My summer was a very fun summer even if it was same thing the whole time. My whole summer the only thing that I did was stand up paddle board race and train for those races.
The first trip of the year was the annual D.A.R.T (Deep Cove Advanced Race Team) surf trip over march break in Tofino. We had a great week surfing, paddling, having out, and being in the Tofino news.
We got on the news for trying to do something that I’m pretty sure no one had done before. We tried to paddle a 6 person paddle board from MacKenzie beach to North Chesterman, which looks like this…
After we got around the point we ran into very tall messy waves that we could not get into the beach safely on so we turned around and ‘surfed’ on that board. The surfing just turned into madness. But either way it was cool that we got in the newspaper the next day
The next trip I went on was with my brother Evan and my coach Mike to the West Kootenay River SUP Race. We made a camp using Mike’s van (which he can sleep in, and it also has a couch) two tents, and a tent structure placed over a picnic table. (To see more photos check out those Instagram links)
(pretty cool)
This trip was possibly the most fun I’ve ever had at a race.
Next big race was Tofino again, but this time was the Canadian SUP Championships. I finished 3rd to Evan and another 16 year old.
The next big race was quite recent. I went to the Vancouver SUP Challenge at Spanish Banks in Vancouver. This was the race where our team took our official team photo.
What was cool abut this race is that we got to see and race against our friends/rivals from Hawaii Jeffery and Finn.
That was my very SUP summer.
Unfortunately for Mr. Hughes and us, due to his broken leg he was unable to teach us our pirate/exploration unit. Instead we we’re taught by Ms. Buedry who did an awesome job.
For the final project my group of Aiden, Alex, Tatum, Robbie, Marcus, Ryan and Isobel. (I would recommend visiting those blogs by clicking on the name).
If you want to read on the rest is very long, it will help you learn. If you don’t want to and don’t, or if you do, after please visit our Instagram page and comment on any photo if you think exploration gave us negative or positive results.
I was one of the writers so I helped write about our assigned results of exploration. I wrote the positive paragraph;
When we think about the positive effects of exploration, after very little research it becomes clear that we are the biggest advantage. We would not be here if it wasn’t for exploration. Also we would be lacking many of the objects that we use in everyday life. For not just the explorers though, the native people also benefited from the discovery of the new world. Things like bananas, chicken and wheat all came from the new world. Today if we try and think of where we live not having those things and more, it sounds unheard of.
As for the native people, their society was not nearly as technologically advanced as Europe and the surrounding countries. They did not have a written language, they had no books or texts, it was all word of mouth. Unfortunately they did not really have a choice to advance dramatically or not, but either way the society advanced quickly.
When the natives and the Europeans worked in harmony it benefited both groups. Although all of the time this was not true when they did each side got things they needed from the other side, while also giving items that the other side needed and you had an abundance of.
Willa wrote the negative;
As for the negative effects, well, they weren’t exactly few and far between. The European explorers, short on time and knowledge of the people they encountered, were often violent, starting wars even with those who were kind to them, and keeping people, commonly native people such as the Africans, as slaves for their own benefit. They would keep these slaves in tight quarters and essentially treat them as cargo or possessions.
The missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas said of an expedition to Cuba that he was on, “One time the Indians came to meet us and greet us with food and good cheer and entertainment… [T]hey presented us with a great quantity of fish and bread and other food, together with everything else they could think to do for us. But the Devil entered into the Spaniards, and they put them all to the sword in my presence, without any cause whatsoever. More than three thousand souls were laid out before us, men, women, and children. I saw such great cruelties that no man alive either has or shall see the like.” To put it simply; the “Indians” did their best to welcome the Spaniards, who responded violently.
They also brought across many diseases from the Old World, and a lot of the natives of the New World ended up dying. Plus, although the new world brought many useful objects and animals, it also gave the Europeans tobacco, which became a common (and harmful) substance among them. As well, the Europeans considered themselves superior to many of the groups they encountered, with little to no information about them, which was probably the start of a lot of racism in the centuries to follow.
The negative effects of European exploration on everyone other than Europe were never quite rectified, as there are still many problems in the world with judgement, discrimination, and want for power. The explorers tended to be greedy and materialistic, caring more about their own profit than the people they encountered, hence the name, the men who sold the world.
For my example of learning I chose my blue sky. I know that is the most recent piece of work but I think that it truly shows me as a person and what I can accomplish, I think that it’s is also a good example of the launch cycle.
Lucky for me over spring break during the observation part, I has in Tofino surfing with my family and paddle board friends. Up until that point I had wanted to design a perfect world, I continued on with that idea for a week after or so, but even then it didn’t feel right. I knew that in truth the world is perfect. The only problem is its smartest species, humans. To try and help the oceans pollution I wanted to pick a pollution track close to home. So I picked the storm drains.
The yellow fish, as I learned from an expert and from people at the exhibition is getting a little old. ‘We feel that this program may have lost some of its original effectiveness as people are not that familiar with what the fish actually means,’ Richard Boase, Environmental Protection Officer. That quote almost drove my entire project forward.
From the conversation I had with him I came up with two pieces to catch attention and to educate.
For work that I am less than proud of I picked my poetry. I love to write and I do enjoy writing poetry, something that I found out in this unit. Unfortunately for me my writing style is not very poetic, and trying to rhyme, include theme, and make it sound effortless is very frustrating. On some of my later poems it got better but to me I still feel regretful about the poetry I wrote. Let me give som examples.
‘Adam’
The first man
Half vowels half not
Half A’s half not
Mada backwards
A branding of a human
A label
A name of men
Great and destined to be great
Men like
Adam Sandler
Adam Levine
Adam Driver
Adam Savage
Adam Blair Gerbrecht
I took the inspiration from an example we read. But even to me when people started reading theirs aloud in class, my need to share left me. For me whenever I write poetry I always feel like I could’ve done better. I felt that on this poem and many others. Not all, on some I took the time to slow down, think, not to rush, and to slowly review the criteria. When I did that I felt very good about my poems. Unfortunately I only did that for a few.
For something I have improved I picked this blog. In my last SLC I got grilled on my blog. Since then I have changed it for the better. I am writing better posts, and more of them.
This is what my old blog looked like (theme and name)
In the last SLC I was especially not pleased with my blogs physical look, it was boring, it lacked personality and I did like the title or tag line. So I asked my friends and I found a theme I liked, I also found a great photo of Vancouver. My tagline is a bit of an adventure. As my parents can tell you I can get very grumpy and angry. Especially after a loss in hockey, or an unsatisfactory paddle board race, and I was in such a state when one of the best quotes was tossed at me.
Oliver Smith was my brothers 7/11 buddy so I kind of knew him already when he started working at the kayak shop, and I started paddling there. He is one of the happiest and easygoing people I know, he is an amazing kayaker, and has recently took up paddle boarding. (Even though half the time he is in the water. I was grumpy and he yelled at me across the grass. ‘CHEER UP, LIFE IS TOO SHORT NOT TO SMILE!’
I don’t think he meant that to affect me so much but it’s did.
This year for blue sky our teachers really based it around a structure. The launch cycle.
Lucky for me over spring break during the observation part, I has in Tofino surfing with my family and paddle board friends. Up until that point I had wanted to design a perfect world, I continued on with that idea for a week after or so, but even then it didn’t feel right. I knew that in truth the world is perfect. The only problem is its smartest species, humans. To try and help the oceans pollution I wanted to pick a pollution track close to home. So I picked the storm drains.
The yellow fish, as I learned from an expert and from people at the exhibition is getting a little old. ‘We feel that this program may have lost some of its original effectiveness as people are not that familiar with what the fish actually means,’ Richard Boase, Environmental Protection Officer. That quote almost drove my entire project forward.
From the conversation I had with him I came up with two pieces to catch attention and to educate.
It’s not often that I write a post in this blog about my SciMatics course, but this is a little different than your used to from a science or math course. Recently we have been studying the properties of light. Reflection, refraction, opacity, transparency, translucency and more. But we’were also learning about pioneers in the field of math an sciences. We learned a lot about a man named Ibn-al Hatham. With his invention of the camera obscura, he proved his theory that all light travels in straight lines.
For our project we were to incorporate all of these elements into one piece, while also telling the First Nations story of How the Raven Stole the Sun.
Going into this unit I had no idea what to expect. Just more sadness, death, plague, lack of social justice and even more fun stuff. But at that time I did not know what Renaissance even meant. In truth it means rebirth, the rebirth of the Roman and Greek way of ordering our society. And in a way we are still living in a Renaissance today, because the a Renaissance, Rome and today are very similar.
To research some Renaissance figures we picked a thinker, or philosopher, am artist and a mathematician or scientist.
After doing that research I relized that during the Renaissance, unlike previous systems, you could question ideas, strive to be who you wanted to be. And I believe that today we enforce that notion, that no two people are the same. Even in a family, so I thought of the saying, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And how sometimes you might be so different that that apple might be an orange.
First draft. Second draft.
Here is a short description.
‘The apple doesn’t far from the tree’ a saying that has been used for way to long, why does this matter? Because it is wrong. During the renaissance once the people started gaining power, they began using skills taught by parents, to become people like their parents, and becoming something different. Today I know we are encouraged to be whatever, the same, similar or completely different than out parents. An orange falling of the old apple tree.
As you can see not much changed in my drafts, just making the tree drawing look more like a drawing.
How is the worldview of different religions represented in the real world? That is the question that we intend to answer on this 3-day extravaganza of a field trip.
We started at the Hindu temple. Once we got upstairs we saw something quite amazing.
The he sign on the left is Aum. Hindus consider Aum to be the universal name of the Lord and that it encompasses all of creation. The photo on the left is the beautiful room that we were given a long, interesting talk on Hinduism, their beliefs, gods, and praying.
Next we went to the Tebetan Budhist temple.
Tourists.
Anyway, this is what they were all looking at.
Really something to look at. If you look closely their are small symbols of items of the Buddhist religion. But what was even better was the inside. And I could only capture it with a video.
Now for my favorite one. At this point my phone died so I did not take any photos, I am trying to source them out though. This was the most immersive experience. I learned how to give an offering and meditate. Also when we walked around the temple, we changed. Something that I did enjoy.
Next we went to the Sikh temple. I did not take any photos, but we were served a delicious lunch, and we were given a long, detailed, and interesting talk. I learned that continually people are reading the Guru Granth Sahib. Which is a crazy thought. And oh yeah it’s not reading, it’s chanting. 24/7 7 days a week projected throughout the temple.
This is my worldview explain everything that I made, it is the second version. The first one was definitely not as good or good at all, but still don’t get your hopes up.
So recently I was featured in the North Shore News. I was chosen by my new friends at the Foundation for Integrated Health, the clinic where I went when I had my concussion. They are amazing there and I would recommend them to anyone who has a concussion, or knows someone who does. They don’t just tell you what to do, they work with you to help the recovery get shorter, and make your time with the concussion less miserable. I for one during the hockey season, have quite a large knot of muscle just above my shoulder from hockey, and they fixed that it made me feel move, and recover better.
This is a picture from the paper about me. What I am doing is part of what they call a baseline test, they test things like you balance, reaction speed, grip, memory and more. Then they give you at tag, which be scanned and then tell you where the nearest certified concussion clinic is, so you can be tested against your old results. Cool right. Anyway that’s the story of how I got in the paper.
A long time ago in a classroom far, far, away seven teenagers were told to do the unimaginable. Create a weight bearing instrument that would have to be under 175g. Buckle up… Yeah, so that was crazy, our little teenage brains were given one of the most complicated and most difficult challenges I’ve ever done. When we first were brainstorming we thought oh yeah this is easy, rig a wooden structure up with some kind of pipe-xylophone system. But we forgot something the weight. UNDER 175g, THATS LESS THAN 40 NICKELS! Anyway back to the calm talk. We, after a great deal of thought went with a simple, yet solid idea. What if we hollow out a 2×4? Well that went well, weighing 21g! Or so we thought… I wasn’t there but at the event there was panic as we found out our machine was not 21g but 221g!
This photo is my team after we found out about our weight mistake, as you can see it was extremely stressful, coming so far in our building only to be told it was wrong.
Aside from the machine we also had to create a presentation. We decided to incorporate the weight bearing into our presentation by using the weight of pressure on one mans shoulders. His name is Arnold. Enjoy.