Month: June 2023

STONKS

Am I financially literate? Are you? Well this project was all about finance.

Finance

We did this activity about budgeting and how budgets cam be helpful. Our objective was to develop a monthly budget, differentiating between fixed and variable expenses. This exercise proved to be an effective method for acquiring budgeting and money management skills.

Moving on, we embarked on the activity centred around planning for our future careers. We engaged in thorough research on summer jobs (if we were interested in getting them) and set goals for the amount of money we wanted to save by the end of summer. Additionally, we explored the average costs associated with attending university and living costs. This experience provided us with a good understanding of our financial prospects for the upcoming future.

Stock Market Simulation

The highlight of this project was definitely the “Stock Market Challenge.” It was a competition within our class to see who could make the most money in a simulated stock market. We had two options: go for big, well earning stocks or focus on ethical investments. I decided to go ethical and really look into each of the companies I invested in. I am proud of my choices because I know that these companies have an overall positive impact on the world. You can see my reflections for all 5 weeks of this challenge here

This is what my stocks looked like at the end of the challenge ⬇️

 

Conclusion

So overall after this project I feel better equipped to handle my finances in the future. I am more confident that I will be knowledgeable in how to manage my money and not go broke.

As Always, Brooke

The ALT Manifesto

Sup guys and welcome to The Alt Manifesto.

 

Have you ever wanted to be King for a Day? Or maybe you just want to settle down for a hearty dinner full of Korn and Chop Suey! Or maybe you didn’t get any of those references and are wondering why I just said that. Well, no matter who you are I invite you to join me on this journey to understanding music-based alt subcultures like emo, goth, punk, metal, and so much more! 

So a somewhat random into to a school related blog post huh? In the last section of maker this year we were working on the famed PLP podcast project. The podcast could be on any school appropriate topic that we want, as long as it was trying to answer the driving question of;

How might I use design and content to influence others for good?

First of all how cool was it to practically be able to make our podcast about whatever we wanted? I chose to make mine regarding alternative music subcultures and their history and culture. Through this topic I believe I can influence others for good by educating people about these subcultures and how they affect people and our culture, instead of just calling anyone who wears all black “emo”.

The Prep

We started by envisioning a plan for our podcast via a collage, and coming up with podcast names and taglines. We then started to work on creating a script for a trailer for our podcasts, and looked at some other podcasts trailers on Spotify to see what type of stuff we needed to have in it. You can listen to my podcasts trailer here;

Along with our trailer we created a release schedule to help us plan out and organize how and when we would release our episodes. I originally thought I would release a single 20 min episode every week, boy was I off in thinking how achievable that would be.

Podcasting

We took a listen to several other podcasts on Spotify to analyze hoe they used story, tone, setting, and editing to enhance their show to make it enjoyable for listeners. Quickly building up the skills needed to plan, script, record, edit, and release podcast episodes.

Just the research for my first episode accidentally took hours because I was so interested in the topic (metal music) that I had a hard time deciding what I should include in the script. Eventually I did end up getting 2 episodes out and I think I may actually try to release more next school year just because I actually enjoyed making them. You can find my podcast here;

Conclusion

This project was super fun and I really enjoyed getting to show off my passion as a learner. The design process can be a bit tedious at times but I think I now have quite the hang of it. I love thinking about what my podcasts audience thinks about the show and if I am actually influencing others for good. Hopefully if you have a bit of extra time you could listen to one of my episodes and let me know in the comments what your thoughts are. Thank you so much for reading (or listening)!!!

As Always, Brooke

tPOL 2023 – Advancing

Before we start, here is the POL declaration- “Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

Hello and welcome to my tPOL (transitional presentation of learning). In this post I will try to answer the question “Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade?”. In short, I am ready to go on to grade 11 because I have become proficient at the skills that I learned and developed in grade 10. And hopefully the rest of this presentation proves that. I have chosen one project from each class to represent me as a learner this year.

First, a quick look at my learning plan.  I did an excellent job this year at trying to reach my proficiency goals for each class, which were rainbows 🌈 across the board.

Some things that I feel I have done well at that are in my learning plan this year would be;

  1. I have been using things regularly for both school and non school related tasks and it has helped me greatly.
  2. I have been communicating with teachers more frequently when I need help or some flexibility. This was something I have never been good at but I feel like I finally made some headway on it this year.
  3. Creating authentic work that I feel represents who I am and my worldview.

Something that I want to improve more on in my grade 11 year will be handing my work in on time. To do this, I will structure my homework time more clearly and get help from my mum to keep my accountability on track.

Evidence From my Classes

Humanities

Save Juno Beach!

One thing you may or may not know about me is that I have loved learning about WWII ever since elementary school. Half of the books I own are WWII related and war movies are by far my favourite genre. So imagine how excited I was to find out that we were doing a humanities project on my favourite topic in history.

Let’s pop over to my blog post that I did regarding that project – > Juno Beach

I chose to talk about this project today because it shows my passion as a learner. I have always been able to learn %200 faster when im learning about something that I am genuinely interested in, a skill that PLP suits so well because we are generally allowed to focus on specific topics that pique our interest.

Maker

My Podcast – The Alt Manifesto

First of all how cool was it to practically be able to make our podcast about whatever we wanted? Remember when I just said how I am so much more engaged when I’m learning about something I’m genuinely interested in? Well this was literally a perfect time for that passion to shine for me.

Personal Growth Planning

I’ve decided not to choose one specific “project” from PGP because I feel like they all kind of blend together into one larger picture. At the beginning of the year I was still just a fairly organized 15 yo who didn’t feel like there was any need to worry about my upcoming adult life or post-secondary plans. First we organized our physical and mental spaces, then worked on building up good long term habits with Atomic Habits by James Clear, then thought about our future careers and how to market ourselves like adults, then started asking questions like what degree am I going to get after high school? What schools might I go to? How will I financially support myself? How can I be financially literate?

Now I stand here as a 16 yo who can drive a car, has a job, and is saving for the future. I have vague plans for post-secondary that I am looking forward to exploring with my mum next year. In PGP this year I did exactly what the class entails right in it’s title, and that is why I am ready for grade 11.

Thank you so much for coming!

Marketing Myself

Helloooo world of blog. I haven’t really done any blog posts yet this year specifically about my careers class so guess what we are talking about today? Yep my Personal Growth planning aka PGP aka Careers class and what we’ve been working on.

So how does one market themselves? In this case, I am talking about marketing yourself in terms of job opportunities through things like resumes and business cards. The choices that you make when choosing how to present yourself to potential employers can greatly influence your chances of getting that job. So this section of our PGP class set out to prepare us for the job hunting and professional self-presentation of our futures.

Driving Question;

How do I make career life choices?

Answer – planning. Let me explain;

We started by looking at our dream careers and our realistic careers, what those jobs would initial and what the prerequisites were. And then finding the prerequisites for those prerequisites and so on. What schools do you want to go to? How far from home are you willing to travel for university/college? What degree do you need? Where do you want to end up living? What’s your financial situation going to look like? Etc. Answering all these questions is essential to planning out any career life choice you make. Tracing out where you want to go and how to get there is how you make career life choices, or at least how you make good career life choices.

And to help us start making these career life choices, we started answering the question “How can I effectively market myself to employers?” To convey our answers to this question, we each made new resumes, business cards, and a cover letter draft that we could send out to potential employers.

The Resumes

Above you will see my updated resumes that I made during this course. I really like the one that has my picture on it because it separates my qualities/soft skills from my skills. An employer can make their decision just by a quick glance over a resume so it is important that they are neat and organized in layout. I think I did a wonderful job creating an appealing resume that accurately reflects me marketing myself.

The Business Cards

As you can see above, I have 2 different business cards. One I chose to do a simple black and white with minimal information and personality, the other is coloured and has some line graphics on it. I like the beige aesthetic one because it feels more personal and includes my title as student/sales associate.

The Mock Interview

Finally, we did mock job interviews. My partner Dana and I spent a lot of time carefully picking out interview questions that we thought displayed a good mix of our skills and personality, being sincere with our answers as well. We came into school dressed professionally and ready to shoot. We then dressed up and filmed the interview with both people answering and asking the questions. Practicing like it was a real interview helped me feel better prepared for any interviews I will have to do in the future because I already know what questions may be thrown at me and how I should respond to show off my best self. I think this interview shows off my skills in communication and my passion for my interests, but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here is the video Dana and I made (I’m the brunette);

Conclusion

Overall this section of PGP has made me feel more confident in my abilities to get another job in the future when I leave the one I am currently at. I am excited to use my new resumes and maybe even hand out a business card or two. It was sometimes difficult to find colours or fonts that matched my personality, and trust me you can spend a very long time flipping through fonts that just dont feel quite right. But being able to critically think about one’s future is a skill I have always loved to use and exercising that in this project was very helpful for me. Thanks for reading!

As Always, Brooke

So Many Lies And Incongruences

Content warning; there will be mentions of residential schools, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and other traumatic events for First Nations peoples.

This is not the first time we learned about Canada’s wrongdoings towards indigenous peoples in class, and it wont be the last.

Keystone 1

Keystone 1 for this project was reading the book The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline and filling out reflections and contributions each week relating to the chapters we read. This reminded me a lot of the “Lit circles” we used to do in elementary school, and I really enjoyed it. First of all, The Marrow Thieves is an amazing book that I had heard of prior to reading it in class, so I was super excited to be analyzing it. I would like to share with you my journal of reflections and contributions, so SPOILER WARNING if you havent read it yet.

Reading Journal pdf

As you may have seen, for some of my contributions I chose to make art pieces, and in one case an animation (that you would not have seen because that file is a PDF and cannot play the video but trust me it was cool). I usually don’t like making art because I find that my perfectionism gets in the way and I end up just giving up on  the art. But I really wanted to do something different that wasn’t just a piece of writing and I am super proud of how they turned out.

At the end of the journal there is a reflection answering the question “How does The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline reflect Canada presently and historically?” And I would like to charge a clip of that reflection with you now.

The characters in the book experienced loss of family, both chosen family and biological, just like indigenous people did during the time of residential schools and especially the sixties scoop. They were unable to know if their loved ones was alive or where they were taken, a heartbreaking type of pain to feel that was felt by a whole race of people. This type of pain is felt heavily even to this day because of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada. The ramifications of the colonizers treatment of indigenous peoples in both the book and real life have long lasting consequences that will not be forgotten.

Keystone 2

DQ – How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time?

The driving question for this project can be answered by the work I did in keystone 2. Here is a brief look at what keystone 2 is about and the competencies that went along with it ⬇️

Keystone 2 was completed in 3 parts; history, contemporary issues, and civil disputes, and how each of those topics could be found in art. For each topic we had to find an art piece (could be any kind of art including music) and tie it to a specific topic or event that related to the main topic (I.e. Canada’s peace and friendship treaties for history or MMIWG).

For part 1 I chose to focus on historical peace and friendship treaties. I chose a piece of art that I found on a website with a research paper dedicated to Canada’s peace and friendship treaties. Lnuey.ca was an excellent source that I found for this topic and extremely helpful for writing.

Here is the art I chose that directly symbolizes the peace and friendship treaties. I encourage you to go to this link to see my write up on what the peace and friendship treaties ment and how this painting is represented. Keystone 2 pt 1. Treaties & Art 

Part 2 was about contemporary issues that indigenous people face culturally and how that can be seen in art.

For this I chose to focus on cultural appropriation. I was researching artists who were indigenous activists when I came across Kent Monkman, a Cree artist from Manitoba. With some help, I searched through his gallery on his website to find a painting that I felt could tie into the cultural appropriation topic. This lead to us finding a painting called “Welcome to the Studio”. This painting is actually too large to be imbedded here without me cropping it up so you will have to see it in my writing reflection -> Contemporary issues and art.

The final part of keystone 2 was a similar task to the first 2 parts, but this time it was related to a civil conflict. I chose to focus on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls because I think it is a powerful topic that is still very prevalent today. My reflection shows the connection to the red handprint and red dress movements that we see today as activism for this issue. The link to my full reflection can be found here -> MMIWG and art

The Collage

The final product of this project was a collage (physical or digital) showing what we had learned over the course of the project. Along with this came a short written reflection on our learnings and what we can do for truth and reconciliation.

I feel guilty now as a Canadian looking back on what my country did to the First Nations peoples. I had a pretty good understanding of most of this information before we started this project but I always felt that it didn’t affect me much. I learned much more about how the history of Canada’s wrongdoings against the First Nations people still affects them to this day through intergenerational trauma, lateral violence and cultural appropriation. I can contribute to Canada’s truth and reconciliation by continuing to learn and take seriously the lessons we are taught on this topic. Especially next year in my BC First Peoples class.

 

Conclusion

So this project contained a lot of heavy topics and was very impactful. During this project I heard someone say “If you feel comfortable about truth and reconciliation, you’re not doing it right.” And that really hit home for me because it is on the shoulders of us white colonizers to right the wrongs of our ancestors in any way we can. I did excellent work throughout this project and really showed off my authenticity and raw willingness to learn and participate, some skills that have grown immensely for me over the past year. Thank you for reading this post.

As Always, Brooke