Hello, Hola, and Bonjour to once again another Humanities blogpost. For our second Humanities project of Grade 10 we dove into some of Canada’s dark and racist past. I found that this project was beneficial because it helped me view our country differently after growing up being told all the great things that Canada has as well.
The driving question for our project was: “How can we keep apologies for past wrongs alive so they are remembered and not repeated today?”
For the next several weeks, we worked as a class and in individual groups to work and answer this question so that we can clearly present our final product with meaning.
As a class we briefly learned about the Canadian Japanese Internment, Canadian Chinese Head Tax, and the Komagata Maru. We watched a documentary that went in depth about what each of the events were and when they happened. What I found was that all three events were related; white people pushing people that are different to them away. Although that kind of made sense to me regarding more of Canada’s past, something that really stood out to me was actually how much racism towards people of different descents went through to just start a new life in Canada.
Fast forward to when we were split into groups and now working in groups to fully understand each of our topics. For the next 3 weeks I worked with Max R and Patrick to build up to creating an artifact that would represent the just or unjust actions made during the Japanese Internment which we would the present in our annual Winter Exhibition.
We began by making a “Keynote of Transgression” (⬇️Below⬇️) which is a quick presentation on what happened during the Japanese Internment in a fancy layout. I thought I did a great job on this assignment because I managed to write a semi-in depth storyline about the Japanese Internment and lay it out in an appealing manner all in a span of about 45 minutes (could be record time). I’m happy with the way it turned out
Next we began brainstorming on what we were going to create and then present at the Winter Exhibition. Our group was having trouble choosing what to make because we wanted our creation to stand out to a certain level because everyone else was making statues of some sort. We finally landed on the Idea of making a “Heritage Minute” thanks to the help of our new teacher Mrs. Pitches who showed us her own Heritage Minute she created herself.
For the next week and a half we worked on gathering real and reliable images from the Canadian encyclopedia and other safe sources given to us by our teacher, filming footage, writing a script, and recording what we wanted to say.
Our goal was to briefly describe the Japanese Internment and why it was just or un-just all in around a minute. It was hard. Like really hard to cram as much info as we could into such a small timeframe, but we did it and it looked great. Once we had put it all together, we posted it to YouTube ourselves.
After going through it again, I really did realize that this project was really beneficial to me because I learned to view things from both sides. People will always tell you to view things from both sides but it’s not until you actually look at both sides in depth that you actually begin to see both sides in every day interactions and events.
Anyways literally 1 day after we finished our Heritage minute, the PLP Winter Exhibition arrived. To be brutally honest I had absolutely no idea what it was going to look like. We weren’t very informed on what was going on until a couple days before. From what i know now, all of PLP worked to answer the driving which was “How does James Cameron’s fantasy world Avatar reveal about society?”. Each grade worked through a certain project that correlated with the general theme of the first Avatar movie. I can’t say much for the other grades but PLP 10 worked on learning and then being able to present a representation of either the BC Japanese Internment, the Chinese Head Tax, and the Komagata Maru. I had previously participated in 2 spring exhibitions and helped work towards last year’s exhibition but this was my very first experience of a PLP winter exhibition.
The preparation for the exhibition was chaotic as expected. You’ve got some cranky people complaining about the excessive amount of time being spent at school here and there while others are racing to set up poster, tables, statues, creations, etc. I found that PLP steered away from focusing on the Grade 10’s work because we were all sort of lost on what to setup and what went where. My group was placed in the “Business Lounge” which represented the corporate lifestyle that wealthy and mindless billionaires live in. It was an awkward setup because the room was a mix of about 12 grade 8s, 5 grade 10s, and 1 grade 11. Poor guy. Anyways once we finished all our stations and covered all the school stuff, our room looked great in some parts and really bad in others. The teachers heavily insisted that we cover everything with white bedsheets which had mixed reviews all over. Anyways we finished and the cafeteria flooded with hungry students waiting to collect their nightly rations from the teacher. My intellectual self brought a pizza in advance and ate like a king while I watched students fight for 2nd measly round of food.
The exhibition started at either 5:30 or 6:00 pm sharp, and it was looking like a ghost town for about 30 minutes before parents, siblings, students, grandparents and whatnot began to fill the spaces we worked so hard to set up. It was a successful exhibition. People would come to our station, we would do our short presentation, we would have a quick conversation, and they would leave. (Very repetitive). It was all smooth sailing until around 7:15 when students began roaming the halls as crowds thinned out. It was a little hectic as stations were left unattended but the job had been done and the exhibition concluded at 8:00. Quickly the cleanup began and everything had too out back exactly as it was before which was difficult. As rooms were all cleaned up the halls filled with students once again and created chaos along the teachers corralling students.
Anyways, it was a pretty simple exhibition for me. Looking back I would have liked to make something else or even just having something else to present other than just a well made video. I thought that the theme of Avatar was a little wired and hard to relate to but it was all made this way because PLP rented out an entire movie theatre to watch the new Avatar: Way of Water movie. We arrived at the theatres at 8:15 and started the movie at around 9 in the morning. Brutal. I thought it was a good movie and I enjoyed finishing the year watching a movie alongside my friends.
That’s all from me, adios.