Month: June 2018

Welcome back! This unit was… a lot, to say the least. We studied Lord of the Flies, for starters. We also managed to squeeze in debates at the driving question of “How Do We Organize Ourselves?” It delved into governments and society. So, obviously, I was hooked. To fully capture this unit, I’m going to need to break it down for you.

The Teams

So, first day: we had to get ourselves into teams. Sounds simple, right? Right…? Wrong. Seeing as Ms. Maxwell left the room for twenty minutes and let a bunch of rowdy, 15-16 year old teenagers try and sort themselves into groups. So much shouting. So… So much shouting. We had to write a reflection afterwards, and it turns out the whole thing was about human nature.

Click Here To Read The Reflection!

I got a team with Mimi, Ethan, and Kyle. We were a really good team! I think we worked well together. One big part of the teams was the Point System.

As you can see, it was based off of how good our team was at certain things. Charged iPad? Points. Were you a decent human? Points. We tallied them all up on board.

We got the third place, if I remember correctly. Good fun!

If you notice on the point system chart it mentioned quizzes. Yep, there were team quizzes. We read Lord of the Flies (more on that later) and did three team quizzes. Each person in the team answered at least two of the ten questions on the quiz, and we ad to work together to remember things like characters, plot points, and stuff like that. We never got 100% but we got close, with 9/10.

The Book

Next up: We Read Lord of the Flies! That book that everyone reads at some point in high school, about innocent British boys that resort to murder and savagery. The good, lighthearted stuff! For those of you who haven’t read it, it’s pretty much about a bunch of boys who survive a plane crash and try to figure out how to survive. Speaking of survival… The first day of the unit, we had to figure out what we would do. We were given the assignment of figuring out what we would do if we were in the LOTF situation. My group came up with:

• Figure out a group of leaders and different committees with diverse ages
• Find a source of running water
• Find where renewable sources of food are
• Build shelters
• Build equipment/tools
• Scope out what dangers are on the island
• Find out who has certain skills
• Find highest point and make good strategies for attracting planes

We were on the same page as Ralph, mainly.

So I’ve been throwing around Ralph’s name a lot. (Like once, but whatever floats your boat). We actually did analysis of these characters! So let me bring you along the journey of LOTF: Who’s Who?

SPOILERS FOR LORD OF THE FLIES AHEAD!

Let’s talk a bit about some symbols in the book. Personally, I’m a sucker for symbolism. It’s always so cool to look at something and notice the Easter eggs, or realize that ‘Hey, the Lord of the Flies could be Satan’. The good stuff. The character analysis website (that I made) talked about what those characters symbolized, but what about some of the other things in the book?

The Conch in the book is very important. Ralph uses it to call meetings, and it gives everyone a chance to speak. It represents democracy. So when it breaks after Roger kills Piggy (I dislike Roger strongly), any chance of democracy or reasonable solutions have been, quite literally, shattered.

The Lord of the Flies is really just a pig’s head on a stick. But Simon goes insane, and it starts… talking to him. Yeah, this ten year old boy gets scarred for life by a dead pig’s head talks to him and taunts him. The Lord of the Flies represents the evil inside of all of us. If you haven’t read the passage, you should. But the pig’s head says things like “There’s only me” and “We’re going to have fun on this island”. There’s a whole other theory about Simon being Jesus and the Lord of the Flies being Satan, but let’s not get into that.

I really liked this book. It was interesting, even if some of the descriptions were long. It showed human nature, and it’s oddly interesting to watch these civilized people turn into savages.

Government

How do we organize ourselves? Well, this unit helped us answer that. To start off, each team researched a different government. There was:

1) Constitutional Monarchy

2) Dictatorship

3) Democracy

4) Oligarchy

5) Theocracy

6) Anarchy

We got the boring one of Democracy to research. Democracy is very common, seeing as places like the US and Canada use it. How it works is it focuses on political equality of all citizens. It is a system of rule by laws. The rule of law protect the rights of citizens, maintains orders, and limits how much power the government has. No one can be discriminated against based on their race, religion, ethnic, group or gender.

We also looked at the charter of rights and freedoms. Really important learn, seeing as I, personally, like to know my basic human rights as a Canadian citizen.

The last thing we looked at was voting systems. Okay, this is… so much. Why is it so complicated? But we looked at this article to try and make sense of it. I got to research the most simple one: First Past the Post. Pretty much, say that three candidates run. People put in their votes, and Candidate C gets the most. Candidate C wins. It’s that easy, but no. It has to get more complicated. I can’t even understand why anyone would make them, but whatever.

Debates:

For those who know me: I’m very scared of talking infront of people. Drama performances I can do, because it’s less scary to be playing a character. But then we had to do debates…

So, for the debate, we had to incorporate anything we could from humanities. This rages from World War One, to Disruption, World War Two, and LOTF. Then we got our statement:

Be It Resolved That It Is Human Nature To Put Yourself 

And we were arguing pro. Yeah, we got to say that we’re all selfish at heart! Good times. We did a lot of research, and a few ‘impromptu speeches’, where people would get given a topic and have to rant about it for a minute or so.

Then came the debate. We had our opening statement down, and some strong rebuttal ideas. The thing is, there’s only so much you can do to prepare for a debate. We did it, and i think it went well! Sure, the other team had good points, but so did we! We made a podcast out of it:

So, all in all, I really enjoyed this unit! Lord of the Flies was very interesting to read, and I learned a lot of how the government works and debating. The debate was very stressful, yes, but I got a lot out of it, such as public speaking skills and my ability to form an opinion and stick with it. Side note: this may be my last humanities post for the year. So, until next YEAR,

Read you later

Sincerley, Me

Space! It’s everywhere, we’re floating around in space. We got to do a whole unit on it, and I was very happy. Space is always something that’s interested me. Furthermore, we got to do a project in something very, very, very cool: colonizing Mars. Willa and I did this project, and it was very cool!

Literally, because Mars only gets 60% of the light Earth does from the sun.

We started by doing research. So. Much. Research. Everything from what we would need to survive in Mars, to how much water a human uses in a day, down to how, ahem, fecal matter could be used as fertilizer.

I went back to last year’s post on The Martian to look up how Mark Wattney did it, and we figured out what would work, what wouldn’t, and what we could improve.

It was actually a very short project, so all we needed to do was stick in a few bad space jokes (see: post title) and we were off!

I personally feel like this was a great unit. We did a lot of research from different sources, and pulled it together quite nicely.

There were other presentations in class, and we had to figure out how they all connected. This is the small mind map I made to show that:

Read you later

Sincerley, Me

It’s that time of year again. Another TPoL (or SLC, take your pick). If you’re reading this online, hi. Sorry you’re not getting the full experience. For those of us actually talking, also hi.

I’d like to start by talking about something I’m proud of. Something that I’m really proud of this year would be our WWII website. I feel like, given that I was working alone, I did quite well with it. I had to learn a bunch of new things about website design, and had do to all of the research on my own, and it’s one of the strongest projects I did this year. I’m very proud of how it all turned out in the end, considering how much time I put into it.

Next, I’m going to talk about something I feel like could have used improvement. Something that could have used improvement was my disruption podcast that I did with Claire. We actually wound up turning our video project into a podcast last minute because we didn’t fully take advantage of everything we had at our disposal in California, and even then it wasn’t the best podcast we could have made. I would have put more effort into the script, as it was very rushed, and planned everything out better, maybe gotten a few more interviews. It’s still alright work, but it definitely could have been better.

Another thing that I’d like to add in here is: what’s the most valuable thing you have learned this year? I’d like to say that it’s knowing your team members’ strengths and weaknesses, but don’t play it safe. During DI is when this really set in for me, because we all played into each other’s strengths and didn’t stick anyone on a job that they either didn’t know how to do or weren’t good at. But we also didn’t play it safe. Personally, I’m not a great public speaker, I never have been. Yet I wound up getting the second most lines in DI, with Claire (who also isn’t big on public speaking) having the most. We could have been super simple and given Adam all of the lines, as he’s confident in it. It was a challenge, but we did it. Another thing would be Claire’s makeup skills. We knew Claire could do makeup, but we asked her to push her limits by asking her to try and do things she’d never done before, like draw on tattoos and make a fake beard. There needs to be a good balance between doing what you’re good at and challenging yourself.

Finally, I’d like to talk about something that shows my growth as a learner. For this, I’m going to pull upon our Sins of the City unit. In the end, we created a podcast talking about homelessness in Vancouver, specifically the issues surrounding a homeless shelter being build across the way from an elementary school. I feel like this shows my growth as a learner because I had to learn to work in a group, which (if we all remember from last year) I tend to struggle with. I also had to deal with editing a podcast, something that I wasn’t too great with before, and hearing the sound of my own voice on tape. I’m very proud of my team, and I feel like we all grew as learners during that time.

So, why am I ready to move into the next grade? Because of all of these things. I’ve grown in my public speaking skills, and I’ve done excellent work this year. Personally, I think it’s the best it’s ever been. I’ve also learned important lessons about team work, strengths and weaknesses, and challenging myself. I’m really looking forward to grade 11. Until then,

Read you later

Sincerely, Me

The day started at 7:30 am, when we went to pick up Willa (she was shadowing my dad all day). We drove down to the office, where we were a bit early. The first person I met with was Yvonne. Yvonne is in charge of all of the digital marketing. Any signage you see for COBS is all run by Yvonne. She also contacts people such as food blogs to help promote Cobs.

Next I talked to Jane. Jane’s job really interested me, because she’s a graphic designer. This means every single thing to help promote Cobs has been made by her:

She had a whole colour palette at her desk, to help her figure out colour schemes. When I was shadowing her, she was designing how to fit window art into a new store.

Next up: Brad. With Brad, I actually got to sit into a campaign meeting, talking about the logistics of the Breakfast Club campaign that they have. It went from everything from what outfits kids in the advertisements would wear to the adhesive on the stickers the donors would put up around the store. Seriously, so much talk about adhesive.

Afterwards, Brad talked to me about what Cobs’ goal is. Everything from good customer service, making sure that your store is the go to instead of other bakeries, and making good sales.

(It doesn’t show up well, but the text on Brad’s screen says “how do we win?” Truly iconic)

We went to lunch, which was good. Then I talked to Kelsey. Kelsey is in charge of all of Cobs’ social medias. This means Facebook, Twitter, instagram, possibly MySpace, and the blog. She told me a very weird fact: as long as you have the weather app on your phone, you can be tracked. But not just where you are: if you click on the Cobs bread website, from there your phone can tell which bakery you went into, how much you spent and how long you were in there. It’s freaky, really.

I went into a meeting where they talked about creating a mobile app. They had a prototype, which demonstrated how it would work like ‘Skip the Dishes’.

The final task: my dad and his co worker filming an educational video for franchisees. My father, mind you, had not read the script before hand. We were only there for half an hour, but apparently it took another hour after that.

(Note the professional green screen of green paper duct taped to the wall)

All in all, marketing sounds like an interesting job I’d like to be invested in! I really enjoyed shadowing, and I’ll definitely consider it  as an option in the future.

Read you later

Sincerely, Me