Terrorism

faiths Uncategorized

Driving question: Why does terrorism happen, and what are the immediate and long-term impacts?

When I first learned that terrorism was going to be our new project, I was nervous. See while it sounded very interesting to me, I also was aware at how lacking I am in basic information about terrorist groups, events and people. Names were mentioned in class that I recognized but didn’t know, and even worse – names were mentioned that I had never heard of before. Lucky I found that many of my classmates around me were in the same boat and since we only had two weeks for this project it would be short. The project/idea sprint was still broken down into smaller sections which made it easier for me to get a handle on. 

We started with learning the definition on terrorism, which may sound like a simple google search but trust me it’s not.  In class we were given a 32 page PDF called “What is Terrorism”. Lucky we didn’t have to read the whole thing, in fact, we only looked at one section: “The Most Universally Accepted Definition”. And there is where we found out that there is no “single agreed apron definition” for terrorism.

We learned about the closet they could get:

“terrorism is the use of violence to create fear (i.e., terror, psychic fear) for (1) political, (2) religious, or (3) ideological reasons (ideologies are systems of belief derived from worldviews that frame human social and political conditions). The terror is intentionally aimed at noncombatant targets (i.e., civilians or iconic symbols), and the objective is to achieve the greatest attainable publicity for a group, cause, or individual.”

This lead us directly into our next part of our project/idea sprint which was the building knowledge section. This was going to include us watching four main videos on different types of terrorism: terrorism in the name of liberation, revolution, God, and state. 

 

Terrorism in the Name of Liberation

This part was honestly the one with the most examples and interviews. It was so different than expected because the documentary had interviews with people who openly said they had killed people and didn’t feel remorse but like THEY WEREN’T IN JAIL OR ANYTHING. It was just such a foreign idea because it brings us back to this quote we often referred too: 

Which was just crazy to think about because we are always told terrorism is a horrible, horrible choice but then we started to see some examples where people are being so strongly oppressed that maybe they didn’t have a choice? Maybe it is possible terrorism could be justified? Those questions would actually follow us through the whole project. While I don’t think I can agree that it can be justified, I don’t know if I can outright say that it can’t be. It definitely left me thinking a lot. Then in small groups we did a mini research project, my group did ours on the Troubles in Ireland. Check it out here!!

 

We then took a break from the videos to do a socratic seminar……..it didn’t go as planned. While I had improved since last time I did a seminar I still talked a lot less than I wanted to and found myself just sitting there trying to follow our conversation. As you can see in my reflection below, I didn’t prepare as much as I should’ve because of tests and other outside factors as well as I just got a little overwhelmed in the moment. This frustrated me because just a week before I had been a moderator for our panel discussion on the civil rights movement and I thought I did really well with the public speaking. This felt like a big step backwards. I was determined to do better on the final seminar. 

Terrorism in the Name of a Revolution

This one showed again a lot of brutality but also more guilt than in the liberation documentary. In the interviews people stated things like “I have to say to myself that I killed two people”, “the fact that people died is difficult for me”, at the time it was justified”. There was one story about a group of terrorists who had taken someone hostage to get attention for their cause but where there were no concrete steps taken by the other side they shot him and one of the terrorists said this in an Interview:

“It was an awful day, I had been the one who contacted his friends and it was my job to tell them where the body would be….pretended to be someone else and told them where the body was … It was not a nice job … messenger of death.”

What I found most interesting about this topic was how no terrorism in the name of revolution has ever been successful. My group ended up looking specifically at the Shining Path terrorist group in Peru who was a lot more recently active than I would’ve ever thought. Check out our research here.

Terrorism in the Name of God 

What surprised me most about this one was how there was a lot more intentional deaths of the terrorists. For example, suicide bombers were mentioned more than once and there would be people who shot up a temple and then killed themselves. There was one example of a plane hijacking where the terrorist said to the hostages “Don’t worry if you die you will go paradise and have 72 virgins waiting for you” and“You will die a martyr why are you scared?”. This honestly baffled me because at least for me, that’s something you hear about in movies or a dramatic podcast not an interview with a real victim. I guess this section really brought me to realize just how dedicated people can be to a cause and how beyond reason it can seem to someone with an outside perspective. This lead my group into our research topic: How can mass killings be seen as a form of religious commitment? I was most interested in the Luxor Massacre which involved the shooting of 70 people, who were mostly tourists, and ended in the suicide of all the terrorists. Here is our full research:

Terrorism in the Name of the State

This one was the saddest video by far, and while all of the videos before also included awful deaths and consequences, this video showed the intergenerational and long term effects. Here is a snippet of what the video talked about: “One of the more dangerous forms of terrorism…..tend to be far more capable…they are being trained by an established nation”. People throughout the video had so many differing opinions on if some of the acts counted as terrorism: “A strong interrogation is justified if it prevents worse crimes”, another person said “If you call that terrorism you are broadening the definition…terrorism is against civilians” and also “If they were fighting for freedom then they are using a disproportionate amount of violence”. The comment that really got to me is this idea that terrorism is against civilians and since the terrorist group was mainly attacking the government “they didn’t count”. This bothered me so much because minutes before we were hearing about how that group in Nicaragua who were killing civilians in countless awful ways. It seem like so many “unfortunate casualties” and the way they were killed was all awful making me realize that the man saying these things may not have seen the whole picture or at least was trying to find justification.  The main reason I found this documentary so sad was because of “The Grandmothers of the Disappeared”. In Argentina there were decades of something called the Dirty War which caused tens of thousands of deaths and disappearances. There were even stories people people being pushed out of planes, alive. The grandmothers of the disappeared refers to the mothers of the pregnant women who were taken at the time and haven’t been seen since. One of the grandmothers said “we don’t know where are children are and we don’t know where our grandchildren are”. The idea of the terrorists was that they would take these women and men (mostly who were activists but not always) and kill them. They would take the newborn baby and give it to a military family to be raised. Today these grandmothers try to find and reunite with the grandchildren. This was very interesting to learn about and reminded me a lot about what has happened here with MMIWG. Read more here!! 

 

Final Seminar

This brings us to the end of the project which ended with our final Socratic seminar. This one went much better then the last. I was more prepared, I used evidence, asked more questions and even searched up a definition to share with the group. While I maybe didn’t talk as much as other extending students, I talked much more and had more purpose in speaking than I did last time and I think it was definitely extending for me. What I really enjoyed was how the seminar didn’t feel like everyone was talking just to talk. We were debating, challenging ideas, giving evidence, adding new questions and bringing up moral debate. We talked about religion, how morals change around the world and how they don’t. I honestly wanted the conversation to carry on longer. 

Overall I think this Idea Sprint was really intriguing and was on a topic I probably wouldn’t have looked into on my own currently. I liked learning about the differences between the different types of terrorism and how its not always just Black and White like I feel it’s often portrayed, rather it has so many more layers and things you need to look into to really understand. I am not at all saying terrorism is ever justified, I am just saying that looking more closely into topics is important because prospective matters. 

Road trip in the South! Yeehaw! Not Yahoo >:(

faiths Uncategorized

Some cultures have their bed roll or mattresses directly on the floor. But imagine the reason you do is so you have a better chance of survival in case someone shoots at your house. This was the everyday reality for Darell, Reena, and James Evers, the children of Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist in Jackson, Mississippi. When our group visited his house, which is a national monument, I saw the extra preparation the Evers family had to think about when living in their house. For example, their windows were higher, to limit visibility and their front door was at the side of the house so Mr. Evers could go from his car to directly inside his house without being exposed too long. Inside their home, their fridge was located close to their door so it could easily become a blockade. Furthermore, their neighbour was instructed to shoot a warning shot into the air if he every heard any shots fired. While Medgar Evers was assassinated, his wife and children survived and the shooter ran off when he heard the neighbour fire a warning shot. Going to Medgar Evers’ home, as well as each step of this project, opened my eyes to how harsh the realities of life are for many people.

Our big idea for this project and field school was “Social justice initiatives can transform individuals and systems” and specifically we investigated the essential question of “How can stories of social activism and change from the past inspire us to create a positive impact in our communities today?”. 

Before we could even approach an answer to this question we had to build an understanding of the civil rights movement. This included watching films like A Long Way Home, documentaries such as The Soundtrack for a Revolution, reading articles, and listening to in-class lectures. We made notes, participated in conversations, and gained insight into who or what we wanted to learn about individually. Our goal, in answering the essential question, 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.” I decided to choose someone who was an activist as a child and as an adult, Ruby Bridges.

Ruby Bridges, at age 6, was the first African American child to attend a previously all-white elementary school in Louisiana. Later on, she started a foundation and wrote books to inspire children and youth in the fight against racism. To learn more about what I discovered click here to see my notes or watch my film, “Ruby Bridges”, at the bottom of this post.

Next we conducted a Socratic Seminar and afterwards I did a lot of reflecting because it did not go as I planned. The seminar was meant to tie together our learning so far and push our thinking forward to help prepare us for our upcoming field study. I made notes. But, during that week I had multiple tests. I reviewed my notes but not as thoroughly as I needed to. During the seminar, I did not talk very much. When I did, I felt like I could not add much new insight or direction to the conversation. It felt like the discussion was going in circles. It made me realize that I needed to get on top of the project before the trip. And I did. 

During the weeks before the trip I researched Ruby Bridges and created an approved storyboard about what I would shoot everyday of the trip. This was challenging because I wasn’t quite sure what I would find about Ruby Bridges because her story was not directly in Mississippi or Tennessee. And I was definitely at a loss for what I would photograph at the Salt and Pepper Museum … Click here to see my APPROVED storyboard.

 

THE TRIP 

The road trip through Mississippi, Arkansas (yes, I am counting this part too), and Tennessee was a cultural experience in multiple ways. First of all, we experienced many iconic treasures like Dollywood, The Grand Ol’ Opery, RCA Studio B, and Graceland. There was a lot of GLUTEN-laden food, that I now miss dearly. We had a 25 lb pie. We had (too?) much fried food. We had ribs. We went to multiple all you can eat buffet. It was the American Dream?! Particularly memorable, was our day at Dollywood where I went upside down 12 times which is amazing considering I had never been on an upside down rollercoaster in my life. My group went on five rollercoasters in one hour. Secondly, we experienced a part of American culture that I never really thought about before, the realities and need of the Civil Rights movement. 

We met a man who was the youngest Freedom Rider who was ever arrested. This young man, at age 13, was put on death row for multiple weeks because of a clerical error. We saw the place where Emmitt Till’s body was pulled from the river and visited the nearby town with the Emmitt Till museum. Glendora maintains this museum but does not have the recognition or protection that they deserve. Here we met a man who has been through so much heartbreak and injustice but he still is trying to make his town a better place. He is the Mayor of Glendora and is the founder of the Emmitt Till Museum. He was a key reason why I feel my eyes were opened on this trip to the realities of racism. I stood just a few feet from where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. We viewed the Freedom Rider bus that was bombed. I read a list of people who were lynched in Mississippi; it was massive, double sided, and there were five or six more pillars with the same amount. We drove through many poor communities that were also eye-opening because we don’t think of first world countries as having such disparity. The more we drove the more we could predict if the neighbourhood was a white neighbourhood, or not. To see more of my reflections on the trip, click here!

 

Filming

Throughout the trip, I filmed stand-up’s, took videos, collected interviews in order to answer the essential question. Something I was proud of myself for was being flexible about what I could get at a location. If I was planning to get an interview, and it didn’t work out, I would immediately check the schedule, to find the next location of where I could get one. One part I feel bad about was when I messed up the microphone for multiple people’s interviews. The microphone had just been working, and I knew that the day before it had been working, and we were in a rush. So I did not test it again for our question. While the audio is not terrible, you can tell that the microphones were not working. I am proud of my stand-ups that I did in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum because it required me to take initiative and utilize what was around me. (Thank you Ava for being my amazing cinematographer). In the end, the biggest challenge I face was shortening my video. My first draft was 12minutes long because I had so much content that I wanted to use. I needed to be very particular about how I would answer the essential question. Because of my conversation with the employee at the National Public Library, I ended up changing my call to action than what I had planned at the beginning of the trip. I decided to make it more about the importance of conversations and small acts. LINK to film

 

Panel Discussion

To end our project, we prepared a panel discussion to share our knowledge with the parents who graciously paid (in my case at least) for this incredible learning experience. (No shrimp talks were allowed.) As the moderator, I think I did a good job of keeping my group on time (the goal was 15 minutes and ours was 14:56), and on topic. I also made lots of my own connections and had the idea to encourage audience participation. In fact, I was even complimented by someone, not my mother, which I take as a big win considering how much I say I hate public speaking.  Even with the surprise ending question, I contributed to the conversation many times with something relevant and meaningful.

I am left with a lot of gratitude for having the chance to learn about the Civil Rights Movement with so much depth. One of the Museum volunteers talked about how schools in the area do not learn as much about the Civil Rights. This shocked me. When I got home, I told people where I went and most people did not know who Emmitt Till or Medgar Evers was. People should know. I am glad I know this information, glad I can share it, and glad that my film encourages people to just start having tough conversations. 

MPOL 2025

faiths PLP

 

Welcome to my grade 12 MPOL!

 

Successes:

           Producer:

    • This role was outside of my comfort zone because it put me in the spotlight, it was significantly more pressure, and it involved my involvement in every step of the movie instead of just one part of the movie.
    • It was a success because I collaborated well with various people and was able to tell them things they did not necessarily want to do. 
    • When I was working with an especially difficult teammate, I took steps to communicate with the teacher about the situation and ask for help when I needed it. 
    • When my director went away for a family vacation, I had to take a more prominent role in helping the editors with the movie – which was a stretch for me because editing is not one of my strengths. Knowing this about myself, I found a way to use my strengths and still see the editing completed. I was not involved in any of the actual editing but I got a team of people together to help the editors out and I would daily look at what they were creating and offer help. 
    • Organization and taking a leadership role can be difficult for me due to the pressure, and managing more tasks, but overall I think I did really well and rose to the occasion. I learned to bring Timbits as bribes!
    • I believe during this project I also showed a lot of agency and resilience which was one of my goals in my VMV. I was able to successfully make plans and organize people and more importantly I was able to be flexible and make new plans when things fell apart. 
    • Another one of my VMV goals was to create work that I am proud of and this movie is one of my favourite projects I have ever created. I showed my family, friends, and random relatives the final project because of well how our hard work turned out. 

 

Set Backs

      Essay Writing:

  • Essay writing is difficult! It does not come naturally to me – my brain is more inclined towards math and science. When I learned we were doing an essay project I did not have a great mindset about it and I saw it as a big obstacle I would need to overcome.
  • I found it hard to be excited about other aspects of the project because the essay was looming over me. 
  • I worked through this by choosing a topic I was actively interested in learning about to make it less of a checklist and more personal to me.
  • I also asked for help ahead of time knowing that I would need it. I sent my essay to a lot of people for feedback and started writing it before we were even assigned it to be written because I knew it would take a lot of time. This connects to my VMV goal of setting aside work blocks ahead of time so I don’t get behind or overwhelmed. 
  • Another VMV goal that this project helped me work on was giving others feedback. I recognize that writing doesn’t come naturally to me and so I haven’t always been confident that I give meaningful feedback to my peers. With this project though I gave many people feedback and decided to focus more on the things I knew they were missing or sentences I found confusing, instead of trying to find all the little mistakes. 
  • I learned that I can still create work I am proud of even if it is something I don’t enjoy or doesn’t come naturally to me. 
  • I learned that I have systems in place to help me when I need it and accessing those systems is beneficial. 

My VMV Progress:

 

In conclusion I am really proud of the work and learning I have done so far this year. While I still have multiple areas I can improve on I am just really happy about how far I have come in so many other areas and I am excited to see what we are doing next. 

Feminism

faiths Humanities

How Has the Feminist Movement Impacted Members of Our Society? When you read that question, was the FIRST thing in your mind “Feminist Baby”? The children’s book written by Loryn Brantz shows a little girl who is not afraid of doing her own thing. If that somehow wasn’t your first thought then you will relate to the majority of my class who was happily surprised when our launch activity included us looking through this book and thinking about why it was created. After reading the very entertaining book we each created mind maps showing everything we thought of when we heard the word feminist. Here is mine:

I thought that I was fairly educated in this area until I actually had to create my mind map. As you can see my mind map was fairly basic, but while that’s unfortunate, it was still fine seeing as though it was only day one of the project.

 After this launch activity we learned that our final product was going to be a research paper/essay that included an interview. When I heard this I…….was not excited. I was conflicted because I knew it was an important topic but I also knew that I dislike interviewing people, writing isn’t my strong suit, and that it was going to take a lot of work.

To start the project off, our investigation stage was all about building our knowledge on the four waves of the feminist movements. We would spend our classes listening and reading about the feminist movement then writing responses to various questions. I have never been a fan of reading in class because I find that I never finish the article by the time we talked about it as a class.  I was able to give well written out answers but many times I had to ask for an extension in order to do so. 

The next part of this project I am actually really proud of myself for. Over the course of the whole project we read Becoming by Michelle Obama which is a great book but its also our fourth and longest novel study of the year. Normally in high school we do one or two novel studies in a year, so I was not overjoyed, initially, to learn that we would have to read the 24 chapter book. This is the part where I am proud of myself because I actually used my systems and did really well. I found an audiobook and listened to my book while having my screen split between my notes and my online book copy so I could highlight, get quotes, make notes, all while following along. Then for the book notes I always had more than one question and I backed them up with in text examples. For the Socratic seminars I would always offer to start off the conversations and I continued to contribute multiple times and would ask questions and build off the ongoing conversation. I normally hate talking in class but I also wanted to show my ideas and how I did in fact read the book and that I did understand what was going on. 

This brings us to the hardest part of the project, the final product. To start we needed to decide what we wanted to research and write about. Knowing I had to interview someone I decided that I would ask and see who I could talk to before deciding what I wanted to directly focus on. When asking around to my relatives and friends I still couldn’t decide on what I would be interested in learning more about. It wasn’t until I read about Christian involvement in the second – third wave that I realized what I wanted to do: can someone be a Christian and a feminist? With my topic I now had to find someone to interview and write my thesis. Finding someone to interview turned out to be fairly easy, I had three plausible options that in the end I decided to go with only one so that my essay wasn’t too busy. I interviewed Ms. Vance who currently holds a Masters of Leadership and Development and is Director of Organizational Development for Norquest College in Edmonton, Alberta; however, she also worked as a pastor for many years. Even now, outside of that role, she serves on national and western Canadian boards for interdenominational organizations. In other words, she knew what she was talking about both in experience and in an academic sense. My interview with her went smoothly and with my questions I was able to get even more information than I needed. The thesis was next. I did probably 20 different drafts of my thesis before writing my introduction, then I wrote ten more after showing my introduction to my friends and teacher. Their feedback was that my thesis was too chunky and no matter how many times I reworded it I couldn’t change that enough. In the end I decided to switch the order of my body paragraphs around so the thesis flowed better. 

With my introduction and thesis done it was time for the research and writing part of the essay. Even though I’ve always struggled with writing this part didn’t go to bad because I made detailed notes, asked for lots of feedback, and got help when I needed it. In the end my first draft was finished on time and I was able to get feedback from multiple different classmates. My favourite part of this process was learning about feminism in Christianity and how words are often mistranslated. For example, in some translations a word that means “everyone” is translated into “men” or another translates the same Hebrew word into “elder”, when in reference to men, and “servant” when in reference to women. This area of study has always been really intriguing to me and I’m glad I got to look into it. One particular line of my essay that I am proud of is “By seeing this inter-connectivity, there is proof that it is not only possible to be a Christian and a feminist but that they can support one another’s desire to bring societal change.” 

In the end, I am happy with the essay I handed in and enjoyed the project more than I thought. If I had to do this project again I think I would’ve liked to do more research on Christians in feminist movements as well as how different feminism movements has affected the church. 

Pivottt!!!! Pivotttttt!!!!! Timbit?

faiths Humanities

Hello world, for the past five months I have felt like Ross in “Friends” when he was trying to move a couch up a set of stairs while yelling “PIVOT” over and over again. The phrase my teachers always say was running through my mind too: “Flexibility is a tortoise🐢 trait” though most of the time flexibility and pivoting in this project felt like how Sisyphus must feel pushing that rock🪨 up a hill: hard, never ending, and the feeling that it might all come crashing down and be for nothing at any second. 

Welcome to my 👻 HORROR 😱project blog post filled terrifying events like when your group members decide to change the storyline after you had already spent two days making one, or when your people don’t know who the main character is TWO MONTHS into the film production, or when people decide that they can learn their lines five minutes before we need them on camera, or when your director leaves for a month and literally has no internet to do her job……fun times 💀. Anyway I guess it is time to give you context and show you what this project really was about, but before I do that I just want to warn you that this blog post is longer then normal because this project was 4 months long. 

(PLP 12 casually taking four months on a project be like ⬆️)

Now you might be wondering “hey, isn’t this a humanities class? Why are they learning about horror? ” well, that is what I used to think too (not that I wanted to say it out loud in case they changed their minds…..). The reason we were studying horror is perfectly outlined in the driving question: “Why is horror such an effective way to reflect and comment on our society?” The horror genre gives people the ability to see and process our biggest fears in a controlled setting. It also enables us to see how fears have evolved over the decades.  For example, during the height of the Cold War, lots of horror movies showed an evil imposter hiding among people as the villain. Today, we have lots of zombie 🧟‍♂️ plague movies, as well of lots of movies about being in total isolation which we can connect directly to COVID-19.

 

 

This brings us to investigation one which was all about Frankenstein!!!! The first fact you need to know is that Frankenstein is the name of the scientist not the “monster” and the second fact is that Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein is nothing like the movies. Another interesting thing to note is that when Mary Shelley’s first edition of her book came out, (when she was only 20) it did not have her name on it. It wasn’t until the second edition of her book three years later that she was identified as the author. This is because it was the early 1800s and she couldn’t put her name on it the first time because she was a women. This book actually became a cornerstone of the gothic genre that people still read centuries later.  It’s the  themes of isolation, guilt, grief, fear and her manipulation of nature that come together to create this awesome novel Frankenstein that follows the life of Victor Frankenstein and how he comes to create his “monster”. 

Throughout reading this novel, I was surprised how different it was from today’s horror and gothic genres, because it wasn’t gory, fast paced or about a man in a mask with a knife. That’s because the ideas and themes I said above were scary in their own way especially for the time period it was created in. After a number of chapters we would take our notes, themes, and connections and discuss them in small groups. I found that I was much more comfortable and confident in these smaller group discussions and that I was able to effectively communicate my understanding. My notes themselves showed a deep and meaningful understanding of the novel and of the role fear played in the storytelling aspects. You can find my notes here if you want to learn more about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. 

The next investigation was quite different from our normal investigations in humanities as it included us watching horror movies. We did this to better understand how fear can be used in different situations and they gave us ideas for how we can create our final product.

The first movie we watched was the original John carpenter Halloween movie made in 1978. This movie demonstrated how long pauses cause a mix of fear and suspense and how we don’t need blood or a large budget to make a good movie. 

Next was 28 Days Later, which is a well known zombie movie released in 2003. This movie I enjoyed a lot more because it used more action and jump scares to incite fear while still having long suspenseful pauses. I also really liked how the director incorporated a feeling of isolation through amazing shots and views of empty streets which would cause anyone to feel uneasy. Once you add in the fact its a zombie movie… it definitely induced fear in the audience. 

Lastly we watched Get Out, which was released in 2017 and unlike the others used more psychological horror to create fear. This one was very well made and the twist at the end was crazy. My favourite part was how much foreshadowing and symbolism there was down to the cereal and milk being separated in one scene. 

All of these movies showed different fears in very different ways. After watching all of these films, we thought about the specific techniques used and make connections to other projects. I think my notes showed very insightful thoughts and connections which you can find here: (Halloween, 28 Days Later, Get out). 

 

These steps led to the last investigation/ the final product/ the reason for a lot of stress, work, problem solving and pride!!!  Our assignment was to create a 15-25 minute horror movie. This was by far the longest PLP project we have done (on and off September → January) with a lot of hard work, responsibility and pivoting. BUT it is  — by far — my favourite (kinda, this does not include any field school projects because those automatically are just too good to count).

First we needed to be put in two groups and to do that we needed to hand in a pitch form saying what role we wanted in the creation of the movie. When I first looked at the choices for film jobs I had no idea what to pick as I don’t like writing enough to want to write the script (thanks dyslexia), I have no idea how to use editing software and my acting could use…work. That’s until I told someone (my classmate Sabrina or Ava I believe) that I am better at organizing people, and I prefer to do more than one thing and they suggested I pitch for producer (if only I knew what I was getting into).

After being put into our groups we needed to decide on what type of horror we were going to to do and what our rough story outline was. This took many days with lots of debate and new ideas, and at many times it seemed like we restarted the discussion daily. One day I was trying to think of ways to get people to collaborate more so I brought Tim bits which oddly enough was the day we decided on psychological/killer and we came up with our rough story (whether it worked or it was a coincidence I don’t know).  From there we started the script where our Max R , our scriptwriter, worked with Ava, our director, and Sabrina, our production designer to create many drafts of our movie SHATTERED. This is one part of the project where I was able to help a lot as a producer. I worked deadlines around different people’s schedules and I made sure everyone read the script and gave feedback. Along with making sure others gave feedback, I gave lots of feedback on every draft and put the drafts in our groups craft link to keep everything organised. Unfortunately, even after many drafts of the script we realised that our ending did not make sense and against many people’s protests I decided we needed to change it. I got the director,  the scriptwriters, and one of our editors together (to get different perspectives) and we discussed how to fix our problem. After several rounds of discussion we had a plan and we changed the storyline. Here is our final story idea: “Months after the events of a grad camping trip gone horribly wrong, the surviving girl is deeply affected by the trauma of this event and is trying to move on, but her nightmare is far from over when she starts seeing the killer everywhere she goes.” 

The main real world connection that we were trying to show through our film was that trauma is long lasting and greatly impacts the lives of those who have experienced it. We should all make an effort to have more compassion and patience, and to not dismiss the struggles of those suffering from trauma. 

Our next big struggle was the filming. If I am being honest, just thinking about it gives me a headache because we had a lot of problems we had to pivot around. (See couch photo). The first hard part is that we took a break and started a whole other project in this class because we couldn’t go to Loon Lake (the retreat where we were going as a class to film) until end of November. This was hard because while we were “taking a break” we still had lots of work to do so it left like doing two projects at once. The props, lines, equipment, people all had to be organized before we went. I remember carefully making my schedule and planning who would bring what so it was there on time and two days before we left it seemed like it would all be fine. Then it wasn’t. Our first problem is that we changed our camera we were using one day, at the last minute but I forgot to make sure the person bringing it would be there on time. Unfortunately by the time I realised my error, we didn’t have what we needed and we had already lost filming time, so I quickly decided to go back to our original plan so we didn’t lose more time even though it would decrease the quality of those scenes. The next problem involved teammates not showing up when they said they would which made keeping to a schedule very challenging. We also found that it took a lot longer to film than we originally thought, so I moved some things around. Before we left for Loon Lake, we also discovered that our group member’s drone wouldn’t work for what we wanted it too so we had to pivot and use the other group’s drone. Unfortunately, that one ended up breaking (I think it ran into a tree….) and so I had to work with the cinematographers to find a new plan. These situations really tested my leadership and organization skills. Our main problems were around group members not being prepared, which in Grade 12 is quite frustrating, and also because of Ava and I underestimating how long it would take to film a scene. So after the first day I read through our schedule and reorganized it to put everything we absolutely needed filmed at Loon Lake on the day two and pushed everything else to if we had time on day three. This worked pretty well and even with the changes in plans and problems with filming we got everything we needed and most of what we wanted. 

My favourite part of filming at Loon Lake was our “school sanctioned rager” that we created for one of our scenes. This involved speakers, lights, and a red plastic cup, all to create the illusion of a party where our main character spots the killer. While the filming for this went well it was also honestly just really fun and definitely a highlight. 

While Loon Lake was very productive, we still had almost a full act to film (of our three) and that required a lot of organization. About a week and a half in advance I informed my group that we would be filming on the Tuesday we had off from school. I then created a schedule, trying to give most people as much time to sleep in as possible without harming the movie. This meant that we filmed our scenes with less people first then didn’t film much until that evening. Our first problem was that we needed a set of parents for our final act and we had forgot until a few days before that we hadn’t found any yet. This meant I had to desperately ask everyone in my group if their parents were available. Unfortunately in the end we only had my Dad and then we dressed Sabrina up to look old. This filming went really well too (shout out to Ava and Sylas for the awesome mirror scenes) and we ended up getting all the shots we needed. 

This brings us to the editing. Our first draft of our movie was hard to watch and made me worried, especially since my director was about to leave for a month long trip. But this fear didn’t last long because once we were back at school the editors were able to fully commit  to making the film amazing. While the deadline was tough to meet, I was proud of how (once I learned about the due date) I changed people’s roles around making us have three -ish editors and I checked in with each of them daily, giving feedback and trying to help out where I could. I found the editing portion of this film making quite tough  because I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO EDIT WELL. I instead found myself only able to help, give advice and just trust that the editors would be able to complete the movie well and on time. After seeing many, many, MANY drafts of each act we got Declan started on the music which made a huge difference to the overall feel of the film. 

While there is a lot more I can say about this project, I feel like this is already the longest blog I’ve written in years (if not ever). So I just wanted to wrap it up and say that this project was hard and that it pushed me outside of my comfort zone, made me have to learn how to deal with different people and added a lot of stress, but it also was so cool to work on this film every step of the way and it feels amazing to have a completed film that I’m actually proud I have created. Please make sure you watch the film below because —while there are things that could still be improved—it still shows how much hard work and effort was put into it.  

Carrots are Superior

faiths Uncategorized

You might be thinking hmm 🤔 January is late for my first blog post of the year, and you would be right. This project is actually our second humanities project of the year but the first one we have fully completed (horror project post coming soon 🙂 ) and its about “How Can Art Shine a Spotlight on the Dark Sections of our Society?”. This — like most driving questions— seemed like a daunting task at first, but we did it step by step starting with learning some definitions: 

Dystopian: A person who imagines or foresees a state or society where there is great suffering or injustice. Or relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.

Concept art: Is a form of visual art used to convey an idea for use in film, video games, animation, comic books, television shows, or other media.

Now, when you think of conceptual art, you might think about how dumb it seems, how purposeless, and random it is. These thoughts would echo my first thoughts until we did the “Just Keep Moving” launch assignment.

In this assignment, we were to create a concept art showing a connection between our Grade 12 year and ourselves. In order to complete this project we were given an assortment of craft supplies and one class. I created the wonderful masterpiece that you can see below. 

 

Artist statement: “My art piece represents how I’m currently feeling this grade 12 year. My art piece shows me pushing forward and taking one step at a time this is because so far this year my goal has just to not be overwhelmed and to just keep moving. I used the binoculars to show how I am trying to focus on the positives of my future goal not the rough path in front of me. I also wanted to show with the umbrella how even though the path is rough sometimes, I am prepared for it. Unfortunately even with the umbrella you can still see how it doesn’t stop everything (shown with the stick in my back) this represents how even though I am prepared I still have some days where I am struggling to not be overwhelmed. Overall my art piece “Just keep moving” shows how I am slowly but surely working towards my goal. “ 

Creating this art piece made me a LITTLE more excited about the idea of creating an art piece to communicate deeper connections. 

Next I researched a conceptual art piece that I found: “Iceberg Melting” By Su Yu. Our goal was to analyze both the immediate ideas as well as the deeper ideas. This meant that we needed to look at how the historical context of when it was created contributed to or affected its meaning. I thought the artist’s choice of the rich lady and the fur coat, lying on the melting iceberg was effective. This detail made the audience feel mad at how oblivious people are in the face of climate change and materialism. Overall, choosing this piece made me realize how relevant conceptual art can be. Art pieces like “iceberg Melting” reflect important ideas and concerns of our generation.

Now it was time to start learning about the dystopian aspect of the project. We were given the option between five dystopian novels and I chose Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Dystopian books have aways been my favourite, as I love to learn about how people think societies would react when there were no governments to rely on. I chose Fahrenheit 451 because it was something different from my normal end-of-the-world dystopian novels, because instead of a big war or bomb or disease making it dystopian it was the slow death of creativity and knowledge that contributed to the dystopia setting. Through this novel I explored themes such as:

  • Government keeps control by directing the narrative. (Mass Media)
  • Shedding conformity allows for new perspectives. (Conformity or Individuality)
  • Distraction is not the same thing as happiness.
  • People are disconnected emotionally from each other due to lifestyle built out of societal norms, and technology.
  • The Government ensures that people think and act the same. (Loss of individualism and government control)

I was very proud of the connections I was able to make outside the novel including with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and even with the teenagers of today. For example with both Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 shows societies that see individual thought as dangerous and as something to be discouraged. One very interesting realization that I had is that without the last 10 pages of Ray Bradbury’s novel, I would not have known it was written in 1953 because the descriptions and message the author communicated are so closely related to where our world could be heading today. The book describes a society that is so involved with themselves and technology that they no longer care or think about anything. At one point a woman describes how many of her husbands have died and how if the husband she has now dies she will just marry again. Her response demonstrates no remorse or emotional connection to her spouse. The part of the novel that made me sad for this dystopian future was when a character said 

I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it’s not bad at all. You heave them into the ‘parlour’ and turn the switch. It’s like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid.” Mrs. Bowles tittered. “They’d just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back! (109)

Today our habits affect the future of our society. We see this through our growing screen time and shortening attention spans and lack of personal connections.  Read more about Fahrenheit 451 and the connections I made to today here.

These fun thoughts about technology and our society today leads to my final product, which I titled “A tool, not a Carrot”, by Faith Scheewe.

Our assignment was to bring together our understanding of dystopic themes we are seeing today and communicate them through a conceptual art piece of our own creation. When I hear that I had to create an art piece I almost gave up before I began, but when I heard that it could be whatever we wanted, I grew more hopeful. After a LOT of brainstorming, some help and many times of me just hitting my head against my keyboard I came up with my idea. After reading Fahrenheit 451 and doing my own research that you can see in my annotated bibliography, I knew I wanted to focus on our balance with technology but I just needed a way to catch peoples attention. So … I decided to water my phone 📱.  Here is my blueprint:

My idea centred around how our society is relying more and more on technology and how if we rely solely on technology we literally can not survive; technology can’t fulfil our biological needs and we are biological beings. Technology has become an essential tool, but we must remember that it is a tool. This is why I show the photo of a carrot on my actual phone. Technology can help a person identify food, inform you about the food, even tell you how to make the food but it can’t be food. Similar to our biological needs for food, we have biological needs for connection. Technology can give us someone’s number, or show us their profile photo but it can’t fulfill deep, meaningful human connections.  Research shows a biological need for human interaction that is face to face. You have to actually talk to the person or hug the person to make a connection, just like you need real food to eat. When people see the watering can pouring “water” on the phone they are confused and shocked because why would one water a phone? This confusion and shock provokes people to think about what their phones can’t do and how even though we use the technology for hours everyday, it can’t actually meet our biological needs. Technology can distract us from our biological needs and my art piece draws attention to that and prompts thought about how technology is a tool, not a carrot 🥕! 

The pot holding it all together showcased quotes and articles I found when doing my annotated bibliography. I believe that I did a great job pulling together all my concepts and while the actual creation of the art piece was fun (Thank you grandma for all your modge podge help), my favourite part was the exhibition. 

 

Despite what my grade 9-10 blog posts might say, I’ve actually begun to love talking to people about my ideas and about my work. I enjoy explaining why I made the choices I did as well as showing pride in my creations. During the exhibition, I was intentional about asking people about how well they think they balance their use of technology. For example, one question I asked was what they use their phones for? While project itself, and my conversation related that I wasn’t at all against technology, I did want to make people think about how technology like our phones can not meet our biological needs. Technology is a powerful tool we just need to make sure we know it is a tool, not our lifeline. 

 

I found myself very impressed with how my whole project came together. I included themes from Fahrenheit 451, demonstrated focused and insightful creativity in my art piece, connected my ideas to today’s society, and communicated all that thinking and hard work in an engaging product at exhibition. So remember  even though you are using your device and the internet to read this blog post technology is a tool, not a carrot 🥕! 

Cat and Maus

faiths Humanities

This project was based around the question “How can multi-modal communication enhance our ability to humanize and understand complex issues?” While I’ve always wanted to know more about the Holocaust (since all I had known before this project is what’s in the Disney plus show called A Small Light), I’ve always been cautious about the topic. The first thing Ms. Madsen said to us about this project is that we had to watch what we were saying because it is such a horrific and serious topic that still greatly affects us our world today. 

For this project we learned about the Holocaust and the events leading up to it through reading articles, lectures, video testimonies, a symposium and a visit by a granddaughter of a survivor. Each one of these sources added more and more horrible information that I couldn’t imagine. We started with learning about the rise of the Nazis, and then the growth of antisemitism ending with the Holocaust itself. For the first investigation, I wrote a paragraph talking about which type of format resonated most with me and why. 

This assignment got to me more than I would’ve thought. When I’m in class listening to every horrible thing about this time in history I would try to focus on just writing things down, or on the content, and not the person side of it, but for this assignment all of it was the personal and thinking side. This assignment was meant to demonstrate my analyzing skills and I think I really did that. I not only shared what I learned from the activity that most resonated with me but I believed I showed in depth thought into why. I chose the activity about the granddaughter of a survivor because she made it seem more real and not just statistics. Every person she mentioned was a cousin or uncle or dad of her grandmother and all I could think about was my own family. If you want to see what my paragraph was listen to the voice memo below (I chose to do a voice memo because it seemed more personal to me).

Investigation two was reading Maus which is a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman and the only graphic novel to ever win a Pulitzer Prize. This book is about the author learning and writing about his father’s experience during the Holocaust. Reading this book was crazy because  every few pages there was a way his father could’ve been caught or died. His father was also treated terribly and went through so much pain and loss that you could see still the experiences affecting him when the book changed between past and present. With this book we were instructed to do a literacy critique in an essay format. While we were supposed to choose to write on the psychology aspect of the trauma depicted in the book, or on a comparison of two characters or on the literary elements, I chose to combine the first two because to me they seemed very intertwined. I wanted to show how the trauma Vladek experienced affected how he interacted with everyone around him and how those people then reacted. I’m actually very proud of my essay which isn’t always true for past essays. I had so much to write (maybe too much …… 7 pages…..) and had lots of examples of everything because unlike reading novels, I could remember it because I had pictures to go with the words. I have very strong narrative memory skills. I liked my writing and my friends thought it was good so I decided to see what Ms Madsen thought. Earlier this week I got the essay back with few parts needing revision so I changed those but most parts earned an ✅.  Overall I thought my essay showed in depth thinking and is an essay I’m actually proud I wrote. 

The final product was “With a partner, choose an upstander (historical or current), research who they are and how they stood up against intolerance, and create a multimodal exhibit to contribute to our class showcase celebrating difference making!” Which was meant to be showed at the spring exhibition. If your curious what an Upstanders is here are a few definitions my teacher gave us:

My partner for this project was Fraser and together we came up with awesome plan to research the incredible Irena Sendler who saved 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto and then make an interactive timeline in milk bottles. At the same time in BCFP I had started to research the mistreatment of Indigeous people in healthcare. While I was trying to manage the two projects the plans for the exhibition changed. Ultimately, the new choices led to Fraser and I merging our “Upstander” project and our BCFP project although there was plenty of confusion. Personally, I  wanted to do both from the beginning so was glad when they got combined. I am very proud of how I acted when they got combined too, as most people got very stressed and didn’t know where to start but I just got a white board and a pen and started planning. In the end our exhibition exhibit was educational and engaging. Fraser and I had multiple interactive parts including our original timeline idea, effective visuals including orange origami roses to make into a heart, and a call to action which was a physical card the visitors could bring home. Everything was presented well from the crisp edges of the paper, and the interesting layout.  I was super passionate about both topics (Irena Sendler’s life and the terrible mistreatment of Indigenous people in the healthcare system) and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. While all of those things alone were great I was really impressed with how I explained the project to everyone who walked by. I really enjoyed explaining and showing everything I knew from when Irena got in a fight at school to when she was almost executed and found myself realizing how in the younger grades I wouldn’t have been able to do that so confidently.

This project was filled with horrible history that I’m glad is being taught, because it is so important to where we are today with antisemitism rising. Please check out the links and read the images below to learn about Irena Sendler and her incredible her life and as check out my BCFP post connected to this as well. 

BC First Peoples Exhibition

faiths Uncategorized

This semester I took a newly required course called B.C. First Peoples.  While we did a lot of work in this course this year, which you can look at some of work here, this post reflects on our most recent project answering the question “What can I do, even if only in a small way, to be a part of Reconciliation?”

First here are some of my products from other projects and weekly notes that I wanted to highlight:

 

I knew from the start of the year that I would have an exhibition for BCFP and one for PLP and while I hoped they would be on the same night, they actually turned out to be back to back. Originally we were told that PLP 11 would be showing our humanities Holocaust project (which you can read about here) but a bit over a week before the exhibition the plans changed. Firstly we were going to only create something small for humanities and focus on BCFP for both exhibitions, then I heard we would be able to choose, finally it settled on a combined approach where students could combine the humanities and the BCFP. 

This is the part of the project I’m especially proud of because when some people heard this they started to stress and I know I can get like that, sort of stuck, but that day I found a white board and started writing down everything I wanted to do and how to connect them. 

Working with my partner, Fraser,  we created an amazing project. I originally wanted to do something with making people aware of the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian health care system. I got interested in this because of a weekly note I did which you can find here and after reading many articles I knew it was a very pressing and important topic. Then when planing for this exhibition my mom actually told me about what she saw the last time she was in the emergency room. She saw an Indigenous Staff member come and connect to Indigenous patients waiting in the ER. She heard him talk to them and assure them that he would be checking in wth them during their time in the hospital that day. In my research, I learned that in multiple hospitals in BC there are Indigenous Patient Navigators who are Indigenous people who help other Indigenous Peoples through everything in the hospital, basically being their spokes person. So I decided to do a project talking about the mistreatment, the statistics, and the systems set in place and where. So when the two projects had to combine my humanities partner Fraser and I decided to use my BCFP project idea and our humanities one and connect it through the idea of people needling to be up-standers today. 

We created multiple interactive parts including a physical timeline, an online quiz with statistics, effective visuals one where some of my friends and I made orange origami roses to make into a heart, and a physical card the visitors could bring home with a link to our calls to action describing how you can be an upstander even in a small way (look below if you want to scan the QR code yourself to see what you can do). Everything was presented well from the beautiful painting of BC (I did the islands and Fraser did the mainland) to the edges of the paper on the table, and the layout was eye catching.  I was super passionate about both topics and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. I would end up in discussions with people who would tell me what they knew about the topic as well and personal stories they had heard.  

 

In the end I am really proud of the project Fraser and I created and I think it answered the question “What can I do, even if only in a small way, to be a part of Reconciliation?” And if you want to see a few things you can do please check out this link. The link shows some of our research as well as places you can sign your name, volunteer, or donate to in order to help stop the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian healthcare system. I’m very glad I took this course because not only did I learn this information but in multiple exhibitions I was able to help raise awareness to others who I hope might tell it to even more people causing even a small step forward in reconciliation. 

tPOL 2024

faiths TPol

Driving Question:
How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?

 

“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.” 

 

I’ve loved the growth I have shown and the work I have done this year and by looking at these success behaviours I understand why I feel like I’m doing much better.

Yearly Update on Communication with Teachers 

  • I have set goals each year to talk a lot more with teachers and this year, I am finally really proud of my growth in this area.
  • On plp trips I would engage in conversation.  
  • Will never been super comfortable talking to teachers about school work but I’m getting a lot better at casual conversations making talking about school easier. Mr. Hughes knows a lot of facts about Los Vegas Hotels including how one of them had people trapped in the top when it was on fire. I also learned Ms. McWilliams does not like silence during hiking but would choose to talk about her favourite TV shows with me and Gwen. 
  • BIG WIN FOR ME 

 

Agency

Resilience

  • I can tell that I have improved in this part of agency this year based on how I felt and responded when everything with the exhibition projects were changing.  For this past exhibition I felt like the plan and expectations for us changed a lot and we didn’t even fully know what was happening till the Thursday a WEEK before the exhibition
    • I  argued for us to be able to do both the Humanities project and the BCFP project, because I was really invested in both, but especially the humanities one where Fraser and I had a great idea. 
    • Then when we were told to merge them, instead of being paralyzed by anxiety like I have been in the past when expectations were changing,  I was the one in my group to started planning it out – I got a white board and wrote down all of the ideas we were coming up with then after checking with a teacher we were good to go.

    • And as you saw at the exhibition, our final projects were educational and engaging!
      • Fraser and I had multiple interactive parts, effective visuals, and a physical card the visitors could bring home with a link to our calls to action. Everything was presented well from the edges of the paper were crisp, and the layout was interesting. I also felt that I was super passionate about the topic and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. That feeling shows growth because it was not something I wouldn’t have like doing in the younger Grades.

 

Engagement 

Enthusiasm 

  • This year I have made so many products and presentations that I am really proud of. In other years there were maybe one or two projects I would maybe show off to my relative or something this year I have so many more!
  • In the “Who Cares? Why Bother” government project, I made really good notes and shared my insights in the seminar which makes me feel very proud of myself.  I’m pleased that I spoke first and more than once.
  • I notice that enthusiasm also influences how a group works together.  In the “who Cares? Why Bother?” My group worked together so well and was able to create an informative and engaging project with a memorable performance from Noah.
  • Also in BCFP I created an awesome final product for the honouring the children project. In that one I really did have a good idea that inspired me to make it great. This is the project where there was the tree that had a residential school built around it and everything from the ground to the disconnected leaves had a connection and purpose for it. 
  • Lastly, my overall engagement and enthusiasm was really evident in our “fear factor.” I am so proud of this product. Like in the BCFP project I was inspired. I took my animation abilities from BCFP and decided to make an interactive keynote animation that was like a choose your own adventure to show the decisions people had to make during the Cold War. Not only did I have simple animations, I had drawing animations and I embedded YouTube videos that looked like they were playing on a tv, and I had audio of videos and interviews. It can be a bit glitchy and I needed an extension but that was because I had so much I wanted to say. I also had taken a risk to do it in a format that I love to see from others, but don’t usually choose for myself. I am not an artist!  However, I am very proud of this product and I definitely did it to the best of my ability. 

 

While for this TPOL we needed to focus on just three success behaviours, when I looked over my chart I could check off the “consistently” box for all but one. This helps me see why I am doing so well this year. Who knew walking around a NEON museum would actually be interesting? Or learning about a small town named Kingman. Or why we should never go to a Barbed Wire museum.  Overall , with these consistent success behaviours, my stress levels have gone down and my abilities to take risks have gone up. 

Radiation, Bombs, and FEAR

faiths Humanities

Who knew you could see and do so much stuff in ten days! This was the project that incorporated my field study trip in grade 11. As you can probably guess from the title the project was about fear, more specifically answering the question “How has fear been used as a political, defensive, and cultural tool to shape our society?” 

 

One of the first things we did to launch 🚀 this project was read Hiroshima by John Hersey. This book follows the lives of 6 different survivors of Hiroshima, before, during, and after the atomic bomb was dropped. We did in class discussions, wrote theme analyses, and just considered the different views on the decision to drop the bomb. I found reading this book very interesting because I’ve never known much about Hiroshima and Nagasaki even though they were such an important part of our history and I’m glad I got to understand more of what happened. I also learned more about how an author can use different ways of story telling to show us a theme or message. Most information after the war about Hiroshima was about the statistics, where as this book showed people the influence the bomb had on individuals.

Then we BUILT A SECOND BRAIN! (Technically we just started building a second brain but still.) Have you every heard of a Zettelkasten??? Well before this project I hadn’t heard about it either; its based on the idea that our brain can’t hold all the information and thoughts you have in a day so you write them down in different formats and use your brain more to make connections between everything you write down. Out of the three types of notes (fleeting, literature, and permanent) I found that I normally do fleeting, I find the second one hard and I found the permanent most useful. I am not going to lie but for a while there when we were learning this in class I was thinking “this is never going to be useful to me,” “whyyyyyyyyyyy” and “what the heck is going on,” but guess what? I used the links for permanent notes in my writing on the project I’m working on now. Ms. Madsen told us to write a paragraph on why stories are a good way to learn and I was like “hey I wrote a permanent note about this” so then I linked it and used the previous things I had link to as examples for this piece of writing!!! It actually works!!!!!!! I’m trying to still keep the system in place but I am finding myself falling behind on it so I might need to change how I do parts of it to find something that works better for me. Overall I liked how I could show the connections between topics instead of just having them in my head for a day then forgetting them. 

Using our Zettelkasten system to record information and our thoughts, we watched different films about atomic warfare, and just the Cold War in general. During this time we also read a book called Fallout by Todd Strasser which I found really engaging. It focused more on the impacts the Cold War had on individuals and it was my inspiration to my own question for the project. Unlike most PLP projects we got to choose not only what our final product would be but we also got to create our own inquiry question to answer. Being interested on individual people’s decisions during the Cold War I decided on the question “How did fear influence people’s and society’s decisions about personal safety?”

Then our TRIP. I loved this trip, it was even better then last years (which was also amazing) and last year’s was to Disney World so you know the bar was high. We flew into Tucson Arizona, then went to a missile silo (where I gotta be one of the people to turn the key), copper mine, a long hike, museum/zoo, air and space museum (I absolutely loved this part, especially talking to the people there), an all you can eat buffet, all you can eat buffet and a wild West show. Then on our way to Sedona we went to the biosphere 2, visited the Casa grande ruins, and heard an organ player at a pizza restaurant. Then still making our way up Arizona we went on a really cool hike with beautiful views (this was my favourite hike), another really cool hike, a church in the mountains, and saw an IMAX video that had a cougar attack in it! The next day we woke up at 4 o’clock and saw the sunrise on the south end of the Grand Canyon (if you ever go see the sunrise there WEAR PANTS it is cold), then we hiked, partly down into the canyon, which was beautiful, we got to explore, we drove up and stopped at this town on Route 66 which had lots of cool shops, and ended the day at a delicious steakhouse. The next few days included museums, the Hoover dam, the Neon museum,  Fremont Street, National Atomic Testing Museum, Las Vegas crazy casinos, talking to AI robots, seeing the sphere show, another all you can eat buffet and undercover mansion, more malls, three hours in a place called Omega mart and so so much more. It was amazing to visit these places first hand and especially to talk to the volunteers at the Air and Space museum because they had actually been kids during the Cold War. 

When we got back from our (amazing) trip we were in a bit of a rush to finish our final product. I am really proud of what I created for my question but it took a long time and I should’ve done a less time consuming style of animation. For this project we got to pitch whatever final product we thought could show our answer to our inquiry question and I wanted to do something I wouldn’t normally get to do for a project. Since my question was about peoples’ decisions being influenced by fear I wanted to show some of those possible decisions by making an interactive story!!! The hardest part for me (other than the drawings which took a really really long time. P.S. do not look at any of the peoples hands in the illustrations… I gave up on trying to draw hands years ago), was showing that it was fear that made people make these decisions. From my research, I could see that it wasn’t just “oh I feel like making kids hide under desks today,” but that people were scared and had to make hard decisions with different impacts. For my animation I designed it to seem like you were a mother in 1960 in Tucson, Arizona where you had to make all these decisions based off different information that I gathered on my trip and in my search. Throughout the animation, with almost every decision there was an option to “give up and move on with my life,” which I included because fear can also drive you to push away the fear, or you may also realize that you just did not believe in it and I thought that was an important perspective that I needed to add. Overall, I’m especially proud of how I included evidence in so many different forms: I had voice interviews, videos, photos, pamphlets and drawings. Creating this final product was very fun (even the drawings…sorta) but mostly I enjoyed it because I actually am very proud of what I made and felt I showed a lot of my learning in a very creative way. If you click here you can see and go through my final product (unfortunately you have to have an app called keynote in order to see the animations and videos) 

Fear has influenced the world in so many ways, and if you want to see other ways from during the Cold War I suggest you check out Teva’s about secrets, or Fraser’s about Canada today or Nolan about technology, or Ava’s about the red scare and McCarthyism or Sabrina’s about politics or any of the other PLP 11s who all showed different sides and ideas.  I never knew much about the Cold War but I definitely never realized just how big an impact it had on our society. It was a war not fought by soldiers or guns, but with fear. This isn’t the only example of fear shaping our society but it does help show how our world is so connected and defined by fear.