Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you nerds who still choose to spend their time reading my blog posts. My wonderful teacher who I prefer to see more as a friend, Ms Willemse, decided that it would be “fun” to assign my HPC 11 class a blog post over our winter break. ISN’T THAT JUST THE GREATEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT EVER!! Pardon my capitals I just got a little too excited… Anyways, the purpose of this blog post is to provide a reflection upon an exhibition the rest of the grade 11 PLP class and I were involved in prior to the break. I would easily say that everyone in my class did a remarkable job presenting and putting together this immersive experience within the time we were given. Over all, I will be discussing, as briefly as I can, the process towards creating this exhibition, how my group members and I took on this large task, and my own thoughts on how this project could have been better or be improved if we were to perform something similar in the future. Bare with me now though, because as you can see I haven’t written a blog post since last year… HAHAHA GET IT!? Sorry I had too😅

Anyways, the class was first introduced to this project around the beginning of November, where Ms Willemse and her astounding side kick, Mr Hughes, created an iTunes U file called “Do you want to create an exhibition?” Yes my teachers were even able to accomplish ruining the movie Frozen for me as well… Anyhow, we had previously been learning about World War One, and what key events had impacted this war to come about. (Read all about this in my previous blog post here) Now our teachers presented the class with a new idea, which revolved around how this war influenced Canada’s emerging identity. They wanted us to brain storm, and provide our own opinions about what this emerging identity meant. The main focus of this exhibition was to reveal the growth of Canadian identity, within an immersive experience that we would present towards our audience throughout major events that took place before, during, and after the war. The first step was to divide the class into five groups to then cover each event, and then we could begin working…

In order to make sure groups were as fair as possible, Ms Willemse set up five large pieces of paper, and in small groups she appointed us to write down each event on separate sheets. For example, my group was told to write down The Depression, which was an event that took place post the war. Then we were directed to write as much information down about the topic as we could in approximately five minutes or so, and then we would rotate on to the next event to do the same. The other events were, Pre War, Trenches, Conscription Crises, and Post War. This gave the class a broader idea on each of these topics, and a chance to decipher which one we were most intrigued by. Soon after, Ms Willemse gave the class a list of these events, and instructed that everyone individually rank the events from the topic you were most interested by to the least. In a short amount of time by taking account everyone’s preferences she divided the class into these groups. And drum role please…. the event I was given was the… wait for it…. DEPRESSION!

It was Nolan, Mathew, Spencer, Teva, and myself who would have to work together to figure out how we could represent what the Depression in Canada had looked like post World War One, while also portraying Canada’s emerging identity. While Ms Willemse was away she assigned each group to create a google document that provided an outline and a few key ideas that they could possibly use to present their event. My group had completed that task throughout much discussion, and in the end chose to incorporate both factory life, and life in the city to portray the Depression during the 1930’s. Ensuing this planning stage, Ms Willemse was still absent as she was on a PLP trip with the grade nine PLP class, and had then decided to assign us several smaller projects regarding the Halifax Explosion as well as an in class essay on a novel we had been reading at this time, Three Day Road. It wasn’t until around a week or so before the actual exhibition that we were given class time as groups to get started producing our plans to present, which made the PLP room a very hectic place to be.

I could tell that Ms Willemse as well as Mr Hughes were both very stressed out, as they hold our class at a very high standard anyways and had very high hopes that this exhibition would be exceptional. They encouraged each group to present them with their ideas, and how groups were planning to set up and present their events, so as teachers they could gather a better understanding on what everyone was doing. My group in particular planned out together what props and costumes we would need for our presentation before we began creating back drops etc, as each of us already new our roles from the outline we made previously for Ms Willemse. For example, as a group we had decided that Spencer was the CEO of the factory who in which was very ruthless when it came to firing his employees as he had to be, Nolan was a factory worker who also acted as a guide for the audience as they would follow him throughout the entire experience, Teva was the factory worker leader who would make the factory scene seem more believable by yelling in the audiences faces to work harder, Mathew was a paper boy who was promoting the issue of this Depression emerging in Canada, and lastly I was a protester who encouraged others to join me as I fought for my rights as a citizen of Canada while promoting Canadian identity throughout a small speech.

Nevertheless, my group began creating and bringing in our own props, backdrops, and costumes that we could use to present our topic. Nolan, Teva, and I created and completed our groups script, while Mathew and Spencer started creating backdrops and other props. Spencer brought in many office like materials that his father had in his own office, which were all very useful for his role. Teva and Mathew created a large newspaper poster to promote the Depression, and I finished a newspaper article on the Depression for Mathew to hand out to the audience during the performance. Nolan and Teva borrowed props from the drama room to create large buildings for the city backdrop, and we even used exercise bikes as equipment for the factory. Teva and I even stayed at the school until around eight o’clock just to finish some of our backdrops, but it was ok because Ms Willemse gave us some Chinese food to keep us going! My group in particular had big plans for our presentation, and as we showed Ms Willemse and Mr Hughes our plan but they seemed very nervous about the outcome for it all … I believed in my group, and we stuck to our vision and our hard work definitely payed off in the long run.

Soon enough, the exhibition night was here, and every group began to set up their props in the gymnasium for the presentation. My group was all ready to go after a lot of heavy lifting, and continued to look over our scripts while performing a few last minute preparations before it was officially showtime. We even did a few dry runs of our presentation to make sure it flowed nicely, and that it only took the required four minutes in length to perform. Time was very tight, and another difficult task for my group as our idea seemed very complex, but we were luckily able to pull it off. We were the last group that the audience would see, so we had to make sure they left on a high note! Sure enough every person who finished at our station had said they were blown away by the entire exhibition, and Ms Willemse and Mr Hughes seemed very pleased as well. No matter the time the the class had I believe that every single student gave their entire effort into this performance, and that we all were able to capture the essence and main point of this entire project. Canadian identity was portrayed throughout each group, and I myself along with my teachers am very proud of what my class had accomplished. The outcome of this experience was truly amazing, and was worth all of the stress and effort put into it. I had a lot of fun actually presenting to fellow parents, students, and teachers as after getting used to presenting in front of a few groups I began to really fall into my character which gave me an even further understanding on my topic. I almost felt as if I was living it. Even though I was cold, tired, and hungry, by the end of this exhibition I was really happy I could be apart of it.

Over all, even though I thought this exhibition turned out very well there were a few aspects that I personally think could be improved, or that I would like to do differently if we were to do this again. First of all, I think that the time line for this assignment could have definitely been more organized, as I felt very rushed trying to pull this project together. Possibly allowing more class time for this presentation would have helped quite a lot over all, also more time focusing on the exhibition rather than having to also do other smaller projects assigned on top of it would have been nice as well. As for presenting in the gym, I think that having a few breaks or even an intermission while performing would have been very beneficial for all of us! For myself at least near the last hour of performing I was very exhausted, and struggling a little to keep going. As a group, I was very happy towards the outcome of our presentation, but if I had to say one thing it would be that as a group we could have planned more times outside of school to work on this project, which could have possibly enhanced our presentation in the end.

All in all, this exhibition, being my first one ever, was an amazing experience and I wouldn’t actually mind doing something similar to this again.👍🏼