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. 

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. 

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 🥕! 

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. 

🤷‍♀️ 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!

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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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. 

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.

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.

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.