Good afternoon,
I have been researching about the topic of what the “Canadian Identity” is, and how does it affect us as Canadians. We did variety of things to boost our learning centered towards this topic. The core-competency that we covering was the importance of questions and having conversation. I feel like our final keystone, a human library, really ties in with these goals that we set of to achieve. This project has been really meaningful, allowing me to uncover what truly makes a Canadian.
We first set of our project by doing lots of research, going into our past and trying to figure out rights, and views then. We had a really strong belief that we were non-American. The American media often spills over the border, making our culture and people often very similar. This made an ad calling us out as “non-American” one of the most popular pieces of media that traveled across Canada. Next, we learned about hate-crimes rising throughout Canada, and how we could create a fair society. This led to us making NTK’s (need to knows) relating to women history. We tried creating in depth questions, in preparation of the research project that we were about to do in the next keystone. I think that this trial run really helped us learn to make connections between different topics that related to each other.
https://www.craft.me/s/q32Uaw4v0WQV3U
https://www.craft.me/s/nwUCp41xRX6wLJ
After we finished our first keystone, we slowly transitioned into a research topic that interested us, and related to the driving question. I chose to learn more about the Chinese-Canadians living here, and how they affected the “Canadian Identity.” I decided to learn about this because I myself am a Chinese-Canadian, and wanted to learn more about our past. This whole topic made me learn about my history, and how we were mistreated. Throughout the 1800s, people living in Canada wanted to build an intercontinental railway that connected each coast. This enormous project would be very hard to achieve with their current labour force, so they decided to look east to find more cheaper workers. This is when they found China, a large country with lots of workers willing to immigrate to a new country. During this time, living in China was very tough, if you were not wealthy or high-ranked, you would be treated like dirt. When they saw a chance too start anew in a different country, they decided to take it. The company responsible of the building of the CPR managed to save between 3-5 million dollars by doing this. For my second keystone, I made an entire document that goes into more detail about my topic.
https://www.craft.me/s/k2spiQCIQPViGr
For our final keystone, we were creating a human library. What is a human library? A human library is where a person plays the role of a book. The readers “borrow” this book to have meaningful conversations talking about their past experiences. A human library aims to create a safe space where people open up too new people.
For this part of the project, we were tasked in finding a “book” and bringing them as a guest in this human library. The book that I decided on was my mum. She was a Chinese-Canadian woman who was born in Vancouver, but traveled between multiple provinces living in very small towns. Her parents would open small Chinese restaurants across the prairies in order to make money. They eventually settled down in Edmonton, where she studied biochemistry in UOA. She later moved to a small country called Brunei, located in South East Asia so that she could start up a business. 15 years later, she moved back to Vancouver, where she is living now.
Our assignment after finishing the human library, was to create a reflection journal that answered a bunch of questions. During the human library, I feel like I was able to achieve a meaningful conversation with the books that I had conversed with. The conversations I had were all very unique, each person having their own different past experiences. One of the books I talked to came from South Africa, and how it was very dangerous living during that time. Here is my reflection journal:
https://www.craft.me/s/BW2PerkvDh3W0I
How does the human library relate to “Canadian Identity?”
Canada’s overall identity is very diverse, we have people coming from all sorts of places. Our country is like a collage of different places, all living in the same place now. We were able to see this in action during the human library, different Canadian’s showing their uniqueness.
Overall, this project has been really insightful for me. You never really think about what the “Canadian Identity” is, until you look at it from an outsiders perspective. I genuinely enjoyed learning about this, and how we shape our nation. Next year, I look forward to seeing what the next batch of grade 10’s human library will look like.
Thanks for reading,
Chris