How should we govern ourselves? If you had asked me this question two months ago, before the election reflection and before the press release posts I worked on for this unit, I honestly would have had no idea how to answer. If you are a long time My Dog Ate My Blogger, I’m sure you have heard me whine and complain about my adverse feelings and total incomprehension of the political, governmental, and ideological world. But all of that (ok fine, maybe not all of that but a lot of it) changed when we started this project and I will be telling you that story today in my blog post by following how I developed and created this Campaign video for our (Alex O, Alex V, Meg, Liam, and I’s) imaginary political party, the Ubiquitous party of Canada which you can definitely read more about in my UPC Press Release Post I posted last week:

Hi I’m Jordyn Eyton, the writer here on My Dog Ate My Blog, and I am here to reflect on my learning during this unit that focused on everything from what a democracy is to how I think I could do better as the leader of this country. I hope you will join me in answering the question that drove my work and drove my thinking by diving into some highlights, challenges, connections, and conclusions I have come to now that we are finished.

How Should We Govern Ourselves?

Now that we have covered what needs to be covered in this introduction, let’s get to the interesting stuff!

HIGHLIGHTS OF MY LEARNING

1. The piece of research that really introduced this unit and caught my attention was the federal election that took place in late September. I had never paid attention to or followed an election before, there was certainly no chance I would ever watch the results live, take notes, or use it as a source of research. But as I eluded in the introduction, politics and our government started to grow on me; I actually found the election and it’s results very interesting! You can read more about that in depth in my Election Reflection.

What I am interested in is how this new found interest fuelled my research and forced me to connect my insights about our electoral system and current government to credible evidence. I found that with each opinion I formed or conclusion I came to my knowledge was being layered, becoming deeper and deeper. This skill, being able to back up reasons why the election happened the way it did in my opinion, is a really important one that I feel like I really checked into after my Election Reflection and why it was so successful!

2. A big piece of my learning, a big piece of being a grade 12 student that is important to me is participating and sharing my thoughts with my peers and the class. This is something I have been struggling with recently so it was my goal this year to start doing that more by incorporating research into my zettlekasten that I am interested in and passionate about. The main way that I decided to do that was by researching Truth and Reconciliation day and the 94 calls to action in depth. This made it possible for me to really understand the topic on a different level than other things I researched and to feel comfortable and confident sharing my thoughts with the class. Ultimately, this helped sort out my own ideas and permanent notes and incorporate them into my final project. I did this by deciding, with my group, to offer seats in parliament (approximately 15) to indigenous communities across Canada as I believe that is a huge part in completing the 94 calls to action one by one and reconciling the past.

3. Speaking of the final project, let’s unpack my final highlight that I want to mention in this post. Although our video may not have turned out the way we wanted it to, it may not have completely answered the driving question, one thing that I think my group did really well was using the resources we had, using the medium we had to the best we could. By filming and editing a video, we had the ability to include clips of the world around us, the community that surrounds us to depict our ideas. We wanted to use a mixture of that and all by including the voices of people around us. In many of my other videos, I have tried to use stock footage and I have gone out of my way to film things that end up being a waste of time, but during this project my group really harnessed this skill that can be a difficult one to develop for sure. Trust me, it has been a learning process over all of my years in PLP video making!!

CHALLENGES

Now don’t be mistaken! This project didn’t go perfectly, we didn’t all get rainbows on our video, we also ran into obstacles and challenges along the way. So, here I introduce you to the second portion of this blog post, the bad to even out the good, the challenges! Luckily both of the challenges that I will mention I will have room to grow in to by the end of this year.

1. First, let’s talk about our video again, the Ubiquitous Part of Canada Campaign Video. Yes we were able to write a killer screenplay (if I do say so myself) and yes we worked really well as a group and had great platform pieces….but! Of course there is a “but”! But, I personally struggled with understanding what made our party different, what made it unique. I basically found it difficult to differentiate our party from the Liberal Party of Canada or the NDP. In the end, in my own brain I decided that our unique quality, the quality that made us Ubiquitous was  the fact that we tried to stretch across the political spectrum and take pieces form both the right wing ideologies and the left wing ideologies. Even once we came to that conclusion, I felt as though our group didn’t completely understand the purpose of the party or exactly what audience we were trying to reach, it seemed a little bit vague and general and not overly original but that isn’t surprising since we all grew up in the same place and were raised on the same beliefs.

2. The second hurdle that I couldn’t quite make it over was motivating myself to make literature notes. I know that an important skill to have in grade 12 is the ability to do independent research but it is a skill I am definitely still trying to build on and develop completely. I did really well last year when we were working on our turning points/NRM/Terrorism unit which was completely focused on the zettlekasten and literature notes but we always had a topic to go home and research. I don’t want to have to do that, I want to be able to advocate for my own learning and design my own learning path as that helps me feel more passionate and more driven towards a final product and I felt like I really saw that shine through in my election reflection but not as much in my final video.

Ok, we have made it to the finish line and let me tell you, that was a long and tiring race! The race being this project and the finish line being the end of this blog post just in case you were wondering. Just because this was difficult and stepping a little bit outside of my comfort zone in researching government and politics, I feel fulfilled when I look at the result. I worked really hard to teach myself and help myself understand the content and that is recognizable in the work I have done in this unit. This project has not only showed me how I believe we should govern ourselves (which is evident through out all aspects of this project) but it has also showed just how much I have grown as a learner. Two years ago, I despised governmental projects so much that I vividly remember saying I would never vote, EVER. My perspective has completely changed now and that change is measurable based on the final product, based on my groups UPC political campaign video! This is your host, Jordyn Eyton as a politician today, signing off!

– Jordyn