Travels in the land of the Delta Blues

The essential question was: How can stories of social activism and change from the past inspire us to create a positive impact in our communities today?

Through my research and our trip, I was able to learn more about the civil rights movement and the the music that helped keep it together, and Robert Johnson, the musician who helped shape music as we know it today.

The challenge we were given was to use the power of video storytelling to spotlight an individual who made brave choices to bring about positive social change, inspiring others to do the same. 

Civil rights and Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson’s work

Over the last couple of months, we have been working on a video where we told a story about someone who has impacted race relations and the civil rights movement. I chose Robert Johnson. He is considered the king of the blues, and is believed to have been to be the start of what would be known as Rock and Roll. We took a trip to Mississippi and Memphis to back this up, and get firsthand knowledge on the people we were learning about.

I got so excited about this because some of my favourite musicians said they were deeply influenced by him. They include: David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan, if not for Robert Johnson, some of our favourite modern music may not exist.

Here’s the video I made 😀

The Trip

Boom. Mississippi. 

Civil rights museum. Amazing. At the Civil Rights museum in Mississippi, we got to experience a firsthand account from a freedom rider, and credited information about the struggles before the civil war and civil rights movement for race relations. I got so many cool photos and videos from this location, and I put some in my final video which would be later in this post.

Tennessee:

Sadly I did not see Robert Johnson’s grave, or the crossroads, but on the upside, I got to take a Greyhound! It has always been a bucket list item for me, and I’m glad I got to experience it. The bus drove through cotton fields, passing through the Mississippi Delta. We saw so many small towns, and it was amazing to see. The Mississippi delta was the birthplace of the delta blues and Robert Johnson. Robert Johnson’s songs where going through my head the entire trip

Music:

We saw a museums about iconic rock stars, like Tina Turner and Elvis, it was cool seeing some of their costumes in person, and the instruments they used over their careers. We got the the country music hall of fame, and RCA studio B. We capped it of at The Grand Ole Opry, where music from all decades were preformed and careers were created. 

Random:

When saw a salt and pepper museum where they did the Beatles dirty

We worked in a group to create a round table about the project. Here are my notes:

In the end, dear reader, please take the time to listen to some blues music, take it in and realize where we came from, And then think of where we can still go.

Thank you, take care and have a good day

 

Blog post. Humanities final. This year was good. Doing good projects. Some of the things I did I was quite proud of, debating for example. I have never done something like that. It went terribly, but I did something new I guess. 

I learned quite a bit over this year, how to make a nuclear bomb, how to become a political leader, and learning about the place I’d live for the next two three years. All of those were nice to learn. It has given me the ability to do exactly what I want. In other words, its nice things to know. Would I want to elongate these projects? Yes. I felt I learned a lot, but I also feel like there is more to learn.

Thank you for reading. See you next year.

The Fear factor project is a continuation of the Manhattan Project project, but more based around the Cold War. In this continuation we went to see deactivated missile silos, we saw a replica of “Big Boy”. Big Boy was the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. In the underground mansion that we went to, we saw …(drum roll)… an underground mansion! I’m making it sound like I didn’t enjoy it. I did. History lesson: the mansion was built in the 70’s because the owner was rich and liked the idea, not because they were worried about an impending nuclear attack. The trip was fun. Well… any trip is fun. I got to know a lot more about my classmates. I talked a lot more. Guess I had more to say, which helped me start conversations for once. I learned a lot on the trip. I created a bit of a fact book amount aviation advancements during that time, unfortunately it was never finished. Overall, liked the project, learned a lot, but unfortunately I was too distracted to take advantage of the opportunity.

As you can see… politics. Interesting. I have never really been interested in politics before this project. It has always struck me as something I didn’t really need to invest much time into. After all this, i can say that my opinion hasn’t really changed. I did learn how British and Canadian politics can change, and affect others.

At the start of the project we read the book “Lord of the Flies”. The book was good. It showed how  a group of british schoolboys in the 50’s would react, and survive on a deserted island. The book started out with them establishing a society and giving roles to everyone. The kids deteriorate to a point where they are rebelling against each other, burning the land they live on, and threatening each others lives.

We worked in groups to create explainer videos on the Canadian government. During those videos we included an animation and an 80’s school video parody. The making of the video was okay. We worked fine. The video came along nicely and i feel like we did a good job. My part was to work on the script and appear in the video.

 

At the end, i feel like I learned something about democracy and how it is better than chaos. I don’t know how this will help me in the future though, unless I am stuck on a desert island.

In the Great Debate project we created some debates that we presented in front of parents, friends, and classmates. We got to choose classmates that we would compete against.

My partner and I chose to debate whether High School was properly preparing students for life in the real world. I argued that High School helps students in the real world, because you can’t go anywhere without learning the basics – you won’t be able to fulfil your dreams.

I feel like I learned good debating techniques – some of those include thinking on my feet (helped me because I find it hard to follow a script when I am stressed), conveying an opinion, displaying my ideas, and looking like I’m supposed to be there. I have always struggled with this for some reason. But, i guess it wasn’t too bad in the end.

I have always struggled with stage fright.  I think I got lucky by only having six or seven people watching, and it even lifted my sprits when neither my original partner or the backup partner showed up – it was a distraction from the stress.

I felt like the project helped immensely, because after all of the practice speeches, I could somewhat convey my point.

Here is the script I planned to read. The “script” that I actually used was just me “winging it”. A video of it should be floating around somewhere. If you find it, please don’t show me. I don’t want to see it.

Anyway, during the project prep, we watched The Great Debaters. Good movie. 7/10. It is about a debate team and their road to glory. Defying all odds. It has an expected amount of Hollywood moments (bending of the truth).

Emotion, logic, background preparation, all of the techniques I learned in the project, I also used in this blog post. If they made a movie about me, it might be called the “Not-Too-Bad Debater”.

 

In this exhibition blog post I am going to be talking about… the spring exhibition :D. For the spring exhibition we had to show off our podcasts and business cards. This was supposed to combine our Marketing You and our podcast projects together.

 This exhibition was amazing because it combines my favourite projects together and the design of our room makes very few people come to ask questions. It’s a win-win. Parents talk to people they care about, and students get to talk about something they are passionate about. Over the project I have created two business cards and one podcast. 

Here are my business cards:

Here is my podcast. It will help you fall asleep:

I had lots of fun during this project because of the product I was showing, it was also fun to check on projects from other grades. I would like to do another exhibition like this soon.

The main question of this post is “ how does balance in my life create opportunities.” Immediately I know I have a problem. From the videos we watched as a class, some guy named Shawn Achor was talking about how happiness affects work.

The Video:

After watching I knew that I was the perfect storm of what not to be. I am constantly tired for some reason, I could be happier and I am not as motivated as I was one or two years ago. I am trying to get better at working efficiently. I was excited to get better habits.

Next we read a book about Atomic habits. It’s meant to help us make good habits and break bad habits. Didn’t work. But I did see some habits that I could change to work for me. My goal for completing the book was to read 21 pages each week. Eventhough I had that goal, I didn’t manage to fully complete the book. From what I did read I found that it gave decent advice, but I don’t think it would work for me.

There were 4 chapters to this book. They are:

• Make it Obvious

Have a visual cue to help you complete work. For example: take your dog for a walk every day that it’s sunny. Oof you do this it would streamline reminders. Instead of having to comb through an app every day just remind yourself through the situation that your in.

• Make it Attractive

Make the task seem quick and exciting to complete. Have a reason to complete it. If you have a reason to complete the task it feels more natural and not like someone if forcing you to complete it. In the first year of PLP there was a post we had to do where we could chose anything to write about. It felt fun. I could go on a rant about anything I wanted to. That is because it seems natural. Not something that was guided by the teachers.

• Make it Easy

Make the task easier by simplifying, taking breaks, or by find something that is interesting about it. Have it seem like a hobby and not school work.

• Make it Satisfying

Feel good after completing the task. Schedule something fun after you complete it. listen to music during it. Work with family. Just do something that ether makes you happy that you completed it or do something that you like while doing it.

Overall I feel like I did learn from this project, but I don’t think that it’s helping solve my bad habits. I am happy that I did this and I am planning on finding some other way to help me create new habits.

In this project we were learning about Disney and how his theme parks shape and influence the experiences of visitors. Over the course of the projects we went to Disney world and created trend videos about ride reviews, asking people about Disney parks and how it affects them. Almost all of my videos were about reviews. Because that’s one of the only trends I can work efficiently on.

We were also tasked with creating a group video. For that video we decided to interview multiple people and ask how Disney has become so nostalgic for them, what movie holds a special place in their hearts and if Mickey Mouse’s core values have remained constant is Disney films. I feel like the video is doing well.

The group video:

I liked going to Disney World. Even though it’s overpopulated and cramped, it’s interesting to go to. I feel like the rest of the project could have been planned differently though. The videos don’t seem to work with the rest of it because some ]thing about Tik tok trends and a school project about Disney theme parks doesn’t seem to fit right. It could ether be changed by giving different option or by having the blog post and the main project being combined in some way. Anyway, I liked this project; I would like to do more stuff like this in the future.

Some of the videos that I created:

In this project we worked on Romeo and Juliet. We first read the original play and connected it to the movie Gnomeo and Juliet. It was cool because we got to watch a movie. I competed a page about how the two versions of the play were similar and how they deviated from one another. Then, in a team had to create our own version of one of the scenes. We chose the balcony scene because it could be changed the most out of all of the scenes in the play. We decided to make it a mockumentary because we could film it more like it was happening in real life. The filming of the video was interesting because we had to create a script that was both realistic and interesting to a modern audience at the same time. At the end i feel like we created a good video that was, in a way, so bad that it ended up being good.

At the end of it i feel like I learned a lot from it. I learned more about team work, i got better at editing on my iPad, and i found out more about the Romeo and Juliet play.

MPol:

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

Gold digger project:

• about the BC gold rush
• We were supposed to create a story

my story:

Gold rush blog post

Ology of apology project:

• about Canada’s past wrongs
• Created a keynote

Winter exhibition:

• created a exhibition piece about Canada’s mistakes
• Didn’t get a break
• Experience

Ology of apology blog post

Takeaways:

• Experience of this year
• Loon lake
• Movies
• Exhibition building
• Not so good times
• Early mornings

My opinion:

• my feeling on the year so far

i liked the start of the year because of the different classes, but I feel like this negatively effected my work.

• What could be changed

i felt like there wasn’t a big focus on PLP