Category: Uncategorized

Recently I was talking with someone about a interesting question someone had proposed them. The question was, “Say you built a ship, and it was the first of its kind. We’ll say its a pirate ship. Now say every year you take one plank of wood off the pirate ship and replace it with a new plank of wood. With the plank that you took off the ship, you begin to build a new ship. Say 1000 years passes and you’ve successfully removed all the planks and built complete other ship out of the planks of wood you removed from the pirate ship. Which ship is the original?”

The idea of an original event starting something, just seems absurd. The more I learn, the more I realize that history tends to repeat itself quite a bit. I was just thinking about this because today I was discussing the current stock market with someone today. We were talking about how much wood costs right now, an absurd amount. The housing market is in a bubble, its just like everything that I learned back in our first unit about turning points and stock market crash are flashing back to me.

Though this analogy might fit more comfortably with terrorism. Acts of terrorism have tended (I am not a professional, so this is all coming from the research I did) to be built on top of one another. Each act has to outdo the previous to maintain the amount of attention needed for people to respond to their cause. Mr. Hughes brought up a point about the mass shootings (defined by the Gun Violence Archive as: 4 or more people shot or killed not including the shooter LINK) in the US. The news tends to pick up larger events, and so larger shootings tend to end up on the news, but not all of them. From January 1st to May 28th this year there have been 225 mass shootings in the United States alone. As of April 30th 206 people died from mass shootings in the States. Now the pandemic has heightened shootings, as 2020 and 2021 have been really bad. Even now as I google “mass shootings in the United States” articles pop up published 17 hours ago, about shootings that happened today. Theres a fine line between not wanting to hear any more bad news, like choosing to ignore or avoid information like this, but theres also the side that news broadcasters are choosing not to display this 24/7. There has been (on average) more then 1 shooting a day in 2021, so why haven’t we heard about them all? Many news broadcasting companies have only chosen to mention the largest shootings, and  to recognize them. The United States Government will fly its flag at half mast when a large shooting has been committed to memorialize those lost. But it doesn’t fly its flag at half mast every day, or for every shooting. These things that I’ve found are interesting, because at the end of the day the recognition of a shooting only comes when its larger then average, and when the average is increasing at a steady pace, it just looks like exponential growth.

So I guess bringing it back to “what is original”, my conclusion is that if something was original you would never be able to find it because it would become buried under the exponential amount of people doing the same thing. For the ship analogy it means that the original ship must be the one that wasn’t made last.

 

***Quick sand. Hint, hint

As I’ve been working through these past 2 units in PLP, Turning Points, and School of Rock, I’ve noticed something. Human beings have extremely low attentions spans. This is a fact for so much more than just these past 2 units though, it’s a common factor that each individual displays every day. I can connect this factor even further to my recent kayak guide training.

I was in charge of teaching a few lessons, and to prepare I had practiced my lessons with another guide. This other guide taught me a lot, and gave me a lot to think about, but one thing he couldn’t stress enough was that people have incredibly low attention spans. I really let this one sit with me. He went on to tell me about how you basically shape every lesson around the fact that peoples attention spans are so low so everything has to be short, sweet, and engaging. Obviously I know that my own personal attention span is low, but it was interesting to learn about general peoples attention spans.

Ok, I took myself off course there but I felt that it was important to include that this is a common occurrence. I had also come up with another example. I’m guessing everyone has seen a missing animal poster, (look right).

These posters are a good metaphor for how well people can retain interest in something. I know personally when I see a missing animal poster I’ll take a photo, and make sure I keep my eye out. As time goes by though I don’t actively look anymore. I thought this was an insensitive problem of mine, so the second I notice myself doing this I tend to look harder. Which ends up just faltering out. I used this analogy because as we are faced with an issue, or another persons problem for too long (I am not sure how long, I would absolutely love to do research about this!!!) we loose interest, not because we become uninterested per say, but rather we’ve seen it, and now we are done. Naomi Klein talked a lot about this in her book “On Fire” as well as “The Shock Doctrine,” where she argues that for an event to change the publics perspective, it needs to shock them, and I mean really shock them.

Now taking this analogy to political movements we can apply this to the Climate Crisis firstly. The Climate Justice movement started in the 1980’s. So we have had 40 years, an entire generation of time to figure something out, and yet we are worse off then we were in the 1980’s. Why? Because like quick sand and missing dog posters, the more you promote it, the less people want to see it. And we know that it is almost impossible to make people want to see something when they don’t want to. (Now I am talking mostly about people who live in countries that reside in the Global North). The more people force climate activism, the less and less attention seem to have.

This can be applied too many political movements, though I will preface my next paragraph by saying that I believe that there is much more going on then peoples lack of interest when it comes to the Black Live Matter movement and the Civil Rights movement. I do believe though that this plays a role in peoples lack of change.

 

The Civil Rights movement (officially) started in the 1950’s. A really long time ago. Think 2 generations, and 13 different presidents. And yet black people are still being treated as less. Take Hurricane Katerina as an example. After the hurricane hit New Orleans, a predominantly black city, in 2005, it took the national guard 5 days to get there and help the people. When people tried to escape the city by crossing a bridge to another town they were forced back into New Orleans by people with guns on the other side of the bridge, sending them back into a figurative hell.

The conclusion is that the longer you protest something, and the longer you fight for your rights it seems, the less people will pay attention. Going back to what I said earlier about kayaking, it looks like more than just my lesson plans have to be “short, sweet and engaging.”

Additional connection: Free Palestine Movement (more reading here), and how it started in 2003.

The event that started the Cuban missile crisis was the Cuban revolution. The US got involved when JFK proposed that Cubans fight, and the revolution themselves after the US had already gotten involved. 

JFK decided to make an army of Cuban people who were against the revolution. So he sent this army of American/Cuban people to take down the the Cuban revolution. This was thought of as a very strong idea, JFK believed this was the solution. The battle is called The Bay of Pigs, and when it failed miserably it humiliated the US government.

You’d think that people (the US government to be specific) would have learned from this experience, that they wouldn’t make army’s of people to fight their own people in a proxy war. Well your wrong if you thought they wouldn’t do it again. If theres one thing I learned it’s that the states loves a good proxy war.

This same idea of proxy warfare, and making people fight your wars, was used at the end of the Vietnam war.

Before Nixon was elected he campaigned saying he knew how to end the Vietnam war. He didn’t. He used this same idea. He called his idea Vietnamization. To make the people in Vietnam fight for themselves. This looked like getting all the American troops (the support in Siagon) and people out of Saigon before the fall, and leaving the few non-communist people to fight the war the US had waged. What this did was deprive the Vietnam people who were in favour of Saigon of safety and leave them to die. 

Now you might think that maybe after this has happened twice the US might take a hint. Leaving/leading other people to fight your war is not the way to go. But yet, you’re wrong again.

This same concept is being used for the removal of US troops from Afghanistan by July 4th this year. Biden said that Afghan troops have been trained to hold up the country to avoid collapse. Obviously we don’t know how this will end, maybe Biden really has developed a sound foundation, but with the way things have gone in the past, I have doubts. I would love to believe that things will be sound in Afghanistan once the troops leave, but history tends to repeat itself. I guess only time will tell. 

So we have been doing quite a bit of research lately about turning points, and I have found quite a few interesting connections between topics. One that I would like to start off with is the association of a crisis to a turning point. I understand this is a broad idea but I would like to walk you through my thinking.

I first came across this idea when we were looking into the assassination of JFK. I had been playing with the idea of a turning point requiring a crisis for a bit, it had popped into my head when we talked about The New Deal and The Great Depression, and I had also had the same thought when we discussed The Cuban Missile Crisis. When we started to talk about the JFK assassination I quickly started to draw connections to the crisis of it all, how America’s sweetheart, their young, beautiful president was killed. How he was visiting Dallas with his wife, who had just birthed a still born child, and was still grieving. How he was so close to making it to lunch when he was shot. The crisis of his assassination rings clear from every history book, and article you read on this event. Though the idea of it being a turning point is very much based on the crisis.

Like I mentioned earlier I felt this same way about the other turning points such as the cuban missile crisis. This turning point came after the crisis that almost demolished the US and Russia. This crisis came about when Russia started to move nuclear weapons to Cuba during the Cuban revolution. The US was getting panicked. The enemy having nuclear weapons is one thing, but them having them so close to your country pointed right at you is something else entirely. The US was loosing control quickly, and one wrong move could have led to a completely different present day. This was a turning point because the world got so close to total elimination, but turned back. This traumatic experience led to the US and Russia installing a telephone line directly to each other to communicate more efficiently, and before things were to escalate too far.

 

Lastly, the New Deal was a perfect example of the turning point arising after a crisis. The New Deal was a product of the Great Depression. It was created to ease the American economy back into safety, and though some argue it did not help and that actually WW11 healed the American economy, it was a major help. The New Deal, and I’m siding with Ms. Willemse, pulled the American economy back together, and deals since then have been based off of the New Deal (such as the Green New Deal but thats for another day). But the New Deal and the turning point of it came as a product of a crisis.

I’m excited to see if this idea holds up for the entire unit of “Turning Points” and if it doesn’t I’d be happy to figure out more on that side as well!

Thanks for reading!

Woman want to be accepted so much they will silence areas of their life wants and needs to submit.

“Perrault’s moral is that curiosity only causes problems because it either leads to discovering something we wish we didn’t know, or at best, we lose our sense of wonder as soon as the reality is revealed to us.” – (https://study.com/academy/lesson/charles-perraults-blue-beard-themes-morals.html)

I have been reading “Women Who Run With The Wolves,” (Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés) for about a year now. Picking it up when I feel like it, and then switching back to a simpler book when things get chaotic. I picked up “Women Who Run With The Wolves,” last week and was reminded of the morals throughout the book. One of the stories that struck me immediately was when I opened the pages was the tale of “Bluebeard.” Now the Bluebeard tale went a bit like this: three sisters find themselves courted by a man named Bluebeard, he had an image in the town for courting women, and so the sisters were suspicious. In an effort to become closer to the sisters, bluebeard invited them and their mother out for a picnic in the forest. He charmed them with his stories and food, and by the time they were headed home each of the sisters believed he was not so bad. Though when they arrived home again the 2 older sisters had returned to their suspicions of bluebeard and vowed to never see him again. The youngest sister thought, “ if a man could be that charming, then perhaps he was not so bad”, and she decided to see him again. When he proposed she accepted, convincing herself there was nothing to be suspicious of, and that he was the one for her. A little while later he came to his new bride and told her he had to go for a time, and that she was welcome to invite her sisters to the castle to keep her company. He told her to ask the cook to make a large meal for all of them and to ride their horses in the forests surrounding the castle. He told her, “ you may do

anything you like, anything your heart desires.” He handed her his ring of keys, and told her each door she could open except one. The smallest key she could not use. She agreed to these terms and he left. When the sisters arrived they were curious as to what was planned for them, and the sister told them that they could do anything, except open the door that required the smallest key. Now the bride didn’t know what door opened with the smallest key, so the sisters, being curious in nature, decided to make a game out of finding what door the key fit in. Each floor had 100 doors and there were 3 floors, when they came to the final door the little key hadn’t been used. They opened the last door, and inside was another door, a smaller cellar door. Without thinking one of the sisters put the little key into the door and opened it. Once opened it was too dark to see and so one of the sisters lit a candle, once lit, the sisters saw that the room was full of dead bodies and blood. Each sister screamed and ran out of the room, locking it on the way out. They believed the experience was behind them until they noticed that the little key, the one they were not supposed to touch, was bleeding. They tried everything to stop it from bleeding, and in the end decided to hide it. When Bluebeard returned he asked about the sisters time, they all agreed they had a lovely time, and handed him his key ring. He noticed immediately that the little key was missing and it didn’t take long for him to find it, as it was bleeding through the wardrobe where it was hidden. When he realized this fact he dragged his wife to the little room, and told her she was next. She begged for 15 minutes to make good with god before she died and he granted her this. In the 15 minutes her brothers came and when Bluebeard returned to execute her, her brothers killed him. Which brings a close to the story.

This story I find so compelling, how the morals are written in bold. Basically, a curious woman is  killed by society. Someone who questions her placement and her rules becomes ‘next’ in the context of this story. The sisters being curious in nature do not have husbands, though the sister who decides to submit to the man, and not listen to her instincts, is killed by her inevitable interest in the key. This story is repeated countless times throughout, and could propose a second ending for Taming Of The Shrew. Had Kate not submitted to Petrutio, she would have ended up as one of the women in the cellar. Had she expressed curiosity in why the sun become the moon, why at 2 it was 7, she would have become a skeleton waiting for the next woman. Not only can we connect this with “Taming Of The Shrew,” we can connect this with happenings today. I watched “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” this weekend and was shocked when they interviewed the social media influencer, Macy Chanel. Chanel told Tutar (Borat’s daughter in the film) that she needed to be weak, and submit to her man. As this movie was released this year its the most recent evidence that people (who have many followers) still believe in submission. That curiosity, and creativity for a woman, is shamed and that these themes have continued from the beginning of time.

https://soundcloud.com/user-335030245/the-climate-justice-movement

Justice is a concept on ethics and law where people behave in a way that is fair, equal and balanced for everyone.”

• wikipedia.org

To be unjust would be behaving in a way that is unfair, or morally wrong. 

(Now before I would like to continue any further I wanted to mention that I am coming at this from the perspective of a white teenage girl. That things I say could be perceived as wrong, because I am only able to build off of my own life experiences, and right now with all this information I am trying to be as open as possible, but if you read this and find something incorrect about it, please leave a comment!)

“Injustice causes movements.” – Megan Currin, District Councillor, and Shop owner, said. This blew all my work away. The point of there being yet another similarity between the Civil Rights Movement and the Climate Crisis. Last week I belittled my work with ways to prove it inaccurate, but I didn’t realize that by doing that it left very little for me to build upon for this week. I then realized that I could build upon the very thing that made me uncomfortable writing about, which is white supremacy. The Oxford dictionary defines white supremacy as, “the belief, theory, or doctrine that white people are inherently superior to people from all other racial and ethnic groups, especially Black people, and are therefore rightfully the dominant group in any society.” 

To find white supremacy in the Civil Rights movement you don’t have to look very far, every protest, every march, every sit-in and arrest happened because of this unjust believe that people with white skin were superior to people with darker skin colours. An example of white supremacy during the Civil Rights movement is the white knights of the KKK. The KKK’s goal was to maintain segregation, and to prove to any African Americans that the KKK was proof of supremacy, at the toll of violence. They did this through “cross lightings,” which was when the KKK community, at meetings/rallies, would burn a cross the symbol of christ and Christian faith, continuing to claim that they were non violent. Many of the KKK’s more violent lashes came from individual members, not the Klan itself. The members would make deals with police to attack or kill African Americans that had been released from prison, which brings up my next point. Many of the people who brutally attacked and killed African Americans were not themselves part of the Klan, which proves that you didn’t need to be a part of the Klan to be a white supremacist. The murder of Emmett Till is an example of murder at the cost of superiority. Emmett Till was a 14 years old, and on a trip to visit family, when he was murdered for making a comment to a female worker in a candy shop in Money Mississippi. The husband of the woman working in the candy shop, and his friend then 3-4 days later went to Emmett’s uncles house and dragged him into their truck, and drove off. He was found weighed down by a cotton Jin fan in a river near Emmett’s uncles house. He had suffered major injuries before the two shot him. It’s such a horrible event that didn’t need to happen. These men were not doing anything but showing their supremacy towards a 14 year old who was merely visiting his family. These 2 were not registered KKK members, this wasn’t part of a Klan act, it was a individual decision, which just goes to prove that you dont need to be part of a group that believes in white supremacy to be a whites supremacist. 

So now that we know that believing in white supremacy is not limited to people in a clan/group, I feel that I can understand that white supremacy today follows that same mindset. You may be wondering what white supremacy looks like today and I think you would be shocked to know that it honestly isn’t that different. There are still KKK groups/communities all over the world, and if not in person, online. Many alt-right groups have taken to social media to hide, many finding homes on sites like twitter, facebook, and VK. After the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand in 2019, many media sites decided to purge their sites of platforms that portrayed a similar belief. These groups then found themselves home on a Russian site called VK. What makes VK so popular is that you can hide things in a “blanket setting.” Things like posts, pages, or sites can all be hidden from public view. 

Aside from the very evident white supremacy groups, there is also hidden white supremacy belief in many other areas, one being politics. To get right to the point the connection I had planned on using in this post was the misuse, and overuse of people and resources. How African American people were stolen, and then enslaved and forced to work inhumanly, and then when they wanted to be treated like humans, white people refused. I wished to connect that to how people in higher income counties have been extracting and burning up fossil fuels unable to look the people who they are affecting in their eyes, and refusing to stop. This misuse of resources struck me as a connection that I could tie into the Civil Rights Movement, so heres my explanation. 

When you go to a mainstream store, and you see a cotton tee-shirt on sale for $5.99, and you think its fate, all you wanted lately was a cotton tee-shirt, I highly recommend you think twice before purchasing it. If you are ok with the fact that the shirt was made by people (using Bangladesh for this example) who are earning 1.8 % of the hourly wage of the average American which means that these people (85% woman) can not provide for all living needs (shelter, food, education), that they receive this wage for working 14-16 hour shifts 7 days a week, that the people employed to work in the sweatshops face unsafe working conditions, and cramped quarters, and there are often factory fires due to these 2 points. Many of these workers are not granted maternity leave, and are not able to unionize. If you can make it through these points and still want that $6 shirt, I don’t know what will change your mind. It’s not that you shouldn’t consume, clothing is an important part of our life, its how we express ourselves, and obviously that is a very important part of our culture, but being able to express yourself, while also thinking about these people who are being targeted by this cutler of consumption is very important. 

This is where my connection comes in. When you don’t think about the people being affected by your actions your exercising your privilege, and supremacy. Many people will not think about the repercussions of their actions when it comes to the climate as well. When I say “the climate” its a pretty bold grab at anything climate related, emissions, pollution, global warming, major weather events, the death of species, and the blatant tendency for people to ignore those being affected. When people produce emissions it contributes to global warming which stirs up many major weather events, ( I am not a pro at this stuff so please comment if I mess this up). The people, in general, who contribute the most to the emissions are people living in higher income companies which generally reside in the global north. Now the major weather events affect people in generally lower income countries, that also generally reside in the global south. If you read that correctly you should have seen that the people who contribute the least to global warming, feel the effects the hardest. People don’t think about what there actions affects have on others, which is an example of privilege. 

Using that example here in North America, we can see that people like President Trump are examples of white supremacy in his actions to continue to extract and refusing the fact that his actions have repercussions across the world. There are many other ways that he can be considered a white supremacist, but to connect the civil rights unit to the climate crisis, I will remain talking about climate. 

“He is a dehumanizer. … He has been very clear about who he prefers to be in this country and who he literally wants to keep out with walls and cages and militarization and torture and cruelty. And again, we in El Paso have born the brunt of all of that.”

former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said

“I think if you own a business that attempts to keep black people from renting from you,” Coates said, “… if your response to the first black president is that they weren’t born in this country, despite all proof, if you say they weren’t smart enough to go to Harvard Law School and then demand to see their grades, if that’s the essence of your entire political identity, you might be a white supremacist.”

“Many of the statements [Trump has made] are exactly what a white supremacist would say — whether talking about immigrants invading or African countries being ‘s***holes’ or Mexicans are rapists,” Beirich noted. “He’s tweeted out material that came from white supremacists, and a lot of his views are indirectly views from white nationalists. I don’t know if that makes him a white nationalist, but he’s talking from their scripts.”

These are just quotes from a simple search about Trump and white supremacy. I hope this post makes the point about how people are still exercising their belief in white supremacy today, and that this misuse of the planet, that stems from that belief, is similar to the misuse of people during the civil rights movement.

Thanks for reading 

https://soundcloud.com/user-335030245/the-climate-movement-and-the

Last week to answer this question I went into a specific example of a human rights issue that is being disregarded tying into the human rights issue we have been studying. This week I wanted to delve into connections that I have been seeing between the civil rights movement, and the climate crisis. It may strike you as quite a stretch, and personally it looks like quite a stretch written out. Though this entire week I have been taking note of similarities that I have been seeing when reading “On Fire, The Burning Case For A Green New Deal” and any information prescribed by Mr. Hughes, and Ms. Willemse. I will begin to unpack these connections below. I have also mentioned any connections I made in the podcast linked above!

Racism confines people based on the disproportionate use of skin colour. A racist has a preconceived notion of the value of the person they are being racist towards. They put that person, along with others who they identify as “similar” in a box. This cramped space is not appropriate to be placing people in, though the people that place these people in these spaces cant really find the decency to stop. African Americans fought for their human right, freedom. They slowly gained this through a series of marches, sit-ins, peaceful protests, and rallies. Though today that freedom is not quite detectable because it was never fully given. African Americans are still suffering against segregation, and racism, though today the approach is different. Did you know that 70% of toxic waste treatment facility’s in  the United States are placed in and around communities of colour? That these facility’s are affecting around an estimated 1.5 million African Americans? The government is still treating people that are not white as lesser, and its getting a little frustrating. Take immigration for example. Now this is a big topic so I will try to handle it as best I can. In 2018 alone the United States became home to 44.7 million immigrants.

(Watch this for more information)

Seems like a lot but it turns out to be 0.59% of the global population. Still a substantial amount of people. These people immigrate for a variety, and abundance in some cases, of reasons, environmental reasons being one of them. People in the global south are feeling the effects of climate change must faster then it will hit the North. So that means that generally the counties the least responsible for climate change, are the ones who feel the effects first. Which doesn’t seem fair. So these people who live in these counties that are being hit with drought, monsoons, hurricanes or floods are trying to escape. The homes they built have become companions of the sea, and are lost to her forever, so they try to move to America.

Mr. Trump isn’t really the nicest though is he? He turns his back on these people who have lost so much, and are willing to make a new home for themselves in this country, and work to build thier economy, but Mr. Trump isn’t sold. He is racist and doesn’t want to take in “others.” By 2030 Live Science predicts that over 100 million people will be immigrating due to climate related reasons. Where will they turn if the only place that looks safe is really the only place that isn’t? That America turns out to be more dangerous and scary then their home?

Another connection I have been seeing throughout this period is in the planning. Little comments that are identical to each to her. Naomi Klein, the author of On Fire, said “the weight of the world is not on any one persons shoulders… It rests in the strength of the project of transformation that millions are already a part of.” She was confessing that this movement would not progress with people carrying this on their shoulders privately, sure the problem is more one persons then the other and people should be feeling guilt for that, but in the end it does become everyone’s problem. I was watching Eyes On The Prize, a civil rights TV show created in 1987. The show makes bite size pieces of the civil rights movement. The first episode is called Awakenings (1954-1956), and it focused on the exact same events we have been covering in class. The bit that caught my eye was when they interviewed Rev. Martin Luther King Jr after his house was bombed. This is what he said:

Interviewer : “are you scared?”

Rev. King : “No I am not. My attitude is that this is a great cause. It is a great issue that we are confronted with, and that the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important. It is the triumph of the cause that I am concerned about. And I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted and willing to face the consequences whatever they are. And if he is filled with fear, he can not do it.”

His message is almost exactly what Naomi Klein said. That you must give up the idea that you carry do thing by yourself. Whatever your fighting for must be on the backs of many before you make progress. 

This may seem like a very small connection, but I believe that the climate justice movement could pull a lot from the civil rights movement. That in a sense the fight for a green new deal is similar to the fight for equal rights. The peacefully protesting and marching people are doing today evolved from the civil rights movement. There are still many differences between the climate crisis and the civil rights movement, many to big to even think there are connections, things like lynching, segregation, slavery, and profiling. But those horribly terrible things were the reason to act. The climate crisis has very similar things that cause people to act, things like the 2 degrees of warming that was promised not to cross, leaders that don’t seem to care, and actions that contradict what is said. I’m still a bit iffy about all this, but I have been struck on more then one account of the connection between the civil rights movement and the climate crisis. If you have any further ideas please mention them in the comments because I would love to hear what others think.

This section for science 10 we focused on chemistry. We started with discussing what chemistry is and what questions we had about chemistry. We planned this on a white board and then we took our ideas and thoughts to mind maps and wrote down our thoughts to return to them throughout the last month. Here is my mind map discussing these questions and points. 

As you can see the mind map is mostly questions because coming into their unit I did not really know much about chemistry and that I wanted to learn much more about what it truly is. 

Now after our mind map, we got to get right into our project. Our project was all up to us giving us complete creative freedom. We got to decide the driving question and base all the work and the final presentation around it. I was in a group with Lucas, and Alivia. I think my group worked really well with each other because we all found a good grove and once we had addressed our topic which was double replacement reactions we got to working and deciding what we wanted to pick as our driving question.

Now before I talk about the driving question I would like to talk about our topic, which was double replacement reactions. Now I had never heard of double replacement reactions so I was quite interested in what the topic would entail. So I did some research into the topic with Alivia, who helped to explain it to me, and realized that it was a really cool topic. A double replacement reaction is where you have one product take this as an example!

 Na2S (Sodium and Sulfur) + 2HCl ( Hydrogen Chloride) will turn into – 2NaCl (Sodium Chloride) + H2S (Hydrogen Suflide)  

As you can see the same 4 elements are on both sides of the equation, this is because in a double replacement reaction it only switches the placement of the elements instead of introducing or removing elements!

So now that I’ve introduced the topic I would like to talk about the driving question that my group and I picked. We chose to focus our project on how doctors use double replacement reactions when diagnosing patients. Driving Question: How Do Doctors Use Double Replacement Reactions To Help Diagnosing Patients? 

We were really lucky because there was not much about this sort of thing online but then right before we were going to give up we realized that there was something about it in the textbook! We were able to get all the information that we needed in the textbook and add it to our presentation. My job for my project was to complete the key note. I was really proud of my work for the keynote and I had fun making it!

Heres my keynote.

Our presentation was in front of the grade 11 science students in Ms. Welch’s class. The presentation went really smoothly and it was cool to present to the class, and hear what they had to say about the projects, all in all it was a good project. We are now wrapping up this project and so we have been tasked with the creation of a end of unit mind map. 

So here is mine! 

Before I end this blog post I would like to talk about what Curricular Competincies I felt that I improved upon throughout this project

The first one is: Communicating, I felt that I was able to share my ideas and thoughts loudly with my group, I also felt that I was able to listen and to understand others ideas as well.

The second one is: Applying and Innovating, I felt that I did well I this competency becuase I was able to fully understand what the need and what for our reaction was and how it helped people.

The third one is: Questioning and Predicting, I felt that I was really interested in our experiment  and I was genuinely interested in the topic chosen by my group and I. I also really wanted to figure out the backstory as to why the chemicals create the final product eh way they did.

The last one is: Planning and Cunducting, I felt that I did well in this competency becuase I felt that I learned a lot form my research into the topic, while I alos helped to plane the layout of our presentation.

 

Thanks for reading

Math blog post

This week we finished and presented our projects for math 9. Maggie and I did our project showing how you can find polynomials in a common environment. Our common environment was the grocery store. Maggie and I decided to show how like terms can be collected when you “stalk the store.” Our plan was to make a floor plan layout like a store, and put the paper cut outs, of food, in there rightful spots.

We glued down a bunch onto there spots, and then left a about half to answer. The way the questions worked is, you would grab a paper cutout of food from the basket (which ranged from rice to yogurt) and on the back of this cutout there would be a polynomial question.

The questions included, plus, minus, decimals, fractions, exponents, and variables. The next challenge is to combine like terms and figure out the answer to the question on the back. Once you’ve answered the question, figure out what category your piece of food belongs to. There are 6 categories, baked goods, fruits and veggies, dry goods, meat, dairy products, and cold goods. Pick which category your food goes into, and then within the category look for your answer, once you find the answer put the food so it covers the answer, and then you move onto another food cutout!
Within our game we covered all the important factors of polynomials, such as variables,

 

constants,

and coefficients.

We discussed these concepts before diving in, and showed how they make up the base of a polynomial equation. We then showed how this game was a good example of collecting like terms in our day to day life.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed Maggie and I’s game

Recently PLP 9 traveled to Ottawa, the capital of Canada.

We were traveling to Ottawa to stay for a week at, Encounters With Canada. Encounters is a week long school away from home, where people from all over Canada, come to learn a specific thing. The week that PLP 9 went, it was Vimy week. Vimy week held a focus, on world war 1 and the battle of Vimy Ridge itself. Little did we know that this week would hold much more than just facts and story’s from years prior, but also our own new story’s, and new experiences!

We got the lucky chance to take a plane, instead of the PLP bus that is our chauffeur for a majority of the trips. We had DI on the day we were leaving for Ottawa, so we had to leave from the competition. (If you want to read about the competition its here) Our plane ride was 5 hours long, and I got to sit next to Luca J, and Isabelle, which was good because I have a hard time on planes. Which made the plane ride ten times worse when I realized that it was going to be quite turbulent. We made it through the plane ride, and arrived in ottawa at 3am. We didn’t check any luggage so packing was a little hard but it made it so much simpler when we got off the plane, and we were able to leave the airport almost immediately.
In the morning we woke up and realized we were at Encounters Canada. We would be spending the next week here.
In the morning we realized that we didn’t have anything planned for Sunday, so it was a relaxed day. We played cards, and monopoly, met new people from all around Canada, and at the end of the day we had an assembly shedding light on what we would be doing this whole week.

Since we went for the specific week about Vimy Ridge, the whole week was aimed to expand on our knowledge of the battle of Vimy, and this is where our week began.

 

                                                  Day 1
Wake up is at 7:30, I think, by some acoustic version of a 2003 pop song, or swan lake, (it just depended on the day.) You then have to rush to get to the bath room before all the other girls could get there, since the bedrooms had about 75 beds, and the bathrooms had 2 stalls. Breakfast was served downstairs, in the dining room, which was also the room where I met some of the people that I would never forget. PLP stayed tight for the first few days, not letting anyone in/out, but after a while, we split up, each of us making new friends.
Every kid had a name tag, on this name tag was your name, where you were from and your group number. I was in group number 5, which consisted of Luca J, Marshall, Kai, Logan, Lauren, and Maggie from PLP. The people in your group were the people you would travel with, and go on field trips with, during the days. Speaking of field trips, we had our first one, on Monday.

The Vimy Ridge memorial, for all of Canada, is in the Center of downtown Ottawa. The day that we went to go to this memorial, they were holding an actual ceremony at the memorial, which was very touching to watch. Many people from around Ottawa gather to participate in the ceremony, and so it felt special to be there. During the ceremony there was a man playing the bag pipes, another playing the trumpet, and we also go to witness a guard change.

We had workshops in the afternoon, one of which consisted of the biggest traveling map, in all of Canada. It was a map of Vimy Ridge, and I found this to be a cool and new experience, since we were able to walk all over the map, and learn new things about Vimy.

We spent the rest of the afternoon back at encounters, but when night rolled around, we got to go bowling. The best part of the bowling experience was going to Quebec to bowl. We crossed the river, and were greeted by a whole lot of french signs. The bowling was glow in the dark, bowling and I had a blast meeting new people!

                                                           Day 2
The mornings are the same each and every day. Swan lake or acoustic pop. Today was different though because we were going to the Canadian national war museum. Today was one of my favourite days. I absolutely love museums, and learning about all the cool artifacts, and interesting history, makes me really happy. We were welcomed by a well preformed skit from one of the tour guides, and after which, we were then split into groups, so that we could tour the museum. The museum was absolutely jam packed with amazing things. For example, we spent 6 hours there and still didn’t have the time to get to one of the floors, thats how much stuff there was!

We had lunch, and got to play around with a few things the museum had set aside for us. After we got our own free time to explore. We needed a interview for our book, so I got my interview, and headed on my own tour. On the ground floor I ran into a veteran, and we started talking, and by the time we were done I had to run upstairs to make sure I wasn’t going to miss the bus! This man had so much information, and so may stories to tell. Not specifically about war, but about his life, and he was very eager to share them with me. We talked about many different things such as, wells, war, love, peace, god, etc. At the end of our conversation he gave me this bible, and told me that he only brings one with him when he goes to the museum, and he only will give it away if he finds a kind, compassionate, person to share this treasure with, and who enjoyed spending time with. I’m not religious, but I felt it would be rude to turn down this offering, so I accepted it gratefully and thanked him.
That was it for day 2 and I was already feeling tired.

Day 3
Day three was a very talked about day because we were going to parliament. We had to pack special clothing that was “fancy” so that we would all look responsible, and respectful. Parliament was packed with information, and our tour took us all over the building. The library, the House of Commons, the peace tower, everywhere.

Personally the peace tower was my favourite part because we were able to see all of Ottawa.
The peace tower had four windows, one on each side of the tower. From it you could see the river, all the government buildings surrounding parliament, and some of the war memorials scattered around.

On the way up to the peace tower, in the elevator, we passed the bells, and since the door was glass you could see them all quite clearly, it was really cool to see all of the bells. The biggest of the bells would have been able to fit me inside easy!

After parliament we went on a walking tour of all the war monuments. We saw one that was dedicated to men who fought in the Korean War, and one for the men who fought in the boer war. Also there was one for the animals in the war.

Once we were back at encounters we had a presentation prepared for us after dinner. There was an aboriginal man, who came and had a funny skit that he performed about how to treat this earth, and how we may never get another one. I found the skit really eye opening, and it made me thing about all the ways that I pollute in my day to day life.

                                                     Day 4
We had to wake up early this morning so it wasn’t 2003 acoustic pop, or swan lake, it was more a pots and pans symphony, to wake us all up. We got on the buses and bumped our way to the diefenbunker.

The diefenbunker, was a bunker set up to protect the government in the case of a nuclear attack, around the time the Cold War was going on. The diefenbunker was built in 2 years, which I find amazing, because it is 4 levels underground of bed rooms, food storages, dentists, mini hospital, cafeteria, even a work out room.

The bunker was made to sit 2 miles away from the city in the opposite direction of the wind. So that the wind wouldn’t be blowing the toxic nuclear fumes into the bunker.
I found the bunker to scare me in a way a horror movie scares you. The wall were painted with stripes running vertical on the wall, and horizontal on the floor. These lines were needed because they made the space look bigger than it actually was. Smart huh, well I guess it was made for the Prime minister. Though a fact was, that if there would have ever been a nuclear attack on Canada, the Prime minister would not in fact be staying in the bunker, he would be staying with his family, because it was such a small bunker that they could only house the important people, and they couldn’t even bring there families along. Anyway, the bunker scared me, a lot! On the way our of the bunker we even passed a nuclear bomb, which just made me want to walk faster!
Since it was such an early morning, we had left the bunker at 9 o’clock, am. Crazy. Anyway we had modular for the rest of the morning, but the module weren’t just the normal ones, this time each module had a veteran that told their story to you, which I found so very cool. The only sad part was that we were not able to meet all the veterans, but we were still able to meet 2 out of the 6. The first veteran we met was nice and kind, he was young as well, but the second veteran really sparked my interest. She was in her 40s and had been a part of the army for 20 years. I had so many questions to ask her and not enough time or courage. She told us about there hero shots, and what her job entailed. It was astounding. She also told us about how the Canadian government will pay for your tuition for attendance at the royal military school, so its a bonus!It really interested me to think about joining the army, though now looking back, I’m not so sure!

We took the bus to a cemetery about a 5 minute drive from encounters. There was a nice service and I was grasping the truer idea of the war at this time, and this just helped me to do that.

After the ceremony we had some time before we had to head out on our night activity’s. I had chosen to go to a play called The Lamentable Tragedy of Sal Capone, and it was absolutely incredible. The story line was, there was a boy and he was part of a rap group, and he was their DJ, and suddenly he was shot by the police, the leader of the group, Sal Capone, really felt to blame for this so he got in a fight with his manager, and things started to get out of hand. The play was filled with free rapping, the truth, and amazing acting. I felt really touched after watching it, and was very thankful that Encounters offered this experience.

Day 5
Today was very looked forward to among all the students. It was our free time in downtown Ottawa. I stayed with Isy, Luca, and Celina, and we started our day in a cafe to get some coffee, to keep us awake. It was nice to be in the cafe, because it was our first meal out side of Encounters. After we found our selfs endorsed with the street vendors, and spent at least half our time looking through there finger puppets, and rings. I ended up buying 5 finger puppets, for 10 bucks, it was well worth it.

We went to chapters, chipotle, Hudson’s bay, and many other stores. I really enjoyed exploring at my own pace, and where I wanted to, and I found as a very nice way to end the week.
We had a talent show that night, and I absolutely loved it. There were so many people that talents that I hadn’t even seen throughout the week. Nolan could yo-yo like no ones business, Erik could vogue like a pro, Luca O.G. could sing and play guitar like a star, (a lot of girls swooned over that performance), and lucas rapped his own song.

After the talent show we had some to pack, and then we had to meet in the cafeteria, for the talking stick circle. I did not have the best thought about this talking stick circle, I thought it would be a uncomfortable exercise, but I could not have been more wrong. All 120 kids came together for the first time this week, mentally and physically. Tears were shed, and hugs were given. There were so many stories that touched me so deep, and these students had the courage to share these stories with the whole group, I was overcome, and I was in shock. Celina, Isabelle, and I got closer than we had all week.

After the talking circle, we had some time, as some people were setting up the party. The party was just a disco ball, some jams, and nutrigrain bars. Which by my standards is the best party I’ve ever been to. I left in the middle, to get some air, and headed out side. There was a group of people outside, and I was listening in on there conversation, and all of a sudden I was part of there conversation. There was a girl outside, we stayed out there long after the rest of the group had left, we talked for like an hour. It was amazing, she was incredible, her story’s were so interesting, and I was so intrigued. The party wasn’t going to end until 3 am, which was when breakfast started, so at 2 we went back inside, it was getting pretty cold. The party was still the same, just groups of people standing on the dance floor, so Celina and I headed out and danced our hearts out for an hour, and had a ton of fun! The end of the part came, and I headed to bed, and realized I would be leaving the next day. I took a good half an hour, to think about all the wonderful experiences that I had participated in throughout that week, all the walks, or inside jokes, the story’s the veterans told us, the new people I had made, and a lot more. I was hit by a sudden sadness to leave, but I knew, that I had lived my week to its full potential, and just because I was leaving didn’t mean it would be forgotten.

We flew home the next day. I have never experienced more turbulence on a plane, it was really scary, but we made it home, and I was able to see my family, and dog, but I promised myself that the experiences that I had at Encounters would never be left behind.