Who Cares? Why Bother?

🤷‍♀️ Where I started

In Grade 5, I distinctly remember learning that there are municipal, provincial, and federal governments in Canada. And that there are taxes. Since then, anything about government has seemed to disappear from my memory. When we started this project, I remember internally complaining about the fact that I had to spend the next month or so learning about something “so boring.” I never knew why there were different names on the election signs in North Vancouver than the signs just across the bridge. I didn’t really understand why we had different parties or that the Governor General even existed. This is where I was at despite my family being somewhat knowledgeable about the government and a great grandfather who was a speaker for the house for Alberta. 

📍Where I am now

The driving questions are: “why do politics matter,” “why should we bother,” and “how can we engage young people in the voting process.” At this time, not only has my knowledge about the government increased but also my understanding of why it should matter to me.  

 

🧭 How did I get here

The Inner-workings of our Government:

To start this project off we built our knowledge of how our governments are run. We listened to lectures from Ms. Madsen, watched videos, looked at visuals, and did daily activities to apply why we learned.

What I did well: Knowing more and more how I learn, I didn’t just type everything the teacher was saying, instead I drew what she was drawing on the board. I added other drawings to it so I could remember and understand the content more. Whenever someone asked me a question, I found that I could visualize where in the chart the information was, which helped me access it. Something else that I did really well was making a storyboard. This was not required for the government video, but I knew I could help my group be organized if we had a visual plan (even if the drawings were stick people), and help myself see what we needed to get done. 

Where I pushed my thinking: The goals of the Government video pushed my thinking. We had to create an informative video for teenage on a topic I knew many of them found boring and somehow keep them engaged. Together my group decided that to do this, we should include different medias by having a video of us and animations that moved around. We also made it seem less than a just an informative video and more like someone helping someone out by explaining it. I also needed to push myself when I not only helped write the script, but did more animation than I thought I would need to do. Animation is not one of my strengths but the video turned out well.

Lord of The Flies:

To learn about the idea of social contract and human nature, we read William Golding’s Lord of The Flies and did group discussions. 

What I did well: I TALKED. A LOT! (for me, at least). For this part of the project, we had to do a group discussion with Ms. Madsen. I was very nervous about this since I don’t enjoy talking in groups or to teachers, and this was both. But I was determined and ended up talking more then I have in any past class discussions. It may not have actually seemed like a lot but I was very proud of myself that I tried to talk every time I had something to add, including being the first student to talk in my group at the beginning.

Where I pushed my thinking: Along with reading the book, I also listened to the book so I could take better notes. The analysis of my notes and the specific questions we were asked, was the basis of what I shared and contributed in group discussions. Where I pushed myself was in the analysis of the book. I had heard of this book from my Mom and many non-PLP classmates but when I started reading this book it wasn’t my favourite. I found the word choices and the amount of descriptions very confusing. When I was done the book, I was very concerned because I did not think I could make connections between the book and the questions. In the end, I talked to friends, family members, and processed the book more and wrote my ideas down, making good connections that you can see here.

The Final Product:

For the final product, we had to create a 10 minute presentation that included our government video, showed our research about current issues, all to convince young people to vote.

What I did well: My communication skills and collaboration skills were strong in the final product. I made sure that everyone had something to do, that they were doing something that was one of their strengths, and that they came in early the day of our presentation so that we could practice. I also helped write the script and researched the political issue I was in charge of as well as helping others find sources for their research. 

Where I pushed my thinking: In the creation of the final presentation about “why young people should vote,” I pushed myself to find ways to make the presentation engaging, and also to problem solve when we ran into issues. Our judge’s panel was made up of Grade 10 and 12 students, which meant that everything in our presentation needed to capture their attention. My group decided that Noah should be an old man with outdated views and who kept interrupting us. This was funny and broke up the longer sections. We also made it seem like we were “FaceTiming” a person who then talked about one of the issues and we set our whole video up as a ted talk. I personally had the idea to split up the long government video into two parts so that the judges did not get bored. Overall, I pushed myself to be very aware of who my audience was and how to get them to care about the information we wanted to get across. You can read their feedback below:

🔍 Where I could improve: 

When reading over The Lord of the Flies, I needed to make connections for the discussion. I found this challenging. Looking back, I should have talked to Ms. Madsen more for help and to see if I was on the right track, because trying to make those big picture connections was difficult. This novel was important because it teaches us about social contracts and why government is important and it talks about human nature. Also, for the final presentation, I wish I had practiced my own lines more because I found myself tripping over many words. 

🤔 Why does my learning here matter: 

In trying hard to convince other young people to vote, it showed me many reasons why I need to vote when I am 18. I was not against voting, but I was not thinking about it. Now I want to and I know that many of my classmates feel the same.  In the last federal election, 10% less young people voted than the election before that one. Decisions about climate change, tuition prices, homelessness, the war on drugs will affect our immediate and long term future. By voting, young people will have a say in what their future looks like.

Thanks for reading!

Article 44

Hi. This is a short blog post showing part of the work I have done in BC First Peoples so far this year.

UNDRIP stands for the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it got royal assent (making it law) in 2021 in Canada. It is a framework of rights for the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples. For this assignment I had to pick an article from UNDRIP, research it and share what it is and why it’s important in a story formate. I hope you like my puppet pals video below.

I hope you learned something watching the video. Article 44 states that: All the rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female indigenous individuals.

This is important because it means that Indigenous women legally have to be treated the same as men. Indigenous people always faced a lot of discrimination and their rights have always been late to come into place but Indigenous women rights are even worse. Up until 1951 Indigenous women couldn’t even vote on their own band members and it was only in 1985 that Indigenous women could marry someone without status without losing their own status. And we see this more recently with the MMIWG. Those are just some examples of why this law is so important it makes it official that indigenous guys and girls have to be treated the same. I hope you learned something and maybe feel like you want to do your own research to learn more. 

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The Destruction of my Friend Ava through (a super hero) Debate

How can we use a formal debate to convince an audience we’re right?

When I heard that we were starting a debate unit my first thoughts were “I’m going to have to speak in PUBLIC? Noooooooooooooooooo!” But throughout the project I actually had a lot of fun and surprised myself.

To start the project off we watched the movie The Great Debaters and if you have seen the movie you will know that their teacher has them practice speaking with a cork 🍾 in their mouths. While this movie was very interesting to watch and got us in the debating mindset, I was very glad that we never had to do that (it was offered though). I enjoyed the movie because I never have been interested in debate so I felt like this introduced our class to what we would be doing. 

Now that we were in the debating mindset, we needed to practice using persuasive writing. “The Best _____ Ever” was our prompt and I chose to do the best sport (which you all should know is volleyball!!!!!!!). Here is the link to all the different versions I made including the one where I had to identify logos, pathos, and ethos as well as the one where I had to rewrite to add parallel structure. Parallel structure was the format we were going to use in our debates so we practiced with this writing skill. Interestingly, I found that my writing actually showed several parallel structures already which gave me hope for my debate. 

Then we got to pick our topic and nemesis (opponent). My friend Ava and I had already decided to go against each other so as soon as we got the list of possible topic we started highlighting. We went through the list crossing off things we didn’t want to do (basically anything to do with money and school) and highlighting all the ones we would want to try to debate (this was a long list of everything else). Eventually we narrowed it down to multiple serious topics and one fun one. We found that most people were doing serious topics since it was going to be a serious debate, so we picked the opposite (the fun one:) ) to challenge ourselves to turn a fun topic into a serious debate. We chose “Super Villains are Better Then Super Heroes”.

Once we chose our topic we begun researching which allowed me to show growth in my questioning competency. I chose the affirmative side of the statement and because we weren’t supposed to know our opponent’s arguments, the affirmative and negative were put on different sides of the classroom. One engaging part of this project was how my opponent/nemesis/Ava and I made the competition entertaining. For example, you can see from the title of this blog that we would find creative, and fun names for our documents. Other examples are the title of my Need To Knows and the tittle of my Research. For our debates we were told to find lots of research and put it in the form of an annotated bibliography. The trickiest part of this process was finding sources about Super Villains that met all the reliability requirements. We needed at least three reasons why each source was reliable before we could use it (if it was made recently or maybe its a university paper) and there aren’t many research papers from universities about Super Villains. This is one part that definitely showed my researching growth and how I had to change which criteria I was using. Instead of trying to find university studies,  I found articles written by reliable authors with jobs like psychologists and others that made sense with my topic. 

 

Now that I had the research I wrote the actual debate. We broke the debate speech into three parts:

1. The 4 minute opening with most of the research and arguments. 

2. The 1 minute rebuttal which was our reply to our opponent’s arguments. 

3. The 30 seconds closing remarks.

I think the was the hardest part for me was writing the opening 4 minutes as I had lots of ideas but found that…. It might have been too many ideas. My first draft was about 9 minutes….. it took me a long time to cut it down to the four minutes. During this process no matter what people said when I asked them what I should cut I would always keep a certain part. That part was “Are you trying to decide between blond, or brunette? Cruella Deville shows us that you don’t have to decide – make a statement, go for both.“ I don’t know why, but I loved that part and I wouldn’t get rid of it. Eventually with lots of feedback and edits I had a draft that I was excited to present.  Next was the rebuttal. We got many rebuttal examples so when it came to writing mine it wasn’t as hard as writing my 4 minute speech. What I did find hard was knowing that Ava was going to think of some abstract and not obvious point, that I didn’t know, so I couldn’t prepared for it. Then I wrote my conclusion (that I threw out the window during my debate so it doesn’t matter what I originally wrote). 

I grew in my communication competency in the practicing and presenting of the debate. Before I tell you how I am proud of how the debate went, you should understand that public speaking has never been my strong suit so I was pretty nervous going into this project. The feeling of not wanting to talk in front of people got worse when I came early one day to practice in front of of Ms Madsen, my teacher. It didn’t go terrible but I could’ve done better and it didn’t instil me with confidence and nether did the practice later that week in front of her in class. I did practice a lot in front of friends and (what I found very helpful) in front of my whole family but I was still very nervous.

Exhibition day!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was it where all my hard work hopefully was going to come together. I watched multiple people debate (which I found helpful for my own) and saw part of the other PLP students’ work (though not as much as I would’ve liked). Then it was my turn; Ava and I both did really well. A few things I am especially proud: I didn’t speak too quickly which is a tendency of mine when I speak publicly, I used my research to make up an appropriate rebuttal in the moment, and I completely redid my conclusion while talking. What I found surprising was how Ava took a shot at my argument in the conclusion (it was a smart move to be honest) but I definitely wasn’t expecting that. She also made a lot of points that I wasn’t expecting making it challenging for me to rebut her. 

In the end, I did win the debate which might have had something to do with 6 of the audience members being related, but overall, I was very proud of how I did and I loved having Ava as an opponent/nemesis. The experience was fun and challenging. I found that I surprised myself in how I spoke in my debate and even though I need to work on annunciation I was glad I didn’t just speed through all my writing. I really enjoyed communicating in this different format, as it was something I hadn’t tried before and I found it very enjoyable. Overall I enjoyed this project and I hope you look below and watch my debate as well as the debates of my other classmates. 

The Manhattan Project Project

How did the development of the atomic bomb change the world?

All of  my information regarding the Manhattan Project before this unit came from the TRAILER of the Oppenheimer movie. I knew the US built a different type of bomb and that it had devastating effects that ended WWII. I didn’t even know enough to have an opinion on the driving question.

We started the project with lectures about the people, science, and effect of the atomic bomb. We then wrote a piece on any event or person that we wanted talk about and argue why it was historically significant. My choice was to write about Pearl Harbour which led me to research and gave me a chance to revisit the idea of historical significance which we would be using throughout this project. You can see my argument for why Pearl Harbour is historically significant here.

Next, instead of keystones or milestones like most humanities projects, we dived into the creation of the final product by being put into groups of 6. Our goal over the next few weeks was to research, write, design, and publish an interactive book on the historical significance of the Manhattan Project. Our group took a loooong time to brainstorm ideas for our book but in the end we came up with an original and creative idea for our book that no other group did. Instead of writing the book from an outside point of view, we wrote the book from Oppenheimer’s perspective, and turned it into his journal.

 

For part of this project, two group members went on a field school to New Mexico, and visited the Trinity site and a museum which is where they interviewed people and took photos for our book. Back at Seycove, the rest of us split up the book into sections. As the project manager, I helped split up the tasks and research topics to start the process of creating out book. I personally set goals for each class and made sure everyone knew what their job was when they left class each day. I was in charge of finding and writing the information for the “classified file” and the opening writing about Oppenheimer becoming director of Los Alamos.

 

One of the requirements of our book was making sure each team member was in a video so my group came up with the idea to do a reenactment of Vice President Truman becoming President and then finding out about the Manhattan Project. This emphasized how much of a secret the building of the atomic bomb was even at high levels of government.

Overall my group worked really well together. Everybody did their part and helped to come up with ideas when our book got off track or when our thesis needed to be revised. I really liked collaborating in this project and I think it would have been difficult to do on my own. We could build our ideas off of each other and research and develop the part of the book we were interested in doing. I also liked how we each had roles as it made things go smoother. We knew who would edit the videos, for example, and who to ask for help when designing the layout of our pages. We could rely on each other to do our part while still being able to ask for help and get a response when we needed one.

Much of this project was about communication and research skills. As a group we found it really challenging to find sources that talked about Oppenheimer’s thoughts, which caused difficulty considering it was supposed to be from his perspective. This led to deeper research and creativity. I really love how we had different ways to show our information. We had the classified file at the beginning, newspaper to show the historical significance the end, as well as interviews, a video, and photos. To make our book to feel more like a journal we called the chapters “entries,” crossed out words, and coffee stains on the pages.

Now at the end of the project, I realize how much more to the Manhattan project there is than I thought. It was interesting to learn “little’ details like the government actually built a full town so the scientists could bring their families. It was also interesting to learn more about why the decision to build, and drop the bomb is controversial. Below you can see my group’s final product. Make sure you check out the top-notch reenactment video as well as read why this event is so historically significant.

 

F.A.I.L (Faith’s Advice In Learning)

How can we use the power of written text to inspire the new PLP 8 learners? That was the driving question for the first PLP 11 project. This project was a lot more English based then many humanities projects, which I found challenging. Writing and grammar have never been my strong suit so when we started a project called “Mightier than the sword” I was a bit worried. 

To start off the project we did writing workshops and learned about the writing process. This included learning new ways to brainstorm and finding different techniques that worked better for us. If you click here you can see my writing journal where I reflected on this experience. 

In my writing journal you will also find my academic writing which was the next part of this project. For the academic writing we had to think about the audience and tone  so you can see my process in the rhetorical analysis in the writing journal. I found the rhetorical analysis especially hard in the writing process because its a different type of purposeful writing than I usually do. Normally I write down some ideas and some evidence and then just start writing; for a rhetorical analysis, I had to think about what contexts and audiences affect my writing. The requirements for the academic where to write about why PLP is a good choice for students focusing on whatever aspects we wanted. I decided to write mine on hand on learning because I know this is a type of learning I have found very useful in PLP. I have done a bit of writing in the last few years but this one was much harder then most of what I had done before. This writing was serious and needed research and sources and quotes which all took a lot of time. I wrote many drafts (that you can see in my writing journal above) and got lots of feedback I used for my final draft. 

This brings us to the final product which was creating a piece of writing for the PLP Grade 8s. Now as grade 11 student I don’t interact with the grade 8s on a normal basis so figuring out what they would want to get advice on was challenging. We started off with lots of brainstorming and then came up with questions to ask them during a morning snack/discussion time one morning. I participated in the early group for the discussions and it went really well. I was able to get good ideas of who the Grade 8 are and what they are concerned about for high school. Using that information I decided to write my advice on F.A.I.L which in PLP means First Attempt In Learning. I am very proud of the name I decided to call my writing F.A.I.L (Faith’s Advice In Learning ).  For this writing I liked how I added in my own experiences as well as my brother’s as I felt that it added a more personal touch that gave the students first hand advice. I found the type of writing for this much more casual and fun compared to the academic writing so I found it easier to write. 

I unfortunately wasn’t able to get any feedback from the Grade 8 on my writing but I am proud of what I wrote which is my goal this year to be proud of what I hand in. If you click here you can see my final writing I hope it’s helpful to you PLP 8 out there :). 

 

Finances and the Spring Exhibition!

In this post, I will be reflecting on my last PGP project and our spring exhibition!

This PGP project was all about our financial future!!! We started off playing a Uber simulator to get an understanding of gig work. I would never consider being an Uber driver myself and this simulator didn’t change my mind, it was long hours and didn’t seem like a lot of money.
Then we went into personal budgets. We started with creating a craft document stating all my personal fixed and variable expenses in a month. Taking this information we added how much we should be spending on it versus how much we spend. This made me realize that I need to buy fewer fries in the cafeteria but that other than that I’m not spending too much.
That was the starting point in learning about financial literacy. Having financial literacy means that you can make smart and informed money decisions in your life. In class, we then talked about the five pillars of financial literacy
1. Earning
2. Spending
3. Saving and investing
4. Borrowing
5. Protecting
After defining everything we watched the movie “Moneyball” to see these skills in action.

This brings us to my favourite part of this project the stock simulator. The point of the stock simulator was to deepen our understanding of investing and understanding how it could fit into the real world.
Using an app on our iPad we all got $13,000 fake money in a real-world simulator. At that point, we had to decide what type of investing we wanted to do. We could invest ethically or profit based or in anything we recognized. I found myself researching multiple ethical companies that ended up being about 50% of what I invested in. The other half were companies I recognized (like Apple and Google). One smart investment that I was happy with was Apple I bought it when it wasn’t super high and then only sold it when it got super high during the Apple event. Here you can view all my week-by-week reflections.

This brings us to the exhibition part of my blog post! This year the exhibition for my grade included this finances project, the last marketing me project, and the podcast I made in Maker. This is a lot of stuff but I think our room incorporated it all very well, our main idea was that our room would look like an office where we could each display our podcasts and who we were on business cards while also showing examples of our stock simulators.

I liked how my podcast business card turned out. I did multiple drafts and got feedback from a lot of people and in the end, liked the look of what I created. I was also impressed by how well my class got our room ready for the exhibition. We had a lot of problems at the beginning like how we didn’t have any tables and all of our plans needed tables but as a class, we figured it out and created an impressive office.

 

This was a good introduction to the world of finances, marketing, and stocks (I should never invest real money I would lose it all) and I loved showing what I learned at the spring exhibition.

tPOL 2023

-Introductions of parents and teacher

“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”

In this presentation my goal is to answer the driving question: “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?” In order to answer that question, I’d like to direct your attention to my learning plan.

 Let’s start by looking at the core competency profiles that I wanted to be at by June 2023.

The ones I have check marked are the ones I feel like I have met throughout projects this year. The underlined ones are the profiles I don’t believe I have fully developed yet and will set them as a goal for next year. 

In my last tPOL, l I went into detail about how I demonstrated these areas of core competencies as I shared what I loved and where I grew. This year, I would really like to share about my growth plan for each subject area and at the same time reflect on my learning profiles. Let’s look at the humanities section of my learning plan to see if I have met my goals for growth.

At the beginning of the year one of my humanities goals was that I would like to improve in my sentence structure. In order to grow in this area needed to be more comfortable asking for help.

– I want to highlight two projects that show you how I focused on getting better at grammar: the Juno beach project and the Lies and Incongruences project. 

– Peer edit formal and informal: Ms. Madsen asked us to create a first draft of our composition and share it with some peers. What I liked about this form of peer feedback is that our class knew what we needed to look for, and physically wrote on the draft. I really loved how I could choose WHO I sent my draft to for feedback. 

– Interesting about this process, when looking over other’s work I found myself finding mistakes more easily than in mine and it gave me practice.

– Setting goal to improve my sentence structure is one reason why I believe I am at a profile 5 for Personal awareness and responsibility.  I knew this was a weak area for me and knowing that I figured out tools to use to improve my achievement.

Another goal for humanities was to improve my blog posts. I wanted to do this through adding more personality, and thought into my work.

– My work this year shows growth into adding thoughtfulness so I would like to draw your attention to specific choices that I made that show personality:

 

Romeo and Juliet blog post In that opening, I felt I made fun of my actual dread of homework in a creative way. My lines parodied lines Juliet speaks to herself.

– Another way that I took action to my growth goal was in changing the name of my blogpost from “Faith’s blog” (not the most interesting name. Is it better than my brother’s? “Ma blog”… I think so) “Thoughts of a Scheewe”. This change was not big but it’s a start. And definitely beats Sam’s.

– Finally, my “About me” update forced me to really think about choices that really showed me. I mention my skills in sarcasm, have pictures that reflect me now, and feature a cool photography workshop I did.

– making intentional choices about adding personality to my blog posts is part of how I improved in communicating. Adding personality shows awareness of audience.

Maker 

In Maker, one of my goals was fine-tuning my time management skills. Looking over year, I barely had to ask for extensions for any assignments this last semester because I found my self planning out when I would do my work and having what I needed prepared (notes ready so that scribing easier).

– A specific example of excellent time management was my podcast. I’m proud of my release schedule which was detailed. What I needed to do would pop up on my Things app. Part way through, I realized later that I needed more time to write my script and less time to record so I changed my plan accordingly. 

 

 

– My pod cast is a good example of the confidence I believe I show in communicating in different ways to different audiences. It also shows my profile in critical and reflective thinking. I had my topic of “Fun solutions to stress” and I had to gather evidence, including interview, and decided what best fit what I wanted to say. I also had to think about what was working and what was not such as using a microphone and choosing a variety of people to interview.

A second growth goal was to want to improve in teamwork. I can get really stressed and annoyed at teammates and I need to improve on my patience when working in a team.

– In the first semester, The Komagato maru project gave me an opportunity to improve in collaboration. I decided to trust my teammates with their roles and I focused more on what I needed to do. 

– Something that has had an impact on team work skills was the Field school to Disney world. This trip made me more comfortable around my classmates which I notice has really helped me now.

– Overall, I can confidently work with my peers to further our shared goals whether it is a “It’s Porg!!!” Tik tok video or a monument.

 

PGP 

In PGP I had three growth goals but I would like to highlight my anxiety. This year I want to grow in taking care of my anxiety. I want to learn and implement new strategies that will help me be less anxious about handing work in on time and the quality of what I can communicate in a project.

– I think my anxiety has gotten better. First of all, I utilize Things app for everything, even personal tasks. This has relieved pressure on my working memory where I was always worried that I was forgetting something. 

– Another strategy I use actually comes from Atomic Habits. It talked about having a reward for motivation for tasks that are difficult. I found myself setting goals like a specific time to hang out with friends if I got certain parts of my homework completed. I think having more social time has also helped me be less anxious in school.

– Speaking of Atomic Habits, in my blog post I said I would try unplugging. I would put my VR head set out of sight so that I would not play it so much. I really enjoy it, but needed to find other ways to relax. I have consistently put it in a cupboard where I can’t see it. Instead, I now listen to music or hit a volley ball against the wall. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I played it!! These choices have helped lower my anxiety.

In the last section of my tPol I want to highlight some major successes for me this year and also recognize some FAILS.

While it was challenging, perhaps one of my projects I am most proud of is my collage. I felt like I used the app really well to portray what I had learned and what I wanted to say. This project is one example of how I showed social awareness and responsibility as I explored Indigenous issues and then made a collage that helps raise awareness.

While I do not think I reached a profile 5 for creative thinking in all my work, I do know that I showed that out of the box thinking in my collage and want to build on that success for next year. 

F.A.I.L.

One FAIL that I need to mention is the Power of Imagination final video. We did not have a detailed enough plan before the trip or a full storyline. This meant that our video was not at a level that I wanted to see. I felt that we needed to work better together with the editing at the end as well to help our storyline come through.

Another FAIL that applies to all my PLP subjects and pretty much all aspects of my life is one part of communication. In my growth plan, I identified that to stretch out of my comfort zone I will need to communicate more in class. 

– The good news? I can now approach PLP teachers will a little less fear in a one on one situation. I volunteered twice to read roles for Romeo and Juliet.

– The other news? The entirety of the text analysis discussion. I sat frozen in silence and avoided eye contact for 45 min. 

– This is my nemesis. I am taking suggestions and am open to advice.

Overall I am feeling really good about how I have grown. I am able to set and meet goals, communicate in different forms to different audiences, work more confidently with more classmates, and produce work I am really proud of creating. This I setting a goal for accomplished in all my classes and then changed it to extending for Humanities. Next year? I want to aim for extending because I know I can do it.

Lies and Incongruences

How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time? That was the driving question for my last humanities project of grade 10. We combined the idea that art is not just something to look at because it’s something you can engage with to learn about and the historical/present day relationship with the Canadian government and Indigenous Peoples. 

To start we each created an I am from poem to start thinking about our relationship with the world around us. Here is mine:

I Am From Poem 

I am from beautiful places 

I am from clear blue skies And cloudy rainy days 

From both the flat prairies and the tall mountains

The smells of farmland and pine tress

The peaceful quiet acreage 

The busy city roads 

I am from a jumbled crazy and large family 

Siblings always shouting, throwing, showing our insanity 

A brother whose teasing humour I know well 

A sister who is off on her own adventures farewell

Another who is with me everyday 

Parents who’s safety I can never repay 

I am from the back and forth sways of a boat on the waves

The speed, Chaos, adventure I crave 

The peaceful rest with barbecue smells 

Diving into the deep collecting shells 

Rapidly Skimming across the water

Crashing down into the sea now swimming like an otter 

I am from big family Christmases 

fondues with cheesy sauce and chocolate 

None of us knowing when to stop eating 

I am from the laziness that follows 

groans, huffs, puffs, slow movements 

Excitement, music, we can open only one 

Shapes of our gifts not matching reality 

5 mattresses stuffed into one room 

Dog jumping, sister singing, pillows flying 

No chance of sleep 

I am from Little cousins running all around 

Screaming, kicking, acting like clowns 

Baby laughing, toddlers singing 

I am from overwhelming joy 

I am from many amazing friends

All around the picnic tables Laughing, 

From volleyball circles

To whales named Gary 

I am from Joyful, fun, kindhearted friends  

I am from beautiful places 

I am from A jumbled crazy and large family 

I am from the back and forth sways of a boat on the waves

I am from big family Christmases 

I am from Little cousins running all around 

I am from many amazing friends 

I am from chaos, peace, laughter, and love

I am…

I really liked mine.. Thinking about what makes me Faith Scheewe made me think about where I lived, what I do, and who is in my life. I found that it was fun to write and a good start to this project. We used a website to collaborate on what we already know about Indigenous people and issues that are relevant to them for this project and what we still need to know. While doing this I realized how much general information I had but not very many specific information. 

This brings us to when we started reading our class novel Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline. While it was set in the future, it reflected on issues shown presently and in the past. For example it referred to residential schools as part of the past and also as something happening again in the book. While reading the book, I would analyze what I was reading and make connections to issues being brought up today. For example we listened to a podcast on the Indian Act and read articles on topics like cultural appropriation and indigenous resurgence. Every couple of chapters we did a reflection. We called this a contribution as we needed to bring those thoughts to class. Sharing those contributions helped to see other peoples points of view. I did a poem, an image, list of questions and drawings. In the end, after we finished the book, we did a quick write reflection for 15 minutes about the connections we saw from the book to the past and to right now. 

The next keystone introduced us to analyzing images and we had to make decisions about what we thought the artists were trying to communicate about Indigenous perspectives. Our teacher would introduce some issues and we would take notes. I am proud of the notes I made from class and from my own research. These prepared me for when it came to writing. The artwork was created by Indigenous Artists. It was a way to express their opinions on important issues like MMIWG and intergenerational trauma. I actually found it hard to keep my responses to 250 words as I had lots of notes. The different styles were really interesting to me such as the beading over top of the Indian Act. Here is a link to the three art pieces I talked about.

After doing so much research, analyzing art, and learning about different perspectives, we went back to our own point of view and thought about if they had shifted from the beginning to now. Our keystone was a short reflection on Truth and Reconciliation. I think I realized that Indigenous issues are current and not just in the past. It is important to understand how much needs to be done.

Finally we got to the final product which was a photo or art collage about one or all of the issues we wrote about for keystone two. There was a lot of flexibility in that’s this could look like I chose to do it digitally on SuperimposeX. I really liked the art I found for my MMIWG reflection so I wanted to include that, and I also wanted to have images from the past and present. It took a while to get a starting idea but with a focus on MMIWG I created a collage I’m proud of. I used historical images and art about residential school that I made black and white to show how Indigenous Peoples were treated in the past. I made the images about the present more colourful and used red to highlight the issues I was focusing on, MMIWG. The red handprint was one part I really love. The app allowed me to place the palm of the hand behind the images while I could put the fingers on top of other images. This feels to me like people reaching out. I also like the feathers from the dream catcher. The dreamcatchers are symbolic for Indigenous people and the feathers fly over the residential school images as well as the artwork and protests to show dreams leached away. From the Marrow Thieves, I chose a quotation about schools leached away dreams. It was not just us looking at art and saying what it is about. We needed to try to understand what the artists were trying to say and then we needed to take our knowledge and made our own art. Art is engaging and helps people represent important topics and express their opinion.

Marketing You

Are you in need of a kiwi? If so I’m the person for you!

This project has been about learning how to effectively market myself to employers. I have never made a resume or thought about making a business card so this was all new to me. To start we created two resumes, one with a headshot and one without. I had a hard time with the objective, and experience parts. The objective was hard because we weren’t writing this for a specific job and I think it would work better if we were. The experience part was difficult because I have never really had a job. I have babysat and…….. well thats it. In the end that’s all I had in work experience section but I found I had a few more experiences for the volunteering section. For example I went on two volunteer trips to Guatemala in elementary school and I volunteer with kids every few weeks using lots of different skills. I wasn’t a big fan of putting a picture of me in my resume but the layout in the end looked better with it. 

 

Next were the business cards! To start we created funny ones and mine is the one you see at the top of this post “Professional Kiwi”. Now I am not from New Zealand the only reason I used this for my business card (and for my blog) is because my last name rhymes with it and my friends think it’s hilarious. My entire class made fake fun business cards that were all very…original. In the end I made three very simple business cards that have my name and information (sadly says nothing about kiwi 🥝) .  Below you can see the front of these businesses cards.

Next was the email. This part went by fairly quick and I created a short professional email that fit the criteria and could be used as an outline for future opportunities.

The part where I really thought I grew in this project was with the final product the mock interview. My original questions my group and I came up with were surface level and didn’t show our understanding. For example one of our original questions was “can you tell us about yourself”. So we revised the questions and came up with three new ones and included us talking about a time when we struggled while working in a group and how we fixed the situation. Another aspect I’m proud of is how we filmed all the mock interviews. We used different angles and good phone cameras to make it as professional as we could.

This finished off our initial planing for future careers. I have never liked thinking about the future and I know if I wasn’t told to make a resume for a project that I would have kept delaying it for months. I like the creativity involved in this project; making business cards was an important life skill, but it was still fun. 

Save Juno Beach

Understanding historical significance, learning rhetorical analysis, following the writing process, and writing of a multi-paragraph composition, are the steps I took to answer the driving question “why is it so important to preserve the Juno Beach Centre?” 

Have you ever heard of Juno Beach? Well I certainly didn’t. As it turns out this was one of the five beaches the Allies stormed on D-Day, June 6, 1944. More specifically it was the beach Canada was in charge of reclaiming. A few years ago a development company in France bought the land to build luxury condos and this was not only disrespectful it was making access to the Juno Beach memorial Center harder to get to. Lucky Canada bought the land around it and the condos weren’t built but this is the reason we started this project. Why should we preserve this Centre? 

To start we continued our understanding of historical significance that we have been building for the past few years. We defined the word and after a lot of research wrote about the 3 most important reasons why WWII was significant. We had the choice to write about why WWII was significant for us as a nation or why Canada’s impact was significant elsewhere. I chose to talk about why it was important for us as a nation. Through this process I saw a lot of similarities to WWI especially with the job opportunities for women. In both of the wars women joined the work force but in this war women could do jobs that involved a degree. For example I learned That the world’s first female aeronautical engineer was in Canada! She was in charge of producing fighter jets called hurricanes for the war effort. I also learned that social security and unemployment insurance was created during WWII. This assignment showed my deep understanding of the analysis competency which is about accessing the significance of something over time. I never understood how much WWII connects to Canada policies until this project.

Our next step was learning about rhetorical analysis or actually more about how we can use certain words or phrases to get our point across to the reader in different ways. To do this we learned about different transitions and writing choices. We also reviewed and learned about pathos, logos, and ethos. I really enjoyed the exercises we did at this point as we would take the same idea but change it for different audiences. Next we read an article and in groups did a rhetorical analysis. For that Rhetorical analysis, we first had to identify where the author uses pathos, ethos, logos. Then we had to figure out what the author implied in a certain sentence and how it built their main message. While, I didn’t have a problem with that part I found the class discussion we did the next day difficult. I do not enjoy talking in front of large groups of people and so even when I did have an answer, I found myself just sitting there. I enjoyed the writing questions from the day before, but didn’t really find anything useful in the class discussion.

Then it was time for us to do our own rhetorical analysis of this really well written article called “Thank you for not killing my son”. I thought I showed a really good understanding of rhetorical analysis for this Keystone because I wrote a lot and explained how the tone is kind of ironic, and how I thought the author used logos really well in the beginning followed by a strong emotional pull (pathos). I also showed my skills in the questioning competency when I engaged in the text and showed my extending understanding of rhetorical analysis. We then wrote our own rhetorical analysis for the multi-paragraph composition we were about to write for our final product. I found this a tricky part of the Keystone, because I hadn’t really thought through my idea and how I was going to communicate it before then. This exercise did help me think of how I was incorporating pathos and led me to the idea to talk about my great-grandfather.

A multi-paragraph composition can mean different formats and so I decided I was going to be writing an essay and I knew I wanted to have in connection to my great grandfather who fought in World War II. Even though my great grandfather wasn’t on Juno beach on June 6, 1944 he was in the area three days after D-Day giving supplies to those who fought and I wanted him to prove my point that it wasn’t just military people fighting in this war, it was every day people you just see walking down the street. So to understand more about him, I asked my grandparents to send me over some of the scanned images and war items that they had kept from him. Unfortunately there was a problem and they weren’t able to send them in time. I was able to use the information that they told me over the phone. I learned the story of my great grandfather, and incorporated that in my writing. The writing process also involved a lot of revisions. I actually found this process really helpful, as I would come to class with a new draft and send it to a bunch of my classmates, ask them for their opinion and that they thought I could improve and then I would go home and look through what they said, and change my draft to be better.  I also really enjoyed critiquing other people’s work I was able to see some things that I thought could be incorporated in some way in my writing. I could tell which essays I enjoyed reading, and which ones needed a better hook at the beginning or something, and I was able to use that to improve my own composition. 

My final product was a two page essay that I am proud of, and I believe it tells my points of why I think that the Juno Beach centre should be preserved. This is where I used my understanding of the communicating to thoughtfully tell what happened in a form that fits my audience. I have never known much about World War II and I didn’t even know Juno Beach existed until this project. I enjoy learning more about WWII’s history and I think it’s important that future generations do as well which made this project meaningful.