🌲 Why do politics matter and why should you bother? 🌲 

Hello and welcome back to the forest of learning!

This post contains my reflecting thoughts on the project “Who Cares and Why Bother?”. The project has left me with philosophical understandings of human nature, valuable knowledge about government systems, and personal insight about my own beliefs. I have gained a lot of personal understandings throughout the course of this project, and I’m excited to reflect upon them in this post.

Introductory thoughts

Before this project began, I felt pretty confident with my understandings of politics, human nature, and the general structure of governance in Canada. I now know that I certainly have a lot more exploring to do before I can feel completely confident in my understandings – which, isn’t a bad thing at all. Politics was always something that fascinated me, but, I never really took the space to explore my interest farther than surface level curiosity. This project kickstarted an ongoing conversation within myself about the complexities of politics and the often controversial philosophies that rule the world that I live in. Before this project, I always thought that these concepts were ‘adult issues’ so, why waste time understanding something that gives no real value to me as a teen? I think this same belief is the reason why so many youth  don’t explore politics or vote in elections.

 

 

Our first major milestone of the project was analyzing Lord of the Flies. The novel’s themes mostly centred around the concept of social contract theory and human nature; which were both concepts that we learned about in class prior to reading the novel. I found this novel to be very fascinating and I really enjoyed the plot and writing style. Throughout my time reading and creating notes about my thoughts on the novel, I found myself excited to talk to my sisters and friends about certain aspects of the book. I had many moments where I predicted the outcomes of the plot, and through my analyses, it fostered an interest to investigate why I had the ability to anticipate certain outcomes: what made human nature so predictable yet chaotic? 

One thing that I felt worked well in my process of creating notes was writing a summary of each chapter after reading it. It helped me stay engaged in what I was reading, and it helped me to link certain plot points to one another as I would progress through the book. This summarization style is something that I am looking forward to implementing in my other note-taking endeavours.

Image source

I demonstrated my thinking through the form of a socratic seminar. In this activity, myself and a few peers discussed our thoughts, opinions, and insights surrounding the book. I really enjoyed this activity because I was able to learn about different opinions and perspectives surrounding certain characters, major moments in the plot, and the authors intentions. I find that activities such as this one are really important because they leave me with an understanding that is more complex and well-rounded. I felt that my contributions to the conversation were important and I’m really proud of the way I articulated my ideas. I enjoyed sharing my thoughts and listening to my peers as well, I only wish we had more time to discuss!

Here are my notes about the novel ⬇️ 

They contain a glimpse into my understandings and analyses. Feel free to take a look!

https://cars-vanish-k2n.craft.me/zAxLZh0hL8xdBf

The next major component of the project was gaining an understanding of the Canadian government. This portion of the project took place over a few classes, and culminated in a quiz on our knowledge. Throughout learning about the government in Canada, it become more and more apparent that my previous knowledge on this subject was lacking. I learned SO much information, at times my brain couldn’t keep up with the what Ms. Madsen was saying (for me, that is a very uncommon occurrence). I learned many new things that were quite shocking. 

To name a few:

  • We have a female Indigenous Governor General who represents the King and actually has way more power than our Prime Minister.
  • Our Prime Minister is just a representative of a party, and could technically switch out at any point if the party so chooses.
  • The Peoples Party is whacky.

So from these few take aways, I’m sure you can gather I learned a whole lot! If you want to see my notes on this portion of the learning process CLICK HERE

In reflection, I found this aspect of the project incredibly valuable. I gained an understanding of the government which was significantly more complex than my understanding before these lessons. Having this information in my head has made me feel so much more aware of political issues and the complexities that surround them. For instance, earlier today I was speaking with my sister, and the topic of Roe vs Wade and the controversial U.S. government compared to the less controversial Canadian government came up. I’ve had conversations about this topic before, and I felt that this time my perspective had changed. This time, I understood more of why abortions were legal in Canada and how that process might have looked like. I could imagine a bill being created and debated by Supreme Court, I could imagine it being voted upon by the House of Commons, and I could imagine it being given royal assent before everyone started talking about it in the news. Before these lessons in class, I genuinely had no idea Canada even had a Supreme Court, let alone what it did and its importance. 

The next portion of the project involved working within a group of classmates. My group included Sabrina, Max, and Theryn. 

I think it’s important to mention that the final end product of this project was to create and deliver a presentation to a group of teenagers with the intent to convince them why it’s important to vote. 

Our first task as a group was to create a short video that would be included in our presentation. This video was meant to introduce the structure of the Canadian government and the process of voting – since our presentation focused more on the “why bother”, the video focussed more on the “what happens” – . 

Before creating the video, we worked as group to research 4 relevant issues to youth. I investigated transgender rights, which was of particular interest to me since I wasn’t aware of the current state of these rights in BC previous to my research and wanted to learn more. 

To view each of the topics our group researched,  click HERE

Our group approached creating the video in a divide-and-conquer fashion. Sabrina and I were in charge of creating animations for the video, and Max and Theryn were in charge of filming live-action aspects of the video. We worked for the first few classes together to brainstorm, plan, and create the outline for our video. One obstacle I faced during this time period was my communication skills within my group. Although I try not to be too harsh on myself, group projects tend to make me feel self conscious because of my tendency to be a boss hog. In this case, there were times that I felt like I was the only person who was actually excited about our video and knew our plan. I was the person who spoke most during group discussions, and was the person who pitched our idea to the teacher and to other groups. And while this doesn’t seem all that bad, I feel as if I take too much space and don’t leave enough room for others to communicate their ideas. This is a pattern that I hope to correct in my next group project.

The rest of the classes were spent individually working on our respective parts. My role as an animator involved mapping out the animations and articulating my thoughts through visual representation. Each of my animations were made in Keynote. 

We went through multiple drafts and varying degrees of critique from our peers and teacher before completing our final video:

I’m really proud of my contributions to the video. I love how my animations turned out and I feel like they added engaging elements to the film. Additionally, the process of creating the animations was a great way to continue improving my animation skills. For example, I learned how to creatively incorporate a screen-recorded video into my animation ⬇️ 

I feel that our video did a great job of exploring the relevant aspects of Canadian government and the process of voting. I also really appreciate how this video involved each person in the group working together to make one final product. 

After the completion of the video, it was time to create our final presentation. This process involved lots of brainstorming, planning, and creating. We spent our first class discussing ideas and narrowing down the ones we enjoyed the most. The next class involved recording our favourite idea and pitching it to the teacher:

Then, we started to establish our individual roles. I took on various roles throughout the process of creating our presentation: In the beginning, I would often direct group discussions as well as synthesize our ideas and record them. I tried my best to include each members thoughts and opinions in order for us to later come to a conclusion that was of interest to all of us. Later, I maintained an organized to-do list, outlining tasks essential for realizing our shared vision. Each day in class it was my job to ensure each member was on task. I spoke with each member of my group frequently in attempts to ensure this. Additionally, I helped to edit and write the script in many sections and was also responsible for most of the visual elements of our presentation: designing the infographic, voting ballots, and the majority of the slides.

I’ve found that my ideal learning style includes having complete ownership and control over my work. I know my own capabilities and limits, and it makes it easier to plan, manage my time, and generally complete work to a quality that meets my own standards. I feel that while this is a great strength, this approach to learning has tainted my ability to be a great group mate. Improving my ability to collaborate has been my most important learning goal this year. I recognize that I find it challenging to fully entrust my teammates with their respective tasks. Moving forward, I want to cultivate greater trust in my team’s capabilities. I hope that implementing this goal will lead to a more positive collaborative environment where responsibilities are shared effectively in future group projects.

While the next stage should have been delivering the presentation, I was unfortunately unable to participate because I had developed tonsillitis – which, as I am writing this post, I am still recovering from. I had heard from my group that everything had gone well on presentation day. Although, I’m still quite sad that I wasn’t able to be a part of this final stage of the project. 

Here was some feedback my group received after the presentation:

Concluding thoughts 

So, why do politics matter and why should I bother? Well, I think that politics matter because they impact my current and future reality. Decisions that are made in each level of government directly impact my own life and everyone around me’s life each and every day. This project has solidified this fact for me, and has made me realize that it’s important to educate myself on political issues and stay informed. As well, I’ve understood why it’s important to vote. My newly formed personal motivation for voting comes from the fact that I think that youth should be taking ownership of our future. The notion that people my grandparents’ age are in the majority of people who vote is very infuriating – not because they shouldn’t have a say in the government, but that I think young people should be more active in the political world than our grandparents. Through this project I’ve learned how to understand the political world and question current realities. I’m looking forward to applying this knowledge when I turn 18!

I hope you enjoyed reading. Thank you so much for watching me grow in the forest of

🌲learning🌲