There are a million issues going on in the world like terrorism, bombing, and poverty. Though, a single person can’t fix the world, we can make a difference in our community.
For this project we focused on social injustices that have occurred in our cities history around the interwar period, and that are still going on today.
To get us thinking we did an activity. One side of our classroom was “yes I agree with this”, the middle was, “I don’t know” and the other side was “no I don’t agree”. Our teacher told us to choose what we think, and not what our friends think. We got asked questions like, “do you think we should build the Kinder Morgan pipeline?”, or “should there be a ten year limit to welfare?”. I liked this because we got to debate why we were on one side of the room and see our fellow classmates honest different opinions.
To kick off this unit, we went on a field trip to the Museum of Vancouver! We focused on the City on Edge exhibition that was based on events that shaped Vancouver history.
While we were at the museum we had to think of which 3 injustices for our podcast that we were most interested to us. A few of the options was environmental,labour rights, city growth, immigration, and more. The topics I was super interested in was labour rights and human rights. I took photos on important information I saw ate the museum that I could potentially use as reasorces.
Once we got back and handed in our top picks we were all exited to here what topic we got, and who was in our group. My topic was Human Rights and I was in a group with Ruby, Robbie, and Isobel.
Once we had our groups, we needed to focuse on a specific topic. My group struggled on this. First we were thinking about focusing on woman’s rights, but later decided to talk about homelessness in Vancouver.
What gave us this idea was a issue in Marpole Vancouver that Isobel heard about. Though, this area is in need of a homeless shelture, many people are against it. The shelter would be put up next to Sir Wilfred Laurier Elementary School, and is feared to be dangerous for the kids. Just like the community in Marpole my group have a conflict of opinion on this topic. So we thought it would be great if we made our podcast in a round table format.
Next we made our script on google docs so we could all easily edit
We tried to get two interviews, one with the principal of Sir Wilford Laurier school, and one with someone who cares for people who are homeless. After calling around I got a interview with Tannis Fraser a registered nurse that works a lot with homeless in vancouver. This interview went great she had a lot to say about why many homeless don’t feel safe in a shelter and how it effects there health. I also liked that she had a different perspective then the people of Marpole have on the shelture being built
Our first draft went well with only a few critiques and suggestions such as balancing audio, talking more casual and making our conclusion stronger.
We went through all of the criteria she gave us and double checked the audio till we couldn’t edit no more. Overall I was pleased with our work. I thought our podcast sounded pretty professional, but we could have made it more interesting and creative. I gained so much leadership skills during this project and kept my group members on task. I also learned better time management skills and how to split up work efficiently.
I sent Tannis Fraser, the nurse we interviewed, our finished product and she was very pleased.
Book Club
While we were creating our podcast we also did a book club that was about our topic. My group read two books, Persepolis, and The Bite of a Mango. Both were greatly insightful books that showed the lives of two very different girls. The first book we read Persepolis, was about a young girl struggling with identity through the cultural revolution. The second book The Bite of a Mango was about a girl in a small village in Sierra Leone till her life drastically changed when the rebels attacked. While we were reading our books we did 4 reading logs to show our understanding.
Finally our last assignment was to use all our knowledge and write a letter proposing a change to Terry Beech. Each of my group members wrote what they wanted to change for the homeless ppl in Vancouver
My thesis was: We need to be setting up safe homeless shelter shelters where needed. Many of the people on the streets have mental conditions, nowhere safe to go, no family to help them, and are being attacked.
The main criteria I had was to make my proposal more specific which I tried to do in my essay.
First Homlessness in vancover essay
My first draft of my own essay had great information and ideas but I spelt shelter wrong every single time I wrote it. Though, I edited and had a peer edit, I still missed that a missed spelled the same word over and over again. I will not make that mistake again.
The next step was to put all of our essays into one. We split up our main topics into three, the Marpole debate, Medical needs, and needed changes in shelters.
Final Terry Beech Letter -2im6jbm
Throughout working on our own topic for the project we also did learning on each other’s.
We watched a video called The 8th Fire that was about First Nations culture. People don’t want to talk about how the First Nations were treated because of how horrible and dark it was. It’s still very important for us to know what it was like for them and have there perspective.
We also learned about immigration and how it has changed throughout the interwar years. We each made a infographic and discussed them in class
While we were exploring the museum and creating our podcast, we made a fun behind the scenes montage. Hope you enjoy