Residential School Essay

CLICK ABOVE TO SEE MY ESSAY

Hi everyone! It’s been quite a while since my last blog post, Blue Sky: MyJob Edition. That’s because I’m in grade 10 now, a whole new year of school and a whole new year of learning and projects. We are going to get right into it and talk about the first project we did this year which focused on the years between World War 1and 2 also known as The InterWar years. A lot happened in this time: Women got the right to vote ( you can read this on Ruby and Kiyaan’s blog), there was a rise in fascism (Gabby), and the League of Nations was established.(Izzy) Though, these are not any of my topics, my topic was about the Compulsory Attendance of Residential Schools in the 1920’s.

First things first, the driving question for this project:

    What makes a historical event significant?

Now, let’s get started!

BUILDING OUR KNOWLEDGE

Before we could begin to write our essays, we had to learn about important topics that took place at this time. We watched videos, read articles, and did activities to help. As it would take at least 3 hours to read this blog post if I listed every single thing that we did, I will tell you a bit about what I learned from 3 different Activities that we did.

CAUSING A DEPRESSION

As the Great Depression was a result from the stock market crash in 1929, this was a very significant event that took place in the Roaring 20’s. We read an article about the Great Depression and what happened that included this graphic:

We were to create our own after:

This really helped me understand type domino effect and how several events can lead to one big one which is actually a recurring them in the 20’s and 30’s.

ROARING TWENTIES FOR ALL?

We are backtracking a bit, to the beginning of the unit when we chose our topics. Around the classroom on all of the tables, walls, and windows were pictures and flyers of a bunch of significant events that took place. In class, we call this a “Jigsaw”, as it helps put a bunch of ideas together, like puzzle pieces. This is the picture that caught my eye:

This picture also launched my project and helped me choose my topic. Residential schools is the topic I chose because the history of First Nations and there culture is a big topic of conversation right now and it’s really interests me, as well as the fact that there are First Nations roots that trace back in my family.

WHERE DO YOU STAND – THE POLITICAL SCALE

Before this unit, politics is something I didn’t understand and something that I WAS NOT INTERESTED IN WHAT SO EVER!! Sorry about that, I basically used to hate politics. But one activity really turned that around for me and helped me understand a lot better. Each of us had to make our own political scale that we could understand:

I made mine in sketches!

WRITING THE ESSAY

Before writing a research essay, research (of course) is number one priority. Click here to check out my research document.

The most important thing I learned about research in this unit was definitely crediting your sources and learning how to MLA cite them. This lets the people you got the facts from, know that you aren’t just plagiarizing their hard work.  Writing an essay takes many steps and many drafts until it is perfect. But after the last few weeks of building our knowledge and learning about hooks, thesis’, body paragraphs, and conclusions our first draft was finished and we did some peer critique. Here is the critique I received on my thesis.

Peer Critique and drafts are really important because it helps you do your best work. It may be hard to take feedback, but it is actually really good for you which can be a hard lesson to learn! We did a few more drafts until it was finally perfect which is the essay you saw at the top.

PRESENTATION

Since it would have been very boring just to read out my 5 paragraph essay in front of the class, our next task was to find a creative, Interactive way to teach the class about you researched and your essay. Immediately, my brain thought Cake! I don’t know why that is where it went but I decided to roll with it. New pitched our idea to Ms. Maxwell:

And then it was time to start creating. I decided to bake a four layer cake representing Residential schools over time and how they were a very Significant part of Canada’s History. To do this I related each layer of my cake to a stage of life on the Medicine wheel, and then that stage to a specific milestone in the history of Residential school.

Here is what my presentation looked like:

The finished product of the cake looked like this!

I was super proud of it because I think I really stepped outside of my comfort zone making this cake and a plus was that the whole class loved it. I think it was a really great visual to explain exactly what I meant about the different layers of Residential School over time.

SIGNIFICANCE

The significance of this devastating event resonates through our history and is inside all of us. There are so many examples that I could give to show it but I will only show a few. Intergenerational trauma from the event still show through today in many communities across the country even though the last school closed in 1996. The fact that we still learn about the history in school is another reason that makes Residential school important. We participate in things like orange shirt day and Aboriginal day to celebrate the culture. And last but not least, the thing that probably makes this event the most significant, what we learned from it. This event taught our country to treat, not only First Nations People, but every Ione equally. This project taught me a ton about research, writing, significance, and equality in such a cool, creative way, and I am very proud of the work I did. See you guys next time! Jordyn out!