Hello all readers, and welcome back to my blog! It’s only been a few days since my last post, but that one was wrapping up a project, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for a new one! I am kicking off this project by setting some intentions for my learning, so let’s get into it.

First off, let’s talk about what exactly this project is. We are doing a project on dystopia by the name of “Welcome to Gilead!” The name is a reference to the popular dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. I am super excited for this project as it feeds directly from authoritarianism! As for the actual content, let’s look at a very brief outline:

We will begin by launching the project by watching a movie: V for Vendetta. We will use this to both gain a stronger understanding of what dystopia is, as well as refresh our ability to analyze texts.

Then, we will begin our first benchmark: connecting fiction to the real world. As we read our novel (which is explained more in the second benchmark), we will be making connections to current events to put into perspective why this story matters in 2025.

For our second benchmark, we will be reading and analyzing a popular dystopian novel. When we launched, we got given a few options, and I chose Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I am very excited to read this book.

For our third benchmark, we will be writing a short dystopian story. This is the one I am most nervous about, as I haven’t done much creative writing recently. I hope that once I have done more learning on dystopian stories, I will be able to rise to the challenge and write something that I am proud of.

To present our learning, our stories will be linked to QR codes which will be put up in the hallways at school, so that people can read them.

For this project, I am intending to strengthen my creativity by decluttering and minimizing distractions in my workspaces so that I can focus on what I am making. I will use self regulation to regulate my thinking and make sure I don’t stray too off-topic while still being able to create new connections and ideas. I will also use collaboration by creating multiple drafts and asking for feedback from my peers.

I hope that I will be able to stay true to these intentions. I am ready to learn more.

Thanks so much for reading!! I am so excited to get into this project.

Hello all, and welcome back to my blog. I am officially in my last year of high school! It’s a strange feeling knowing that this is my last September, that the little me in 6th grade, who acted out because she found things too easy, now struggles to showcase her learning.

This blog post is going to take us through my most recent humanities project, but I am going to start elsewhere. You might be confused at first, I promise that it’s all connected. Let’s get into it!

I have always been told that I’m smart, but that I need to apply my learning better. Throughout the last few years, this has been a prominent issue in my learning. I find that I am always trying to do more, and in that attempt, I lose the ability to do any of those things in depth. I was under the impression that the day that I chose to do less would be the day that I would gain that depth back.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. This year, I cut back on the amount of hours I was spending on gymnastics and my job. Instead of training 16 hours a week, I’m now doing 12. Instead of working 8 hours a week, I’m working 4. So, technically, I should have 8 more hours to do homework, process my life, and maybe even have social interactions with people.

This year, I began with the intention to fully reach towards extending my learning, in a way that I never have before. Based on the feedback that I’ve spent my whole life receiving, I feel as though this is completely and totally in my reach, and just what I need in order to continue challenging myself throughout the remainder of my high school experience.

Over the course of this past project, I have learned that this simple recipe for extending my learning (decluttering my brain; giving myself space and time to make original connections to my learning) won’t necessarily give me what I want. It’s an especially frustrating feeling when I reflect on how the entire reason I decided to start in PLP, all the way back in grade 8, was because I wanted to extend my learning – not necessarily in my grades, though I assumed (hoped) that they would come with it, but in the knowledge I would gain. All I ever wanted was to learn more about the world around me. However, even if the grades I was rewarded with weren’t necessarily where I was shooting, I am extremely proud of the work I’ve done in this project. Even if it was not extending based on the proficiency scale given to us for school, on my own personal scale for my own learning, I feel as though I was moving further past where I have ever gone before.

The project I am talking about was called “Don’t Be Dic-tator,” in which we took a deep dive into the signs of rising authoritarianism and a very current risk of dictatorship. We used Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny, as a main resource (which I urge you to look at – it was a brilliant read), and also looked at a few case studies on historically significant examples of authoritarian dictators. By the time we had completed that, we had built sufficient knowledge to begin working on our end product: a 25-minute documentary explaining the warning signs and potential ways to fight back against authoritarianism. All 17 of us PLP 12’s worked collaboratively on this documentary, splitting it into 4 different segments that we decided were significant to touch on. Once it is released, you can find our documentary linked here.

My proudest moment within this project was probably the first benchmark, which was a literature note and two permanent notes to add to my Zettelkasten talking about my main takeaways from On Tyranny. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I was absolutely enthralled by this book. It brought up so many different perspectives that I had barely even considered before. For example, in the prologue, Snyder mentions how when America gained independence, they were trying especially hard to avoid a single individual or group seizing power for their own benefit. He goes on to explain that because this is such a prominent idea in the USA (because this idea of freedom and equality is placed upon a pedestal as if it’s a trophy and not just the bare minimum), a major topic of political debate is tyranny found within smaller niches of society (scaled down into smaller communities or groups). An example he gives is women and how they often get treated in domestic abuse situations – how the abuser has all power over her and her body, how they might be the tyrant of the nation that is a woman. When I first read this passage, I was amazed by this idea. As I continued to read the book, I continued to be fed these thoughts that I had never even considered before. Again, Snyder’s work absolutely fascinated me, and I would highly recommend looking into his work for yourself.

Once I had finished reading the book and taking all my notes on it (and wow, I had a lot of notes. There were so many things to take away!), I added an extra little reflection on many of the little connections I had made to my life while reading this book. This never-ending train of thought is probably one of the pieces of work that I am most proud of from all of my time in high school so far – not because it might be what is important or useful for this project, but because it came so easily. I had so many things to say that were so interesting to me – so many thoughts that came in an endless stream straight out of my brain.

I began this reflection with a takeaway that I feel is an important way to look at our lives right now: “Not everyone has the freedoms to choose many things, but we all as people get to choose how we react to things in our lives, and those choices in turn change the course of others’ lives. Together, these choices make up the mosaic that will one day be our history.”

I went on to talk about the thing the has caught my attention the most throughout this project: at the end of the day, all of these historically horrific authoritarian dictators were humans, too. They were born, as we were, and lived, as we do. At some point in their lives, something went wrong and they ended up where they did, instead of where we are. Somewhere within a collection of moments, something bad happened and they chose the wrong way to react. As I learned about these dictators (Hitler, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, etc.) I could see myself in them, which may seem strange, but I’ll explain.

When I was younger, I would tell everyone “I’m going to be the first female prime minister of Canada!” I wanted to do it better, to fix every facet of society, to be written in history. (I wanted, I wanted, I wanted.) This was not fully born from ego, although there was a bit of that in the mix too (a small part of me that wanted to prove that I could be good at things, just like the other kids, if I actually tried for once. What I didn’t realize was that trying looks different on every child, and for the most part, I was trying – it just looked different from the kids who sat up straight and raised their hands to speak and followed the exact checklist for what the teachers wanted). The main source of my want was simply out of anger – at its core, for me, it was directed towards the education system. But I thought bigger picture – so I redirected it to the government, broadening my anger to many different areas of society. I wanted nothing more than proof that there could be a better version; that there must be an easy fix; that there could be a perfect world. As I grew older, I realized that it simply wasn’t that easy. By the time I got to 7th grade, my vision had narrowed once again, into anger at the education system. “I’m going to be the first female prime minister of Canada” had turned into “I’m going to become the superintendent”. Eventually, I realized that, too, was ridiculous: there is no “easy fix”, otherwise it would have already been done.

You can see the similarities in this train of thought to those of an authoritarian dictator (of course, we don’t know exactly what any of them were thinking, for we are not them, but we can begin to infer based on the actions they chose to take.) I liked to believe that when all of them seized power, it was out of a drive to make a nation better, and they just went about it the wrong way. But at the end of the day, in my childish train of thought (the one that had me believing that I would be able to run a nation if I just tried for once) it wasn’t solely about me being the one to swoop in and fix things (although the idea of proving everyone who hadn’t believed in me wrong was quite appealing). It was about someone, anyone, fixing the issues deeply rooted within our society today.

Through much more reflecting, and one long conversation with Ms. Madsen, I reached a seemingly hollow conclusion to the question that had been nagging me for the entire project: “what exactly draws the line between a child like me and an authoritarian dictator?” The answer was simply narcissism. Once I reached this conclusion, I felt a little (maybe more than a little) frustrated. I felt cheated, as though this question deserved a larger answer than what I had found for it. But as I thought about it more and more, asking myself more questions by extension, I realized that this one-word answer held more than it gave credit for.

Going back to the comparison between myself and many historical dictators, as I grew older, I had the privilege of being taught that there is not, in fact, anything within me that makes me special, that makes me better than everyone else. Some people do not have that privilege, and as they grow older, they just get pushed up onto higher and higher pedestals, without one single thing damaging their egos (and we all know this is much more common among men: hence the fact that every dictator that we looked at was a man). By extension, some people are just born with more narcissistic tendencies than others: potentially leading them to think that they would be able to manage an entire nation and serve it well, all on their own.

This opens up the age-old question: nature vs nurture: Are power-hungry, dictatorial tendencies taught? Or are some people simply born like that? Was I born like that, and simply taught out of it? How much can we change with how we raise a person? Are there traits that simply cannot be taught out of a person, no matter what is done? And this reminds me of a thought I once had, long ago, just after I had realized that maybe being the superintendent of our school district was not, in fact, my calling: if I had a different name, would I have a different personality?

These are many questions, all directly related to one another (though the one about my name might be further off, but still relevant). However, one is, in my opinion, the most relevant, as it gives us the most evidence towards figuring out why these dictators chose to react to a crumbling nation in the way they did, instead of continuing to grow older and wiser and helping in the smaller ways that a citizen might be able to (because at the end of the day, it’s the population who holds the most power – another major takeaway from On Tyranny, but one that I am simply less focused on). Was I born with dictatorial tendencies, and just taught out of it? We can attempt to find the answer if we circle back to nature vs nurture in personality development, and through a bit of research, I found that we won’t be able to find a concrete answer, because there is none – every situation is different, and a person and every inch of their being is built on a foundation of a complex weaving and intertwining of nature and nurture; of the way they were born and the experiences they have touched in between that and death. Studies show that people are predisposed to have different personality traits genetically. However, people change as they grow up and grow old. Personally, the conclusion I have reached through this is that we are all born with deeply rooted traits (for me, that probably contained the need to prove myself, as it probably did for most of the dictators filling our history. Although, even that was probably fed by the way that I felt as I developed: as though people didn’t believe I could do many good things), and as time passes, as life moves, many of these traits ebb and flow; new ones develop; old ones get lost. But the ones rooted deeply within us (for me, the need to prove people wrong about me) are hard to budge: not impossible (I no longer think that I could fix the world on my own, or at all, in fact, because really there is no perfect fix), but definitely difficult to uproot.

Through this, I have realized that this version of myself as a child was not necessarily a pathway to tyranny, though it certainly could lead there. Somewhere within, there was a crossroads, and the true and complete definition shows us the exact different between tyranny and ambition. And through all this thought, I have come to the realization that the true distinction between these two very similar traits is narcissism and humility.

So, to restate the question: what exactly draws the line between a child such as myself, and an authoritarian dictator? The answer lies in the narcissism deeply rooted within one’s tendencies, and whether it can be untaught. A child (in most cases) can be taught not to operate with such a high ego. They can learn that there is more to life than just themself and others’ opinions on them. An authoritarian dictator is a person who was never untaught these ideals. Someone who believes that they can fix it all. Even when the intentions are positive, this narcissism leads them astray, and in the end, many people get hurt.

When writing this post, I only intended to showcase the process that brought me to that conclusion. However, reading back on it, I am realizing that I took a major step in finding the solution to my one other main question: together, can we create a world where no one ends up on the pathway to becoming a dictator?

The answer, at its core, is no. There is no perfect world, where no one holds those tendencies. However, we can begin to constantly work towards it, for however close we can get is better than not trying. To achieve this, we must all work together, especially parents and teachers. We must snip it at its root – unteach narcissism, and teach children to be humble and strong (the two do not have to contradict, in fact they often work hand-in-hand). Together, we can work towards a better world.

My notes on the book (and personal reflection, at the bottom) can be found here.

This project took me through a journey of finding the answer to this question: a rather fantastical journey, if you ask me, for I have never looked so deeply within myself for a history class before. It fills me with joy to know that I truly am learning things in school (about myself, about the world) – which is something that I yearned so completely for when I was in the 7th grade.

Thank you for journeying through it with me. It’s been a wild ride, and I am so excited for the next project. See you soon!

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! Today I will be telling you all about our most recent project in PLP, “Cray Cray, Yay Yay.” The driving question for this project was “Why does it take a “crazy” person to change the world?” Over the course of this project, I researched and gathered lots of evidence to help me attempt to answer the question. Let’s dive in!

One of the first things we did in this project was a mini PechaKucha. For mine, I chose to present and talk about Frank Sinatra and how he changed the world. A PechaKucha is a presentation that contains 20 slides, where you talk about your topic for 20 seconds per slides. For this mini PechaKucha, the goal was to get us accustomed to presenting in this format and reflect on why it takes someone “crazy” to change the world. That’s why this PechaKucha was only 10 slides, not 20.

For my PechaKucha on Frank Sinatra, I think I did a good job. I am especially proud of myself for this one because this assignment was done during the week that I was away in Quebec to cheer my sister in in the International PeeWee Tournament. Normally, when I am away, I end up falling behind and being behind in my work afterwards. This time, though, I made sure to keep up and follow along from Quebec. As soon as I got back from Quebec, I presented my PechaKucha to the class. I’m glad that I managed to buckle down and stay on top of my work, and I think that this shows my growth as a learner.

If you want to see some more from that first mini PechaKucha, I have logged my learning process here. 

After our mini PechaKucha, we got put into groups for our final PechaKucha. Since the final product of this project is that big PechaKucha, done in a group of 4. But before we could get to the PechaKucha, we had to pick a theme and research. I was put into a group with Alex, Sofia, and Kadin. We picked the theme “Sustainability Solutions.” This theme revolves around sustainability and how it takes a “crazy” person to help us solve the problem that is our wounded planet. Before we could do anything else, though, it was Seattle time! The class went on a field school to Seattle for a week to gather evidence to help us answer the driving question. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to Seattle for various reasons. Luckily, the rest of my group did go.

While the rest of my group was in Seattle, me and a few of the other people who stayed back, including my friends Kira and Brooke, worked on research and essays about “crazy” people who are local to Vancouver. The local “crazy” person that I picked was Bryan Adams. Over the course of the week, I researched about him and found what he has done to help change the world. If you want to see my learning process and final essay from this assignment, click here. Overall, I am proud of this work because I am happy with how my essay turned out. Here is a photo of me with a couple of my friends who didn’t go to Seattle, writing our essays.

Once everyone came back from Seattle, we began to collaboratively work with our groups to begin to aim towards that final PechaKucha. We started by generating some Need to Know questions and then researching and using the information that was gathered in Seattle in order to answer those questions.

Once we had that done, it was time to create a story spine. For this, each member of our group did an individual story spine, and then we worked collaboratively on one big story spine. Here is our story spine:

Once we had our story spine approved, it was time to work on the beginnings of a script for our final PechaKucha. Each member of our group took a few pieces of the story spine to expand on. If you want to see some of that expansion, go here. 

After we had this expanded story spine, it was time to create it as a script with sections for each separate slide. Each slide we estimated was about 40-50 words since they are 20 seconds. Once we had these sections, we assigned some slides to each presenter. After that, it was time to pick photos to put for the slides, and finally, time to practice to present!

Unfortunately, due to a conflict with my gymnastics, I was unable to make it to the PechaKucha night to present with my peers. Thankfully, Alex and Sofia were able to pull through and present it well! I’m very glad I got put with a great group who was flexible enough to be able to present even without 2 members of the group. Here are the final slides of our PechaKucha slide deck:

Overall, our PechaKucha went amazing and throughout this project, I managed to keep up on all of my work, and nothing I did was late. I’m super proud of myself for this, as this is something that I have been striving for since grade 9. I’m super happy with how much I’ve improved on my organization and time management as a learner.

If you are interested in seeing our collaborative learning process throughout this project, click here. This is the document where we stored all of our learning.

Thank you for reading!

Susan

Hello all, and welcome back to my blog! Lately, I’ve been hard at work on a project called “Cray Cray, Yay Yay!” The driving question of this project is “why does it take a “crazy person” to change the world?” So, we have been learning all about these “crazy people” and how we need a little bit of crazy to change the world. One of the “crazy” people I have focused on is Bryan Adams. Bryan Adams grew up in North Vancouver and is now a very well-known music artist. Let’s dive into him and his “craziness”.

When you think of Vancouver, you might not think of changing the world at first. There aren’t very many people from Vancouver who have truly changed the world. Or, at least, there aren’t very many well-known people who have changed the world. Bryan Adams has not quite changed the world in the traditional sense, but he has heavily impacted many people’s lives for the better in other ways, and we should all strive to be like that. He has changed the world by using his voice to speak up for the rights of other people including homeless youth and Ukrainian refugees, as well as advocate for environmental change.

Bryan Adams has proven his care for local homeless youth in Vancouver, BC. In July 2010, The Bryan Adams foundation made a grant to Covenent House, which supports homeless youth in Vancouver. By using his fame and wealth to help those struggling, and especially connecting that back to his roots in Vancouver, he’s shown how he cares for his hometown and the other people who share that with him. Despite the fact that he has become famous and has so much influence, he still takes care and makes sure to remember where he came from.

Bryan Adams has shown that he truly cares about others all around the world. In June 2022, The Bryan Adams Foundation made a grant to the Teresa Maxova Foundation, which supports Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic. They aim to support the education and integration of these refugee’s children and their parents into society. The Bryan Adams Foundation aims to improve people’s lives by providing specific grants to help people around the world. Though Adams is from Vancouver, he’s using his influence and money for good, even in other parts of the world. 

You may know about how he’s donated to charities, or revolutionized music. But Bryan Adams has also used his influence to advocate for environmental change. When people were talking about old-growth logging in BC, Adams chose to use his voice and speak up. According to CBC, “Adams said he and others were not calling for the end of all logging in the province. He said they want steps taken to protect old-growth trees, instead of letting loggers ‘plow through and cut everything down.'” (source) Adams knew that he had to take action and speak up. Alongside others speaking up with him against it, he helped put it to a stop. Through doing this, he showed the world that he knew to use his voice for good, and paved a path for others to follow and advocate for what they believe in.

Bryan Adams is an influential figure in Vancouver, BC’s history. He’s used his ‘craziness’ to speak up for what he believes in, advocate for change, and help others. It’s not very often that you might find someone that truly embodies the culture of Vancouver, who can speak up and advocate for what they believe in. Adams is a true role model of how we can help and create change for a better world.

So far, I’ve really had a great time working on this project, and stay tuned to see more from my blog!

Who am I going to be? Recently, we went on a journey in Humanities to attempt to find an answer to that question – or, at least, to reflect on it, and reflect on ourselves. 

Now, I’m going to be so honest with you, faithful blog readers: I don’t really know who I am going to be, nor who I want to be. After a whole project full of questions, and answers, and books, and activities? I still don’t really know. But I am going to try to answer.

As we dove into this project, I wasn’t that excited. We had to read a book, and though I am not a super slow reader, I am also not a super speedy reader. But, as soon as I picked up my chosen book, it was love at first sight. “Between Two Kingdoms,” by Suleika Jaouad, caught my eye. It was a book all about her experience with cancer, and her experience afterwards, as a cancer survivor. If you want to know more, click here to read my notes and reflections. As I read this book, and enjoyed every step of it. I got to see the world through Suleikas lense, learning the lessons that she had learned from experience. Some key takeaways I got from this were that change is a part of life, and though it might take time, you have to learn to accept the changes. I also learned that you are not always as isolated as you feel. While it may feel like it, there are still people on your side. I learned not to let that feeling of isolation push you away from the people around you. I feel as though this is something that really resonates with me. Constantly, I feel so alone, and I let that give me a reason to distance myself further from the people around me. If I truly look around, I can really see that, actually, many people are on my side. So really, if I’m trying to answer the question of “who am I going to be?” My goal is to be someone who notices the people around me, and who accepts change and challenges as a part of my life.

Another thing that we did in this project that guided me was our gratitude exercises. Each day in class, we each got a sticky note and wrote down one thing we were grateful for. Every single day, I sat down in the morning, and thought until I had the perfect thing to be grateful for. Every time, after writing it on that sticky note and putting it on the wall with everyone else’s, I walked away feeling fulfilled and happier. I remember, on the final morning, I wrote, “I am grateful for the sky and the sun and the trees and the mountains and the oceans and the lakes.” This is something that at the beginning of all of this, I never would’ve written down. But I really am grateful for the sky and the sun and the trees and the mountains and the oceans and the lakes! Throughout all of these sticky note moments, I could close my eyes and see what I was grateful for. I was able to relive scenarios I loved, or imagine ones that have the potential to flourish in my future. When I closed my eyes, I was able to see everything I loved, everything I live for, the things that define my happiness. Who am I going to be? I am going to be grateful, to live my life to the fullest. I am going to take a deep breath and love how it feels in my lungs. I am going to see the world with open eyes and an open heart, taking in every single bit of it with so much love.

Finally, we got the opportunity to conduct our interviews. I decided I wanted to interview one of the coaches from the gym that I do my gymnastics at. She is truly an inspiration to me. Through my interview, I asked a series of questions. Here were all the questions I asked:

– “How do you push through challenges and hardships in your life and in your career?”

– “What gets you out of bed every morning?”

– “Who or what inspires you to be better?”

– “Tell me about a situation where you had to lead through change and uncertainty in your career.”

– “How do you contribute to creating a positive environment?”

– “How do you deal with stress, and what coping mechanisms do you find effective?”

At first, I didn’t have much hope for the interview. I didn’t think I would learn as much from it as I was learning from the book, nor as much as I would later on learn from the gratitude notes. After having the interview, though, I realized I was wrong. Though I still think I ended up learning more from reflecting on the other things, I still think I did learn from my interview. Everything that my interviewee had to say had to do with keeping a positive mindset. She also frequently brought up accepting challenges and overcoming them instead of giving up, prioritizing herself, and surrounding herself with people that are good for her. I feel as though these are always important things to think about in life. Since my interview, I have started to make an effort to maintain relationships with those that I love, and slowly distancing myself from people who have a negative impact on me. I also have been trying to prioritize myself and my mental health, giving myself some more rest, and forgiving myself when I don’t perform as well as I wanted to, especially when it’s due to being tired. Who am I going to be? I am going to prioritize myself. I am going to be someone that people want to have in their lives, because I make a positive impact on them. I am going to stay as positive as possible, and I am going to accept and overcome any challenges I face. I am not going to give up. I am going to work hard, and I am going to be good to myself.

Throughout this whole project, I was thinking. I was reflecting on every experience I have had, and every experience I might have in the future. “Who am I going to be? What am I going to do, what am I going to see, and in this moments, who am I going to be?” I would repeat these questions over and over, wondering. In fact, these are questions I regularly ask myself. Normally, I will think more on the negative side. “You cannot and will not change. You will not improve. You will never be someone who is happy with where she is at. You will never be a hard worker. You will always be someone who gives up.” Usually, when I ask questions like that, I give myself answers like that. Throughout this project, though, I have been reflecting on who I really am, who is really hidden under the rough surface. For me, at least, it’s not, “who am I going to be? How will I change to fulfill that?” It’s, “what’s hidden underneath, and how can I help it flourish?” Because I can and I do work hard. In my gymnastics, for example, I have persevered through mental blocks and weaknesses for years and years and not once has giving up and quitting even crossed my mind.  So the real question is, how can I make this show in other aspects of my life? How can I redirect some of this dedication so that I can be more successful in other areas, therefore helping me be happier? And I think I’ve already found that answer.

Going back to the start of the school year, I started art as an elective. I had a horrible mindset going into it. I have just never been an artistic person. When we were little kids, I never did art. It was my little sister who was always painting, always making something new. At first, in art, I would get frustrated when things didn’t turn out how I wanted them.  I didn’t realize that it actually is not “practice makes perfect.” It’s “dedication and hard work makes progress.” And after winter break, after realizing this, I applied it. I was doing a painting project for art. I dedicated so much time and so much energy into that painting. I asked questions, and I got opinions from other people. I learned new things and I tried to apply every correction that someone suggested. And what I realized was, even though I was dedicating more energy, more time, and more effort, I left the class every day feeling more fulfilled and less tired than I ever did before I actually tried. I began to truly enjoy what I was doing.

Anyways, going back to all other aspects of my life, I think that the answer is that I need to find the little things within what I’m doing, and I need to focus on them. And as time goes on, I will start to enjoy more of the bigger parts, and I will start to treat everything with more care. I will be able to redirect all that hard work, all that care and dedication, into other parts of my life, like school. And as I start to feel better about those things, I will start be a happier person.

So I guess, even though I went into this saying I didn’t really know, I kind of answered the question of “who am I going to be?” in this post. I even came up with a bit of a pathway of how I might be able to get there.

I’m going to be someone that people are drawn to for her happiness and warmth. Like a bowl of soup.

With that, I’m going to bring this blog post to a close. Thank you all for reading. I hope you can step away from this post having learned at least a few of the things that I shared.

With love,

Susan

Hey guys, welcome back to my blog! Today I’m going to be reflecting on my most recent project in Humanities, Save Juno Beach. This project was all about World War II. I learned lots about the causes and consequences of the war, and all about how the events of the war played out. Our finished product end was an academic essay. In this blog post, I am going to take a deep dive into the process it took to get me to the point where I had a finished product I was happy with. Let’s get into it!

For our first keystone, we learned all about many of the events of WWII, and then completed Kahoot quizzes to show our learning. There were 6 different Kahoots about different aspects of the war. In order to receive a proficient grade on the Kahoot quizzes, we needed to get a perfect score and get every question correct. I am happy with my learning on this keystone because I think I picked up on the facts when our teacher taught them in class, and anything that I missed, I picked up while doing the Kahoots. I feel that after this keystone, I had a strong understanding of the events that happened before, during, and after WWII.

After this, we got to work on narrowing down what we might want to include in our essay. At this point, we had still not written our thesis, so we had a wide range of options of what we could write about. In order to be able to narrow things down once we started brainstorming, we needed to strengthen our skills in determining historical significance. For this, we had a worksheet, pictured below, in which we determined the historical significance of WWII. In the worksheet, we looked at significant ways that this event could impact the world, and figured out how much that the statement applied. Here is my historical significance of WWII chart:

After we were confident in our abilities to figure out whether something was significant, we brainstormed topics for our essay. I chose to brainstorm using a useful app called MindNode. With MindNode, I could create a web of ideas branching off of one another. Here is my brainstorming:

After this, it was time to write our thesis. Here is the one I wrote: “It’s important to talk and learn about WWII because it helps people gain a better understanding of the world around them, which in turn helps them become better, educated, and more empathetic people.” I am quite happy with how my thesis turned out!

Next up, we created an rough outline for our final essays. Despite the fact that I thought I had a complete, full plan, my outline ended up being completely different than my final essay. Here is what my outline looked like:

Finally, it was time to write up my essay. I had multiple drafts, but in this blog post, I am only going to show you the final draft. Here is the link to my essay.

Overall, in this project, I think I learned lots about essay writing and researching. I am super happy with how my finished product turned out. I hope I’m able to apply these skills in other projects!

Thanks for reading,

Susan

Hello everybody, welcome back to my blog! This is my final post of grade 9, which is crazy to think about. It feels like just yesterday I was writing my first blog post of grade 9. Anyways, this post is all about my latest project, Dulce et Decorum Est, and the spring exhibition, where I showcased the work I did in that project.

Dulce et Decorum Est was all about World War I. We also learned about museums and how to create an exhibit. These two ideas were brought together for the exhibition, which I’ll talk about later in this post.

Our first keystone was research on museums. Part of this was a quick field trip to the Museum of North Vancouver to get a tour and talk to the people working in the museum about how the exhibits are structured and how they’re built to appeal to the audience. Here’s a picture of us at the museum:

Another major part of this keystone was looking at online resources including an article about how to make your own exhibit, an actual online exhibit, and so many more. Through all of that, we took notes about how we could use this information to create our own exhibit. Finally, we had to write a paragraph reflecting on what we learned through this research. Here’s mine:

How do museums tell stories? A proper exhibit is a compilation of thoughts and events, organized either by time period or how it’s presented. A curator can guide the audience to look through it in a certain way, and the audience still has the freedom to go through it in their own way, at their own pace. Museums tell stories by organizing thoughts and feelings through works of art or artifacts. They also explain stories behind said works of art or artifacts, allowing the audience to learn all about what the exhibit may be about. This is actively telling a story to the audience. An effective exhibit could also be interactive, where the audience can choose to use different senses other than sight, such as touch or hearing. This is vital to engage the audience so that they can be invested in the story you’re telling. These are just a few ways that museums tell stories.

I’m happy with how my paragraph turned out, even after multiple revisions. I think it accurately represents what I learned.

Our second keystone was a paragraph on the contrasting narratives of war. For this, we researched about World War I, and a lot about propaganda in war. Here’s my paragraph:

When we think of war, specifically the First World War, we think of death and pain. We think of the worst things that happened. We think of the huge numbers of lost soldiers, the horrible diseases spread, and the idea of living for years in muddy trenches. We can’t stop thinking about trench foot, families alone at home, and famine. Rarely do we think of the valuable things that came out of it. We forget how good it was for the economy, and how white women got more rights out of it, thanks to so many amazing female nurses who contributed to the war. We forget about the technological advancements. Part of the reason that we forget these things is that we have to respect the people that went through the hard, treacherous parts of the war. In that, we forget all of the important good things, because the two contrast each other so much. They are so far apart on the spectrum of good and bad it’s almost like we can only choose one to talk about. Women getting the right to vote is so far away from the 8.5 million soldiers lost. It’s hard to believe they even happened on the same planet, let alone at the same time. It definitely demonstrates great contrast.

I’m satisfied with how this paragraph turned out. I don’t think it was my greatest work, but I definitely could’ve done worse and I think it’s still pretty good.

Our third and final keystone was our museum exhibit. This was the exhibit we put up for the exhibition, and I was really happy with how it turned out. I chose to do a painting that represented poetry made from WWI, following our theme of creation and destruction, choosing the creation side. Choosing to do a painting is not something I would naturally do. I’m not super artistic, and painting isn’t a strong suit of mine. But I decided I wanted to try something new, something out of my comfort zone. While my finished product may not look as great as I wanted it to, I’m glad I tried something new. I set up my big painting on the wall, writing out the poem “In Flanders Field” next to it, and recruiting Evangeline to help me draw poppies around it. Here’s what my exhibit looked like:

That’s it! See you in grade 10,

Susan

Hello, and welcome back to my blog! It’s definitely been a while since I’ve posted a blog post, but it’s nice to be back. 

This last project was about nationalism and Confederation. We started with a simulation! In this we simulated the Confederation of Canada.

When our class simulated Confederation, I learned a lot about Canada’s history. I was leading the colony of New Brunswick with Evangeline, Charlie R, and Jasper. Together, we decided on things to demand of confederation. In the end, most of our needs were met, so we decided to sign and join confederation! Unfortunately, not everyone joined confederation, because not every colony’s needs were met. PEI and Nova Scotia decided not to, because not all their needs could be met because they were both so small with such big demands. For example, PEI wanted to remove taxes for all their farmers, which is a very big ask for such a small colony. The big colonies, on the other hand, benefited greatly, because they were granted a lot of political power and got more of their demands met. Our colony had quite a few demands, and we purposely made some that we didn’t care much about so that we could use them as bargaining chips. In the end, we had everything we wanted, because we made it seem like we had the Capitol taken away from us when really we didn’t want it that bad. By the end of the simulation I realized that I would absolutely hate being in political power. Confederation involved a lot of big decisions made with stubborn people, and it was a lot of work for a few decisions about our country. I did realize how important these decisions were, though, which is something I never thought of before the simulation.

The simulation was our first keystone. Our second keystone was a board game proposal.

Basically, for this whole project, we were building towards the finish line of a playable board game about Confederation, showcasing our learning about nationalism and Confederation. I was somewhat excited about this, but also afraid that I would be setting myself up for disappointment in the board game and it wouldn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. Luckily, my partner for the board game was Evangeline, and she helped to make the Confederation board game of our dreams!

Our proposal was a game called The Colonies of Confederation, and in it you can take historical perspective on the leaders of the different colonies as you try to come up with confederation and agree with the other people. In our proposal, there was also a timeline that we would aim for, trying to complete different parts of the game by certain days. I think we were mostly able to stick to the timeline, which is great. We were able to describe how our game showed nationalism by showing how people must come together and have shared beliefs or needs in order to become a nation.

Finally, the third keystone was the rules of our board game. Through this, we showed our learning in our introduction to the game, showcasing what nationalism is and how Confederation reflected it. We were also able to easily explain how to play our game, using understandable, descriptive language and also using our graphic design skills to make it set the mood and be possible to read. Here are our rules:

Here’s a picture of our board game:

After that, one of the grade 8 classes came and played our games with us!

Throughout this project, I learned a lot about Confederation and nationalism. Before this project, I didn’t even know what nationalism was! But now I know all about how it can connect people through different beliefs, races, experiences, and more. I think that the idea of nationalism is really important to who we are as people, and I think it’s a really cool concept.

See you in the next project,

Susan

How do revolutions bring down empires and change societies around the world? Well, before this project, I could’ve given you some rambling, wordy answer about Hamilton (the musical) because I had an obsession with it in Grade 7 and 8. Now that I’ve gone through this project, I can tell you all about revolutions and the full answer to the question. That’s what I’m going to do now.

What is a revolution? That’s kind of what the first activity in this project taught me. If you read my blog post about Nation X (click here to read) then you would know how I learned this. If you don’t want to read it, basically we did a simulation of a society. I was placed in the upper class, and there were a couple people placed in the top class, as members of the king’s court. There were a bunch of people placed in the two classes below me. The top class got paid $10/day, The class I was in was paid $5/day, the class below got $3/day, and the lowest class got $1/day. Basically different challenges in society had to be faced, but in facing those challenges, people were treated unequally and society fell apart, with people fighting one another and many deaths. What happened was basically a revolution. Now, how can we describe and define a revolution?

To do this, we made diagrams that reflected Crane Brinton’s anatomy of a revolution. I chose to do a hamster on a wheel, falling off and then starting over. Here’s the diagram:

After we did this, we chose which revolution we wanted to work on for the whole project. I chose the American revolution, mostly because I already knew a little bit about it from my past obsession with Hamilton that I mentioned, and I was really interested in digging deeper.

Once we chose our revolutions, we got straight to work making graphic organizers about them. Here’s mine:

As you can see, the graphic organizer basically gives you a crash course on the American revolution. The research I did to create it told me almost everything I needed to know for the whole project. 

After that, we started to work on our affidavit. We chose the evidence we would feature and our arguments. At first, I was a little bit confused with what I was arguing for, but me, Cameron L, Jupiter, and Jessie pulled through arguing for the American Revolution being effective. I applied my research from the graphic organizer into the affidavit. It turned out really good and we had a pretty good argument. In the mock trial, we were going against Charlie M, Julia, Keaton, Silas, and Magnus, Makai. They were saying that the revolution was ineffective.

Once we had finished our affidavit, we started working on a script for the mock trial. Very soon after we started working on it, Mr. Harris, the DRI (directly responsible individual) of the project, had to leave because he was having a baby! Sadly, because he was gone, we had to pivot the project. Instead of doing a mock trial in front of our parents, we started working on a video. We were still writing the scripts in collaboration with the ineffective side, but for a video of a trial as opposed to an actual mock trial in real life. After about a week, though, we pivoted again. We started working on scripts as just our side of the argument. We did it more like the show Court Cam. We were given a due date for our videos and then Ms Maxwell spliced our video with the ineffective argument’s video.

I used my class time very efficiently during this project. The only time I handed anything in late was my graphic organizer, because I was sick for a lot of the days we were working on it. I’m proud of how I used my time well. I’m not quite as proud of our finished project. I feel like it wasn’t the best that it could’ve been, and our group could’ve put more effort into it. Next time, I’ll strive to be at the point where our group is putting a full effort, or at least I am.

Thank you for reading my blog post!

Peace out,

Susan