So in my most recent blogpost I talked about the horror movie we created for our horror unit to try to answer the driving question of the unit: How does horror reflect and comment on our society? And while if you read my post about the movie you’d know we didn’t succeed in answering it, through the unit we did answer it in other ways.
This unit was really cool, we got to watch horror movies, read horror novels and we even got to go on a field school to a haunted house! Leading up to Halloween, and in the weeks after, our class was all horror, all the time. We even got the watch Halloween on Halloween.
We actually did learn quite a bit about horror, what makes it horrifying and how it is a reflection of our society, despite not being able to prove our learning through our film.
One of the first things we learned about in the unit was the The Elements of Aversion, described by Elizabeth Barrette. We ended up using these elements throughout the rest of the unit, up until the last horror assignment.
Along with that we watched both The Exorcist and Halloween (1978), and had to write reflections on the movies and what made them horrifying. In these reflections we could talk about what creates the fear in the movies, the motivation for the killings, the styles and techniques used when making the movie and the historical context. Along with that we could compare the movies to Frankenstein and talk about how they used horror in similar ways. In these reflections we were expected to go deeper than how the movies made us feel and what our opinions on them were. They weren’t movie reviews, but rather short analyses used to prove our understand of horror.
Halloween Reflection
Along with these analyses our other writing assignment was a synthesis essay between Bird Box by Josh Malerman and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I honestly enjoyed writing this essay because of the schedule. The first step was to create either a chart, or a vent diagram, or whatever we wanted really to organize our thoughts on the novels. We were given an outline that we could fill out as homework. In this outline we were to include our thesis, points and quotes to back up our points. I spent quite a bit of time trying to make sure my outline was ready so when it came to writing the essay I would be ready. Then came the actually writing. We were given three class periods to write it and weren’t supposed to write anything outside of class. This challenged me to write quickly and not get hung up on one part for too long, but timed writes are always good practice. There was nothing stopping us from writing outside of class, and doing that only hurt ourselves, so I stuck to writing in the given class time. In the end my essay was decent, and I successfully synthesized Bird Box and Frankenstein.
part of my chart, comparing the 2 novels
First body paragraph of my essay
So those were our main writing assignments this unit, but I’m sure you’re all dying to hear about the field study and the haunted house I mentioned earlier. My class went to Seattle, only for a night, to go to the new horror exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture, along with a haunted house, Georgetown Morgue.
The horror exhibit was really good. There were different sections, each talking about various genres within the horror genre. For example, there was a room all on the history of vampires, another about zombies, monsters and more. Along with that there were little spaces each playing different videos which were interviews with famous horror directors, writers, producers etc. and they were talking about the horror genre.
The Haunted House was really fun! I found if I told myself it wasn’t real it wasn’t scary, but if I let myself believe and get immersed in the experience then it was quite terrifying. That’s the thing with horror, you can just remind yourself it isn’t real, but where’s the fun in that? You get out of it what you take into it, so to enjoy horror you have to allow yourself to be scared.
In this blog post I’ve talked about what we did to learn, but I still haven’t fully answered the driving question of “How does horror reflect and comment on our society?” Horror reflects and comments on our society in many different ways. The horror genre shifts as the fears of society shift, but all in all, the horror genre is a mirror of our society. Horror utilizes societal fears to create the most horrifying product possible. Think about it, why would we find horror horrifying if it didn’t reflect society at all.
I challenge you, next time you watch a horror movie, think about what it’s commenting on society. Think about why you find it horrifying and what it says about our societal fears. Thinking about that will add a new depth to the genre you never before realize existed.
That pretty much sums up my class’s horror movie production in one phrase.
In term 1 in PLP one of our main projects was to create a horror movie answering the question “How does horror reflect and comment on our society?” Unfortunately, throughout the production of the movie this goal was lost, and we went a different direction. The class kind of forgot why we were actually making the movie and the social commentary aspect got dropped, as we got wrapped up in the actual film making.
So let me start this story by telling you a bit about the story of the movie.
Our movie was about 4 high school students who got sent to detention after spreading around a picture of another student. These four students were Leah (Alanah), Damien (Spencer), Brad (Michael S.) and Eddie (Jayden). During detention they were supposed to be helping the Janitor out with cleaning the school. While cleaning they all receive texts saying the sender knows what they did and each text ends with a different emoji. They were all kinda spooked, but figured it was just Rachel (the girl whose picture they sent around) playing a joke on them to get back at them for what they did. They didn’t worry too much about it until later they realized all the doors to the school had been locked, and they couldn’t get out. At first they were thinking it was still Rachel, but the logical side of them knew she couldn’t pull off locking all the doors. Meanwhile, they had all been seeing weird, masked figures around, but didn’t mention it to each other, all four of them thinking they were just seeing things. When they split up to try and find a way out (NEVER SPLIT UP) that’s when things really started going downhill. Remember those texts from earlier? Well, things, wearing masks of the emojis in the texts came and killed each character. By the end, Damien, Leah and Eddie had been killed, leaving Brad alone, to reflect on his mistakes.
The 3 masked killers
Sounds scary, right? Maybe not…also, where the heck was the social commentary? I guess it had to do with fear of invasion of privacy, but that wasn’t as clear as it should have been. Especially because in the actual movie it was never explained what they did to get into detention, and it would have helped if it had been more clear who Rachel was.
Here’s a list of some issues I had with the movie:
It’s never clear what the heck they did to get detention
The janitor was supposed to dismiss them but he went home early or something??? Did he expect them to stay there and keep cleaning or???
Pronunciation of Leah is not consistent
Not enough blood…there was blood left over at the end of production and death scenes with like no blood, or barely any.
Anyways, that was how the movie turned out, but what was production actually like?
So for this project our teachers got us all to apply for the roles we wanted and then interviewed us for these positions. They ended up choosing who they thought would be the best fit for each role and what configuration would make the production run the most smoothly. Finally, after a lengthy process they came up with this list:
So we went from there, doing our roles and trying our best to complete the project by following through with our responsibilities. As you can see up above, I was assigned the role of co-producer. My job was to make sure production went as smoothly as possible, everyone was completing their jobs, and we were responsible for coming up with a finished product.
Everyday during class time and filming I’d go up to people with questions like “Do you know what you’re working on?” “Is there anything you need right now to be able to do your job?” “Do you need anything from anyone else?” etc. I went from their answers and helped make sure everybody was able to do their job. Along with that I helped create a timeline and kept each role accountable for sticking to the timeline. For most roles this wasn’t an issue, for example script was right on top of it, and all the other roles followed along…except for the directors.
The directors meant well, I know that. They just wanted the best possible product. They just did that by taking everyone’s opinion into account, even when theirs was the only one that mattered. I don’t think they had a clear vision of what they wanted, which made filming take much longer than it should have. They’d spend much too long discussing angles with everyone, even though they should have known what they wanted doing into filming.
Another issue I had was, though I asked the directors many times if they were looking at story boards, and they assured me they were, it was pretty obvious they weren’t. The story boarders spent hours going over the story boards, hoping that these would help make the Filipino process easier. And the story boards were good. But for whatever reason, during filming they were often ignored.
An example of a story board
As filming went on this did become better, but it was still a lengthy process. Despite this, by the due date we had a complete film, although as you can tell from what I said earlier, it didn’t exactly meet the criteria.
My main issue with this project is the roles that we were all assigned. I fully understand that these roles are the only reason anything got handed in, and they held everyone accountable for their own job. And I even understand why my teachers instructed us not to step on each others toes and let people do their respective jobs. I agree with this request to a degree, but you see, it’s hard watching other people do their jobs and knowing you shouldn’t step on their toes, but really wanting to step in and suggest some different. As a producer I was responsible for everything that happened, yet after we all gave our initial ideas to the script writers we weren’t supposed to even give them critiques. When they had started the script I asked one of them what it was about and they responded “that knowledge is on a need to know basis.” We just had to follow their script and had no say over the matter, which is fair…but it’s quite hard to make a horror movie if the original script doesn’t have much social commentary. Our teachers told us specifically not to bother the script writers and to let them do their thing so I did, but the final script made it hard to meet the criteria of the project. Maybe I was supposed to tell them to fix this, but that felt like stepping on their toes which I also wasn’t supposed to do, so I’m still confused about that whole situation.
The script was good, and it did hold some social commentary so I’m not trying to call them out, although I completely am. The social commentary in the script was actually quite good, but it was hard to capture on film which is where it got lost even more. For example, it was hard to make it clear who Rachel was and what they 4 main characters did to her. Also, the main commentary was in the texts which weren’t incorporated into the movie very well. I’m just using the script as an example of how the roles didn’t work out as well as they were supposed to.
I’m not trying to blame the fact that we didn’t answer the question on the scriptwriters, not at all. It was a class project and we were all equally responsible for answering the question. I just don’t like the concrete roles and no stepping on toes rule, because that means only certain individuals have control over wether or not there is social commentary.
If its anybody’s fault the project didn’t go so well it is for sure Teva and me. Also, I didn’t mention this earlier but partway through production I got fired.woot woot (rip). When I got fired though my teachers called me the scapegoat so I think that means they know it wasn’t fully my fault? I hope? But roles aside, everyone was responsible for creating a final product that answered the question, and we should all feel equally to blame for not answering the question.
Also, while our movie didn’t answer the question, it wasn’t actually terrible. I mean, I’m personally impressed that a group of grade 12s were willing to spend hours a day working on a project and were able to pull off a movie in 17 days. Our teachers were too disappointed to even comment on the movie and give us their thoughts, but I think that’s unfair because, despite it not exactly fitting into the horror genre, at least we completed a somewhat decent movie that has a followable storyline.
Anyways, that’s the story of “Locked In.” Take from it what you will, and if you want, watch it and comment what you think!
Essays, essays and more essays. That’s what this first month of school has consisted of in PLP.
We began by learning writing processes, and that although everyone starts writing in different ways the most important thing to do is just start. Getting the words on the page is the hardest part and it’s best to just start.
Next we learned about expository essays. We did this by writing one and reading four. These essays were all different from each other and showed us all different styles of expository essays. These showed us different ways authors can use style and form to impact the message they were trying to get across.
After that we wrote and read both persuasive and narrative essays. All three of these types of essays really helped us learn about different styles of writing and how we can improve our writing.
The final part of this unit was creating a satire. But wait, what is satire again? Before we could start our projects we had to spend a class learning the different between satire and parody. Then we had to think. What would make a good satire? How can I present this? Finally, after spending a while thinking about it I decided to make an infomercial pointing out all the stupid things we buy that we really don’t need.
This infomercial tried to convince people to buy a “Kitchen Prep 3000.” What is that? Watch to find out!
Usually I’d film in class but for this project that seemed really pointless. I guess I could have used my class time to film in front of a green screen and edited it to look like a kitchen, but A. why would I do that if I have a perfectly good kitchen at home? And B. no knives (I mean kitchen Prep 3000s) at school!
The one issue with this was as it was an individual project and I was filming at home, over the Thanksgiving Weekend, I couldn’t get any class mates in my video…but I got my mom! Shout out to her for being so willing to be in my video! Also, I ended up filming in my grandparents kitchen because it has better lighting and I like it better so shout out to them too for letting me clutter their drawers (only temporarily, I swear!)
We had like four classes to work on this project so if I filmed at home how did I use that time? Well I would have edited or something then, except I didn’t even have time to film until the weekend so I used that time to write my script, make a shot list and watch tons of infomercials and satires for inspiration.
This satire was actually really fun to make, it’s not very often I get to put my school projects under the category “Comedy” instead of “Educational” on YouTube.
All in all this unit has really helped me think about ways to become a better writer. It’s impossible to perfect the art of writing, but the more you write, the better you’ll become
Yeah, my class went to Las Vegas…you may be wondering “why would a group of grade 11s go to Vegas for a project?” Well let me tell you.
So this unit was an interesting unit. Our driving question was “How is fear used as a defensive, political and cultural tool?” And we went to Tucson, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada to answer this.
This unit was mainly focused on the Cold War, along with bits of the history of Las Vegas and the mob. With these two main ideas in mind we had to come up with a much more focused question that related to fear being used as a tool. From there we were expected to figure out everything we’d need to film on the trip to answer our question in a video essay.
One part of this project that I really struggled with was actually coming up with a question. Marley and I were originally working together, with the general idea of whether feared or loved leaders are stronger. With this we were planning on focusing on the mob, and how the fear of them was used as a tool to create the thriving city of Las Vegas. This was all going great until we actually got on the trip.
Once we were on the trip Marley and I realized that our idea in fact wouldn’t work. After lots of discussion and trying to figure out what we actually were going to do we decided our projects would be best if we went separate directions. The main thing that inspired my new choice was this display at the National Atomic Testing Museum about atomic culture. I decided to focus my project on how atomic culture evolved as the fear of nuclear energy grew.
Throughout the trip I found information and got interviews to help me complete this project at all the interesting and fun places we went.
an abbreviated itinerary
Once I got back to the school I made another change to my project…Maria and I decided to work together. It made sense though because both of our topics ended up evolving into the exact same thing, and we knew we could create a much better final product by putting our information, footage and skills together.
We ended up focusing on how fear of nuclear weapons and energy in general affects people view of nuclear power. This was quite interesting because throughout our research we found that it has an unwarranted negative stigma, and we hoped to be able to change this a bit for anyone watching our video.
The first thing we were expected to do when arriving back at school was write an essay answering our question. This took a few revisions but we eventually got a solid essay that helped a lot with our final product.
I’m actually really glad that Maria and I worked together because we both have a strong work ethic, but working with her is always really fun. We often have different ideas, but this just helps us form even better ideas. We work well together because we always bounce ideas back and forth until we figure out the best way to get things done. Along with that, Maria is a really good video editor so she took more charge in that department, while I took charge when it came to actually writing the essay. Our combination of strengths tends to go well together.
Once the essay was finished we moved onto planning our video. We made a rough video outline to figure out what shots we wanted where and what our voice overs would be. One place we went wrong with our video was looking at the essay a bit too much. We kept looking at it while writing the script which ended up making our video almost seem like an essay with some visuals overtop, rather than visuals with only a few words being needed to explain it.
When it came to editing the video we used some clips from our trip, along with others that we found online.
All in all I really enjoyed the project and the trip. I think our final product was pretty good and am proud of what we managed to create despite both going through so many topic changes. Las Vegas and Tucson were both so much fun, and I hope that next time I’m in Vegas I’ll be 21.
Innocence and evil…seems pretty clear right? But how clear is it really? There is a grey area between innocence and evil, one that many people struggle to navigate. Finding that line where right turns to wrong is almost impossible.
In this blog post I had to pick a concept, create a question around it and then use various examples to answer it. If you couldn’t tell the concept I am going to be talking about is innocence and evil. These two concepts are usually very clear, and it’s often quite obvious what category things fall under, but in some cases it can be hard to tell. This lead me to the question: how does one define the line between innocence and evil?
During war times it’s usually impossible to determine a good and a bad side, which side is right and which is wrong. Both sides are always fighting towards the same goal: to survive. All they want is to win for their country, for their families. The soldiers may feel like their side deserves to win, and they are on the good side, but both sides feel that way. Both sides have to kill their “enemy” and keep fighting to the end no matter what. Which side one believes should win strongly depends on nationalism. In general during war, people cheer for their own country. Considering everybody is fighting for a reason, there can never be a clear evil or innocent side during war that everybody agrees on. This has to be determined by each individual, and their experiences are what allow for them to make this decision.
Some people may think that all soldiers in war are much closer to evil than innocent, because their main job is killing people, but they are usually just volunteers fighting for their country or were conscripted. Most of them don’t want to be killing and are just fighting for their country. Is that really that evil?
One example of a soldier who maybe isn’t innocent is Elijah from “Three Day Road” by Joseph Boyden. This novel was about two Canadian First Nations going off to fight in a World War I. One character, Xavier, didn’t enjoy killing people, in fact, for the most part he hated it. He lost sleep over seeing the dead bodies and knowing he possibly killed people. He is one of the soldiers who, despite killing people, isn’t necessarily evil because he just does what needs to be done.
Xavier’s friend Elijah on the other hand…well he is another story. At the beginning of the book he seems to want to kill as many people on the other side as possible to gain popularity among the other soldiers, but by the end it is all about the kill. He becomes addicted to morphine and spirals out of control. Be begins killing civilians along with his fellow soldiers, and scalps his kills to prove how many there were.
Elijah is a pretty clear example of evil, but it’s much harder to say with Xavier. He didn’t want to kill people, but he still did kill them. Elijah is and example of black and white, where as, to some people, Xavier represents the grey area.
Another example of when point of view determines the line between innocence and evil is in television and movies. In general, people tend to cheer for the main character no matter what. The connections made to the main characters throughout the movies and TV shows blur the line between right and wrong for people, as they tend to cheer for who they know, no matter what the character stands for. If movies were remade with the bad guys as the main characters, seeing their perspective would likely change people’s desired outcome, because it is all in the point of view. Seeing the villain as the main character or learning their view would gain sympathy for them and for sure make people understand them better. People tend to cheer for who and what they know, even if it isn’t always what they believe in.
What side of an issue you’re on also affects the choice between innocence and evil. In the book “Fallout“, by Todd Strasser, a trap door turns this line from metaphorical to physical. When the bomb is dropped only one family in this town has a shelter. This family wants to be alone, to save themselves and not let anybody else in. They know that their best chance of survival is to kept the door closed at all costs. Those on the other side of the door feel as though this is wrong and that they deserve a chance as well. When a few more people break in they realize that they want to keep everybody else out so they can survive. The second they crossed the line they switched from opening the door to closing it. Once they made it into the shelter their opinion on right versus wrong flipped and they tried to keep the door closed, even though they were the ones to pry it open. When they were outside they felt it was unfair to be locked out and forced their way in, yet once in they helped lock everybody else out. This is an example of how a situation can determine one’s opinion, and how seeing the other side of the situation makes them understand people’s actions.
Honestly, in any situation different sides of an issue develop different opinions on what is right and what’s wrong. Even during World War II, no matter how evil some of Hilter’s actions may seem to us, he believed that what he was doing was right.
In the play Macbeth the concept of innocence and evil is played with quite a bit, although mainly evil. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is actually innocent. He does what he believes is right and is very loyal. Once the witches but the idea of the possibility of him becoming king in his head though, it all spirals downhill. In the case of Macbeth defining the line between innocence and evil is fairly clear. Even Macbeth knows what he’s doing is wrong, he’s just too wrapped up in the idea of power to care.
This term in PLP we read the book “Lord of the Flies” and even in this book, no matter what the boys do, I don’t think they are evil, though many people may. The boys run around hunting pigs, chanting “Cut his throat! Kill the pig!” and they get way more into the hunt than they really should be. Along with that, one character Roger shows many signs of bloodlust and even kills another boy on the island. Many of their actions make them seem like they many be closer to evil than innocent…but what do you expect from 12 year old and younger boys. They’re still immature, they haven’t even gone through puberty. They’ve never gotten freedom from their parents, and they acted out. But this doesn’t mean they’re evil, they were just a bit too innocent to start. These boys don’t have enough life experience to be considered evil quite yet. My opinion would likely be much different if it were adults, but then again, if they were adults it likely wouldn’t have gotten that bad.
Many people likely have different opinions on evil in “Lord of the Flies.” Why? Because of how personal the line between right and wrong is. It depends on each person. And I for sure am not saying it’s okay to kill people when stranded on a deserted island, I know it’s wrong, but because it happened doesn’t automatically make the boys involved evil.
I decided to make a Venn diagram to show how much overlap there is between innocence and evil. Obviously the words in the middle are all very subjective and depend on every person individually, just like the line between innocence and evil. It depends on one’s upbringing, religion and personal morals. It’s almost impossible to state something that is considered good worldwide.
In some situations the line between innocence and evil is very clear and those who don’t seem to know it just aren’t making any effort to look. In these situations common sense and the knowledge of right and wrong draws the line. But in the grey areas it of course is much harder to find this line. This line varies for many people, and is often drawn by ones point of view and their experiences. There can never be a clear line between innocence and evil for the whole world to follow because nobody has the same experiences or point of view. The line between innocence and evil is very individualized, luckily, it isn’t all grey, and the black and white areas are what keep us in order.
The end of a school year in PLP means one thing…it’s time for an exhibition! Remember back in December how we had to create an immersive experience from pre-war Canada to the depression? Well this was like that…except completely different.
This exhibition challenged us just as much, if not more, just with less building of physical props, and more building our public speaking and thinking on our feet skills. You may be wondering, well what did you have to do? Well, let me tell you…
…A Debate!!! Actually no, not just one debate…a whole debate tournament! Yep, that’s what we had to do. We had teams, and a whole bracket.
At the beginning of this unit we were given 7 concepts, which we had to build on. We created charts of ideas around them, and were supposed to collect enough information to be able debate whatever we were given. We read Lord of the Flies which helped expand our knowledge of the concepts and added this to our charts.
The debate format wasn’t as formal as most debates. We didn’t have our topics until right before the debate, when we got 1 minute of prep time. Each team then got either 2 or 3 minutes to debate depending on the round. There was a timer setup on the app Board Game Timer and once each time said their point they’d press it and the other team’s time would begin counting down. This would go back and forth until both teams’ time was up.
My team “Debates R Us” was made up of Michael Fourie, Luciano Boniface and me. I personally think we worked pretty well together. We had a good mix of skills. For example, Michael was good at thinking on the spot, and Luc was good at speaking in front of the group. My role in the group was more ahead of time, preparing for the actual night. I helped a lot building up our concept charts and figuring out how much we needed.
One example of a chart
We filled out seven of these charts, but I figured I should just give one example because does anyone really want to see all seven? And we practiced debating. A lot. Along with that we watched lots of videos on how to win debates and how to public speak well.
One thing I think our whole class may have focused a bit too much on was in fact Lord of the Flies though. In fact, my group’s first debate ended up mainly being Lord of the Flies related, so I think we may have lost some of the audience there.
Next time I’d try to calm down even more before hand, and prepare even more. I’d practice arguing really hard topics, and I hope next time I’ll be better at thinking on my feet.
This assignment was actually really fun! I enjoyed debating even though it was quite terrifying. I hope to get to do something similar to this again!
All in all I think this project was very important and did a good job helping to increase my public speaking and thinking on the spot skills.
Well everyone, it’s been a long year, but it’s finally over (almost). Just one year of high school left! Grade 12 will be a crazy year, and (I never thought I’d be saying this but…) I’m actually feeling pretty prepared.
Grade 12 will be a pretty busy year, with trying to get as high marks as possible while working, saving up money for university and applying to universities. But I think I can handle it, I mean I managed to get through grade 11 in one piece. I’m actually kind of excited for it, it should be a fun year.
This year I’ve learned lots that will prepare me for next year. I managed to balance a heavy work load with my job and sports, and only had a few late nights. This year there was a lot going on… for sure the busiest year yet. I was in 8 academic courses (PLP, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Pre-Calc 12, French and comparative civilizations) along with 2 choirs. Plus I worked almost every weekend, along with some week nights. Some weeks I had as many as 30 hours of work.
The lack of free time I had this year really taught me how to work hard and get stuff done in the little time I had to do it. It has taught me the importance of time management. Obviously my time management skills still need a lot of work, like I need to learn to have less to do, but they are for sure improving. Plus, next year I’m taking two less courses than this year, they may be a bit harder, but I will likely have more time for each course which will be a welcomed change.
Budgeting my time will be very important next year, but I think I will be able to handle it. As this year went on I improved at not procrastinating and using my time wisely, as needed. Next year my skills at that will only improve, so I’m excited to see what I can get done.
Another thing I developed this year to help with school is even more of a love of learning. Ever since I was young I enjoyed learning, but it still sometimes felt like a chore, but this year my appreciation for gaining knowledge has grown so much more. One thing in PLP that helped with this is the openness of the topics. Being told, “do this”, “fill this out”, “answer these questions”, “take this test” isn’t the most inspiring way to learn, but PLP is different and we actually have choice in what we do. This has made me enjoy learning so much more, and it has reflected on all my courses. Enjoying learning helps makes doing school work actually fun, which will help motivate me to do my homework next year.
One really fun assignment I did this year was the my Canada video.
It didn’t exactly relate to what we were learning at the time but it was still a relevant assignment. I filled mine with jokes and made it quite personal, which I think helped me practice my skills of making my work seem like my own. I actually enjoyed making it, which made me put in even more effort and be proud of the final product. When you enjoy your project and what you’re learning your final product is a lot better, which is why I think learning how to love to learn is a very important thing I learned this year that will for sure help next year.
Another important assignment this year was the debate. I’ve never been very good at public speaking but this for sure helped me improve a bit.
The debates helped me practice thinking on my feet and speaking in front of a larger audience than I’m used to. These skills are very important in general, so I think it is important for me to develop them more, but am off to a good start. Thinking on my feet and being confident in front of large groups will help me next year in so many ways, and even more further in the future.
Along with that, this assignment had assigned groups which is always good practice. It’s interesting working with people you normally wouldn’t and it’s always good practice.
One assignment I’m especially proud of is the podcast blog post.
Maria and I put a lot of hard work into this podcast and it was actually really fun. We got to hear about first hand war experiences from Helmut Lempke and then create a podcast talking about a relevant concept. One thing that we did in this project that was a bit different was not writing an exact script. We wanted our podcast to be more conversational and less formal, so we just had our general ideas and recorded our conversation about them. The lack of a script proved to us how much we actually knew about his stories. It was nice to show ourselves that we didn’t need to write exactly what to say before saying it. It was actually a really interesting and fun way to make a project and I for sure want to make more podcasts next year. I think this project turned out quite well and is a good example of one that I’m proud of.
I’m not gonna lie, I am very nervous for grade 12, and am not sure if I am completely ready, but I’ll face whatever I have to and work hard. I’m excited to see what I can do with what I learned this year, and expand on my skills. If someone asked me if I am ready for grade 12 I’d probably say yes, because that’s what is expected at this age, but I wouldn’t be sure if it was true. Answering the question “Why do you think you’re ready for the next grade level?” showed me that I may infact be. It’s hard to know for sure until the time comes, but for now I’m confident that Grade 12 will be a good year!
Ever since the first nuclear test in 1945, nuclear power it has been having both positive, and negative effects on the world. It started off as being used as a weapon of mass destruction, but was soon made into a clean energy source. But nuclear power’s deadly history has lead to a great fear around it. Plants can meltdown, the explosion automatically killing many people, and the radiation silently spreading to cause even more damage. In the past nuclear power plants have gone completely wrong, and this fear is still shaping today’s current events.
For a while, during the Cold War, mutually assured destruction kept countries from bombing each other because of the knowledge that their target could just as easily bomb them. This idea has managed to keep the peace for many years. Nuclear weapons “are a type of weapon that countries spend enormous sums of money to develop but don’t actually intend to use.” But if a country is to get nuclear weapons, who isn’t afraid of destruction, and feels the devestation they could cause is enough to justify a nuclear attack, the story may change.
An unopened ferris wheel near Chernobyl
The fear of radiation is widespread, after all, its invisible and odourless yet has the potential to cause mass destruction. On April 26 1986, the a disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Power Plant. Fires and steam explosions released 5% of the radioactive core into the atmosphere. Some newspapers reported 2000 deaths caused by this incident, one even reported 500 000 deaths cause by Chernobyl, but according to a documentary we watched in class, only 56 deaths can be directly attributed to radiation after the incident. The reports of high death tolls were due to radiophobia. In fact, the fear of radiation was probably a bigger issue than the radiation itself. People began taking any little symptom and assuming it was an issue due to radiation even if it was nothing. This backed up the health system which made it hard to treat the more dire issues. According to the video “The threat of human health posed by radiation has been overstated” and it takes a lot more radiation to cause serious damage than originally thought. Nuclear energy is associated with nuclear bombs which creates more fear than it may deserve. This video does a good job of making people question whether or not our fear of nuclear power is warranted, because the benifits may outweigh the risks.
But the fear of radiation is still warranted. In The China Syndrome a reporter visits a nuclear power plant and witnesses something in the reactor that worries her. What she doesn’t realize is that there is such a big issue with the plant that it could cause a meltdown that would make an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable. The radiation at Chernobyl may not have caused too many deaths, but it still made the area uninhabitable and the threat was for sure there.
Today’s nuclear weapons are much more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan at the end of WWII so it’s in everybody’s interest that the mutually assured destruction policy stays intact. Nuclear weapons can be used as threats along with bargaining tools, they are more like political weapons than physical ones. For example, in 2015 Iran agreed to pause its nuclear weapons program in exchange for relief. The countries with nuclear weapons can threaten those without a nuclear program with their weapons, but in reality, World War 3 is in nobody’s best interest, so as long as the world remembers that, doomsday shouldn’t become reality. I may be optimistic, but I like to believe that humans wouldn’t destroy our home planet in nuclear war.
In the TV show The 100 the end of the world made a reality, but even then, the show shows us that our humanity keeps us from destroying each other, and was caused by an Arificial Inteligence hacking nuclear launch codes. It was the program’s lack of humanity that caused the eventual end.
Imagine a class project with 25 people…well this year my class didn’t have to imagine it, in fact we had to face it head on.
After Christmas our class began learning about WWII and Macbeth. We’d spend one class going through the play, and the next learning about the key points of World War II. Once Ms. Willemse felt we had enough knowledge to begin our project she assigned it. Of course, the minute she told us what we were to do, the whole class knew it would be a disaster.
Our project was to create a movie of Macbeth, as a class, in the time period of World War II…yes the whole class….working together…on one project. We knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task. Trying to get 25 opinionated teenagers to work together is one thing, but when the thing they’re working on involves outside of class time work it’s a whole other story. We all have extremely busy schedules, but I’ll get to the issues that created later.
This project didn’t go as well as our teachers had hoped, here’s the story.
We started out this ambitious journey ready to face the struggle we knew was ahead. Most of the class believed at the beginning that they were willing and ready to do anything necessary to create a strong product at the end, of course thing don’t always go as planned, people get discouraged and important ideas get forgotten.
The first thing we did, when beginning this seemingly eternal project was create roles for production. We assigned a director, a producer, story boarders, actors, script writers, camera men, editors, costume designers and set designers. I got the role of assistant director and as an actor, but by the end of the project I became responsible for finances.
Our Roles
Then, the story boarders had a few days to come up with a story board, which the writers would then use to write the script. Meanwhile, props and costumes were being made, sets were being designed, actors began learning their lines, and schedules were being written up. While all this was happening I was focusing on figuring out how much each department was going to need, and how much to ask the class for.
Trying to schedule
After a little while of script writing we thought we were ready to film. But that meant finding days outside of school, because 80 minutes is not nearly enough time to set up the cameras and the props, get in costume and get a scene done. So filming was done on the weekends. Of course I wanted to do what I could for this project, but my weekends are 100% full already. I work basically every Saturday and Sunday, and it’s kinda hard to get out of going to work. The one Sunday I did get off throughout the production of the movie was the one Sunday no filming was happening, otherwise I would have gone. The fact that I had to work during the most important part of production made it hard for me to do my part in the project, so I tried to do what I could in school. I hate the fact that I couldn’t help as much as I would have liked to during those long weekend days, and feel bad about not showing up. I did manage to make it to a few after school filming sessions though, where I got to hold umbrellas over cameras and have the script open for any actors who needed their lines.
Costumes!
The filming setup
At one point Ms. Willemse just wanted to scrap it, but being as ambitious as we are we asked for another week. After that week we still wanted more time, and we knew this was going to be a never ending black hole of a project that we could keep working on forever, at the expense of our happiness. But we did want it to amount to something.
In the end we decided to do voice overs to make the movie flow more smoothly and get it over with. Of course, when that will be done no one knows.
I don’t know if Ms. Willemse was expecting such failure or if she believed we would do it, but either way I did learn lots about teamwork and the production of movies. It was eyeopening to see who would step up in such a big project, and who would sit back and just watch it happen.
Of course, the most important thing I learned through all this is: the nature of evil, aka this project.
Sorry aboot the title, I just love making fun of Canadian stereotypes. Honestly the stereotypes about Canada are the best…I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a country that the rest of the world believes rides their moose to school and lives in igloos? If you think I have a pet polar bear or beaver I’m fine with that, it’s kinda really funny to me. Us Canadians know that these stereotypes aren’t real, which is all that matters. Honestly I’m just lucky to live in such an amazing country, even if the rest of the world is quite misinformed about what we are.
This year marks Canada’s 150th anniversary and Historica Canada is doing a contest for this. People across the country are being encouraged to enter video submissions answering the question what is your Canada? Of course my class is taking this as an opportunity to put our video making skills to good use in hopes of winning a prize or two. So I’ve been challenged with thinking about, what does Canada mean to me?
I mean, part of me feels like Canada is just another country, but then again, if I feel that way why am I so proud to tell people where I’m from? I have so many answers to this question and I don’t know where to start, but this is what I began with:
What is Canada?
•Tim Hortons ice caps and donuts
•Free Healthcare
•Maple Syrup
•Poutine
And I then asked the same question in a group chat with people across the World and these are the type of responses I got:
•Snow
•”Aboot”
•Poutine
•”Sore-y”
•Hockey
I also created a list of a few other stereotypes I’ve heard of:
•Pet Moose
•Igloos
•Polar bears
After forming those lists I used some of the ideas to create this little script: Does this look like snow and ice to you? Do you see people riding their pet moose around? What about igloos? My Canada isn’t what the rest of the world may expect to see. Poutine is my favourite food, and my favourite fast food chain is Tim Hortons, but I don’t like hockey and for sure don’t say aboot. My Canada is the friendly people who fill the borders, and the things we have that I don’t even realize the rest of the world is missing out on, like our strange chip flavours. My Canada is my experience and my home.
I then got a few clips that I feel matched the audio, and created my movie. This movie reflects how I feel about Canada, because, while it may seem weird, I find it so much fun living somewhere with such hilarious stereotypes. It’s funny how easy it is for me trick people into believing I have a pet moose that I ride to school, and they don’t question it if I pronounce “about” weird.
Creating this video has helped me realize how much this country means to me, and how lucky I am to live here. I am, and always will be a Canadian at heart, despite being American as well.
