Month: June 2024

Spring Exhibition ‘24 + BCFP 12

Hello and welcome to the last blog post of the year. This post will cover my BC First Peoples 12 course and the 2024 Spring Exhibition.

Overall I did feel like most of what we learned in BCFP was a recap for me. I tried to find new take-aways and knowledge where I could, so I do feel like I now have a very solid understanding of many aspects of BCFP education. I was interested in the concept of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and the role of plants in First Nations society. Then, I bridged it to my humanities upstander project where I was focusing on my mom as an upstander for health, wellness, and women’s equality. I was a little disappointed that we had to combine BCFP with Humanities for our exhibition because I feel like it diluted the messages of each aspect because there was more than one topic. 

 

The Spring Exhibition was a great opportunity for me to showcase what I had learned in BCFP and to honor my mom at the same time. I always enjoy being able to talk about my work at exhibitions, and this time it was amazing to be bragging about my mum because I am so proud of her! It gave my whole project and presentation a different feel with the purpose of honouring my mum in mind. I felt a sense of pride sharing with others the knowledge I had gained and the  connections I had made throughout the course. It was also amazing to see the work of the other BCFP blocks and my classmates and how they had interpreted the prompt in their own ways.

I believe that the combination of BCFP and Humanities for the exhibition actually turned out to be a positive thing in the end. It allowed us to explore the connections between the two subjects and to see how they can compliment each other. It was a great learning experience for me and I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it.

As the year comes to a close, I am thankful for all that I have learned and experienced in my BC First Peoples 12 course. I look forward to continuing my journey of learning and growth in the future. Thank you for following along with me on this blog and I wish you all the best in the upcoming year.

As Always,

Brooke

tPOL ‘24 – Engaged

 

Welcome to my 2024 transitional Presentation of Learning, looking back on my 2023-24 school year in PLP Humanities 11 and BCFP 12.

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.

– Presentation of Learning Declaration

Within this presentation, I will be addressing the driving question of “How can I showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared me to advance to the next grade?”. You will see this through my reflections on; my growth as a learner in my PLP classes, my work ethic/habits, and examples of leadership, responsibility, high quality work, and barriers I faced. Let’s start with the success behaviours of “Agency”.

Agency


The project I have chosen to highlight my performance in agency is the most recent Humanities project; Cat and Maus. This project’s deliverable was a literary criticism of The Complete Maus by Art Spiegleman, a Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about Art’s relationship with his father, Vladek, and Vladek’s experiences surviving the Holocaust. I have been interested in WWII and the Holocaust since elementary school, so I’ve been hoping for a project on this topic for a while.

Let’s now jump to that blog post for more -> Cat and Maus

Engagement

Overall, I think this has been my year of engagement.

At the beginning of the Humanities project “Who Cares and Why Bother?!”, we were asked if we cared or knew much about politics and to group up in the room accordingly, I chose to go with the least caring/least knowledge group. “At the start of this project, I was a person who didn’t know much about Canadian politics or government and to be honest, I didn’t care.” (Who Cares, Why Bother Blog Post), so originally I didn’t think I’d be very engaged in this project. Luckily, I was very wrong. I would like to specifically share some quotes from the blog post I wrote for this project because I couldn’t have said it better myself ;).

“In the discussion we had post-reading, I displayed complete knowledge of the book and as we all know, I love to talk, so I had a perfect opportunity to stretch my communication skills 💪.”

“Learning about how politics worked made me much more interested in it, and I think that’s is one of the reasons why youth don’t feel like they want to be involved in government processes.”

“Getting involved with the government and voting is a great way to contribute to positive change, which young people these days always seem to be fighting for. So when it comes to convincing young people to vote, focusing on issues they care about and telling them what each party can do to help seems to be an effective strategy!”

“I think the most impactful part of our presentation was the TikTok’s we made on issues in Canada that we care about. Showing the youth that the issues they care about are being acted on by some parties (and not acted on by others), is a motivation to vote to create the change they wish to see.”

These quotes are just an example of the engaged and positive learner I was during this project.

Conduct/Integrity

The Manhattan Project project is a great example where I displayed respect and citizenship. Being a group project making one final deliverable, leadership was integral to making sure the group didn’t fall apart. But where’s the line between being a leader who wants to get things done and being a boss-hog? I found that line working through this project, delegating tasks, supporting team members to complete their own work, and still keeping an eye out for quality control.

I want to wrap up with a TLDR on my take-aways and opportunities for growth next year;

  • I am an engaged, positive learner
  • I am both a respectful listener and a good leader
  • I can set realistic goals, self-assess, and make revisions
  • I will hand in my work on time by utilizing work time and keeping track of deadlines
  • I will continue to preserve through setbacks and be resilient

See you in grade 12!

  • “Who Cares, Why Bother” Debate

As Always,

Brooke

Eeeek! A Maus!

Welcome to my last humanities project of grade 11. Just a warning, this project was about the holocaust and talks about some very heavy themes. I have been interested in WWII and the Holocaust since elementary school, so I’ve been hoping for a project on this topic for a while.

The driving question for this project was;

How can multi-modal communication enhance our ability to humanize and understand complex issues?

This project’s main deliverable was a literary criticism of The Complete Maus by Art Spiegleman, a Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about Art’s relationship with his father, Vladek, and Vladek’s experiences surviving the Holocaust. One of the most powerful aspects of Maus is its ability to humanize the victims of the Holocaust. By focusing on one family’s story, Spiegelman makes the unimaginable suffering of millions of people palpable and relatable. Readers are able to empathize with Vladek’s struggles and losses, and through his story, gain a greater understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust.

When going through the writing and revision process, I’ve always found myself getting writers block and feeling discouraged doing writing assignments. So I had a bit of a barrier I needed to face during this project. Luckily with my personal interests activated, I was able to stay on top of my work, make revisions, and set goals for myself to complete. In the free-write we did at the beginning of this project, we wrote about why stories are an effective way to learn.

“Stories are an effective way to learn because they allow you to follow a plot line of important events and engage readers into the situation. ‘Facts in stories are 20X more likely to be remembered’ (Madsen) – it is easier for our brain to remember things with context, and that is what stories try to provide for us. With the use of characters, backstories, visuals, and sound, a story can be elevated to captivate and engage an audience. — Telling stories can connect not only the audience to the characters, but also to the storyteller, and that helps gain a deeper understanding of the story itself and the message that is trying to be conveyed by the author.” — (My Launch Free Write)

Maus Literary Critique

I chose to do a psychological analysis of Vladek’s lasting psychological effects and PTSD from the holocaust.

Theme

The Holocaust inflicted lasting psychological trauma on its survivors, affecting their mental health and daily lives long after the war had ended.

Thesis

The psychological trauma inflicted onto survivors of the Holocaust impacted them in their lives long after the war, like seen through the life Vladek Spiegelman in The Complete MAUS  by Art Spiegelman.

 

In my criticism I considered the root causes of psychological problems,  how other characters were affected, and what I could infer from behaviours and dialogue. Here is the essay in question;

Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism of Maus by Art Spiegelman

Conclusion

I was so happy that we got the opportunity to go to the Holocaust symposium at UBC and listen to a survivor in person. It was a very impactful experience and really underscored for me the importance of testimonies in history and storytelling. I also really appreciated Ester Clark’s presentation on her family’s survival story and the time she took to share it with us. This project was definitely sometimes a challenge for me, but I was able to persevere through the writing and gain some valuable insights along the way.

As Always,

Brooke