“Who are you going to be?” -Michelle Obama

The question I wrote above was what we centred our entire project on. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do? Where do I see myself in 10 years? These questions I encountered throughout the project made me curious about what my future holds for me.

What type of person do I want to be?

I read a book named “The Ordinary Man”, which was about a hotel manager in the Rwandan genocide in 1993. His name was Paul Rusesabagina, and he managed the two premium hotels when the Rwandan genocide started. He saved a thousand people, both civilians and tourists, with absolutely no weapons in his possession.

Though he had no gun or physical weapon, he had something more substantial which had allowed him to stay alive throughout the Civil War: his words.

Generals, lieutenants, and officers had all visited him during the war with words that threatened him and his family, which would generally make any average man flee or go into hiding. However, he stood his ground and always repelled them without any physical harm.

Book notes:

https://dodos-win-hw2.craft.me/eEyyrW6WYpb0VQ

How was he able to do this?

He had connections that stretched to multiple government officials, from people working at the parliament in the UK to people from the White House. He also knew multiple local Rwandan government workers who had much influence in the army. He gave them favours, always treating them with the utmost respect and ensuring they had gifts worth thousands of dollars.

When high-ranking officers visited the hotel, he could manipulate them into not attacking the hotel by giving them multiple bottles of wine and treating them with care, even after the atrocities they had previously committed. Though he faced fear, he was able to exploit their weaknesses and turn them into friendly people.

“If you stay friendly with monsters you can find cracks in their armor to exploit. Shut them out and they can kill you without a second thought. I reminded myself of this over and over.”

“I have since thought a great deal about how people are able to maintain two attitudes in their minds at once. Take the colonel: He had come fresh from a world of machetes, road gangs, and random death and yet was able to have a civilized conversation with a hotel manager over a glass of beer and let himself be talked out of committing another murder. He had a soft side and a hard side and neither was in absolute control of his actions. It would have been dangerous to assume that he was this way or that way at any given point in the day. It was like those Nazi concentration camp guards who could come home from a day manning the gas chambers and be able to play games with their children, put a Bach record on the turntable, and make love to their wives before getting up to kill to more innocents. And this was not the exception—this was the rule. The cousin of brutality is a terrifying normalcy. So I tried never to see these men in terms of black or white. I saw them instead in degrees of soft and hard. It was the soft that I was trying to locate inside them; once I could get my fingers into it, the advantage was mine. If sitting down with abhorrent people and treating them as friends is what it took to get through to that soft place, then I was more than happy to pour the Scotch.”

– Paul Rusesabagina

He also called in multiple of his previous friends to support him in his time of need. With his connections in Rwanda, he could buy protection and guards to stand at the front of the hotel.

These factors helped him survive throughout the genocide.

What have I learnt from this process?

The first thing that stuck out to me was the power of words. Words are one of the most fundamental things a human can learn. We learn it in school and use it every day. However, most people cannot effectively communicate their points, which could result in less credibility. Though the content of your words is essential, I think the delivery of what you are trying to say is just as important. If you could perfect this weapon, you would be able to command and manipulate the people around you however you want.

The next major lesson I learned was the influence of your parents and the people around you.

The friends around you also greatly influence the type of person you grow up to be. If you grew up in a rougher environment with people harming others, you would highly likely grow up to be the same way due to you thinking it is normal. These factors caused lots of young teenage Rwandans to join gangs and harm others due to peer pressure. It became normalized to kill other human beings like it was part of a job that they had to do. If everyone else in the gang is doing it, what’s wrong if I do it?

Parents are your life’s most significant role models; they bathed, fed, and kept you warm. When you grow up, you indirectly become a mirror of them, most of your ideals and hobbies coming from them.m

Who are my role models?

As mentioned previously, parents are your most outstanding role models and inspirations. They help form the basis of your childhood and mostly turn you into who you are today. I also look up to seniors and my older sibling, who have guided me throughout my academic semester.

To help me understand who my role models are, I interviewed two people who have significantly impacted my development as a person. First, I interviewed my father, then my good friend and senior, Jonathon.

Interview Notes:

https://dodos-win-hw2.craft.me/fckZ74flOcwTn8

My role models

My father, a man named David, grew up in a small, humid, and tropical country in South East Asia. He grew up relatively poor but slowly worked his way up and eventually started his business that specialized in high-end furniture. Like me, his most incredible role model was his father, who began his very own printing business when he was growing up. They both had to face many hardships and persevere through them. I learned a lot throughout the interview, and I will try to implement what he said.  

He mentioned about how adversity is a common thing you will have to face while growing up.  Everyone faces it, it is part of growing up, and helps make you learn on past experiences.  The worst thing you can do while facing hardship, is to give up.  

Jonathon, a senior in PLP, and a friend of mine, moved from Taiwan at the age of 13.  Although his English was not the best at first, he was able to endure and become one of the top students at the school I currently attend.  He has been accepted to multiple universities across the world for computer science and will be continuing his journey in the US.  

Perseverance, a key element in achieving goals, is not the only trait you can have when trying to achieve success.  Leadership, communication, collaboration, are all key elements to achieving what you want in your life.  

What are some common themes between both interviews?

Being a good person is a very important trait when trying to be a successful person.  It boosts self esteem, and makes other people like you.  

How does all of this information tie together?

Like the main character in the book, I look up to my father, for he is a man that I have learnt a lot from.  He has made me into a better person, and made sure that I learnt from my mistakes if I ever do anything wrong.  

We watched a Ted Talk, and one of the main things that I learnt when watching it, is the ability to move on.  Mood usually depends on the place, time and people you are with, however, if you can look forward and not pay attention to the past, your life will be a lot more happier.  Looking forward to the future and knowing it will get better is something that everyone can use.  My father continued to persevere through hard times during his business and looked forward to a brighter future for himself and his family.  Paul, from the hotel, continued to move forward, despite the despair he had in his mind of losing most of his friends and family.  He knew, if he didn’t move forward he would there would be a chance for his children and his wife not to survive.  

Though reflecting on the past is important, if you are to stuck up on something that you did or missed out on, then you will never be able to move on.  You will be stuck with regret and will always remind yourself what could have been.  The best thing you can do for yourself when going through hardship is to look forward to a better future and see what it holds for you.  

So then who am I going to be?

I hope to be someone that enjoys life, and only see things for its good.  I want to be joyful, and be positive around the people that matter most to me.  

I want to persevere through hardships, but want to also excel in other aspects.  Leadership and communication are things that I need to work on currently.  Overall, I think that I am on track to become the person who I want to be.

Thanks,

Christian

Welcome back to another great year of learning!

As our second proper PLP project in grade 10, we studied and created memorials to apologize to certain minorities living in British Columbia.  We worked extensively, learning about different aspects of our history and the injustices we imposed on these groups.  Overall, it was a really interesting project, and I learned a lot about British Columbia’s dark history.

Driving Question:  How can we keep an apology alive so the wrongs of the past are remembered and not repeated today?

To start of the project, we had to research about past memorials, and British Columbia’s dark discriminatory history.  Multiple different races, like the Chinese, Japanese, and South Asians were prejudices against throughout the development of Canada.  These different and diverse races all had unfair laws enforced onto them, only due to the colour of their skin.

The Chinese population had multiple discriminatory immigration polices implemented against them.  At first, they started with head taxes, charging a $50 dollar fee every time a Chinese person moved to Canada.  This did not stop them though, which led to a third of the population in British Columbia being Chinese Canadians.  Overtime, they increased the price from $100, $500, and eventually outright banning the immigration of Chinese people.  Not only that, as the European population slowly increased, they were faced with increased racism.

The second population that were discriminated against were the South Asians.  Like the Chinese population, Punjabi people moved over to Canada at around the gold rush.  They came in great numbers, which eventually led to a hate of them.  Since India was under the British commonwealth like Canada, they were unable to outright ban their immigration.  However, the government officials were able to think up a way to stop the immigration of the South Asians.  They implemented the one passage law, making all immigrants only be able to move to Canada if they came straight from their country of origin.  This caused the Indians to be unable to move over, due to them having to transit through either Japan or Hong Kong.

The last major population that were oppressed in British Columbia’s history, was the Japanese.  As World War II started, Canadians slowly came to fear of Japanese people living in BC.  This led to them interning them in different places across the countryside.  Thousands of Japanese loss their privileges and riches, which included houses, boats, and personal belongings.  Not only did they lose them, but the government of BC sold each item off in an auction, making it impossible for them to reclaim their items.  Only 9 years after the war were they allowed to leave these camps, and go back to the beach.

Why would they move to Canada?

At this time, gold was discovered in North America and saw people were able to make a lot of money.  This caused most people saw North America as a “golden land,” they heard of being able to get untold riches if they immigrated over.  The Asians started off in California, and slowly worked their way up towards British Columbia.  Though they were heavily mistreated against, they continued to work in hopes of being able to hit the jackpot.

Research:

https://dodos-win-hw2.craft.me/LiFZ9BQRuvaRFp

What were we creating for our project?

For our project we were tasked to create memorials for one of the targeted groups within BC’s history.  To do this, we worked in groups of three to plan, build and reflect on the assigned group we worked on.  I worked with Daniel and Caden, to create a memorial that reflected Chinese past hardships.

We thought out the idea to create traditional Chinese cut outs that symbolize the push and pull factors of living in Canada with a Chinese person in the middle.  We also encased it in a luggage to show that the Chinese people never were able to fully open up their culture, and that it was still left in their suitcase.  We also added lights to shine through the paper cut outs to make it nice.

To conclude this project, I think that this project went pretty well, and my group worked great together.  We were able to finish our project even in a short time span that we were given.  If I did this project again, I would like to have gotten an interview with someone who has researched this topic, and what there opinion might be.

Thanks for reading

-Chris

Good afternoon,

Welcome back to my blog, this is the second project that I have finished in my grade 10 year.  In this project, we learnt about the significance of Canadian contribution to World War II, and how it shaped us into a nation.  We learnt about our history, and how we may prevent another conflict that could potentially destroy the world.  Enjoy reading…?

Driving Question:

Why is it so important to learn about Canada’s involvement in WWII?

https://www.craft.me/s/Hm8IXMDjQWdYAR

To start of our project, we needed to actually know what happened during the war.  Lots of people died throughout 1939-1945, however, it was mostly civilian casualties unlike the prior war.  The results of World War I heavily influenced and helped lead to World War II, by putting most countries in political turmoil and in an economic depression. These factors helped eventually lead to World War II. With this, the consequences of World War II had a major impact on the world. Military alliances, technology, and wars, are still a result of the Second World War. Along the way, we learned about Canada’s significant involvement in the war, and how it helped the allies claim the victory. To put the knowledge we had learn to the test, we did a set of Kahoots. During this part of the project, I feel like I learn the most, and understand how I will be answering the driving question.

While building our knowledge about World War II was important, we also needed to learn how to write both formally and properly.  We used a type of formatting called the PEE technique, to make sure that we include the necessary information required within each of our points.  It stands for: P, point, E, evidence, E, explanation.  This method gave us a way to fit in all of information.  We also learned about the structure of an essay, and how each paragraph serves a different purpose.

After this, we had to put our knowledge to the test by creating a group keynote presentation on the consequences of World War II, that we would show to the entire class. My group chose the topic of the United Nations, and its consequences after the Second World War.  For this keystone, I worked with Magnus, Kira, and Luca.  I mostly worked on the causes/ founding of the United Nations, and why it came about.  It was formed after World War II, to maintain peace and stability within all nations in the world.  This would also allow each countries power to be monitored and regulated if it need be.  Learning about a specific topic that was a direct consequence really showed the effects World War II it had on the war.  I was now using the knowledge we had gained in the previous keystone to create something.

Before being able to start our essay, we needed to create multiple different ideas to base of our writing.  I came up with multiple ideas, some include the technological advancements made during that time, the causes of World War II, that shows why they were so significant, political/economical changes between different countries after the war, and the affect it had on people living at around that time.

https://dodos-win-hw2.craft.me/HS8pUg75gVvah0

To put our knowledge we had gained throughout this project to the test, we were tasked with creating a five paragraphed essay that covers over a certain topic to do with World War II.  I chose the topic of the causes of World War II, and why they were so significant.  Without World War I or the economic depression, the biggest war in mankind would not have been fought.  Even though the consequences were significant, I feel like these factors are just as important.  I wrote a lot about ideologies, and how the rise of nationalism helped dictators rise to the top.  If you would like to read my essay, click here:

https://www.craft.me/s/HceySlZStQZt2H

To answer the driving question, Canada’s involvement was a major event in our nation’s short history.  This was once of the only major conflicts that we had participated in, and had heavily contributed to the allied victory.  I think that it is important to know about our previous generations sacrifices, and how they managed to prevail with almost no hope.  Learning about our past is also a way that we could prevent another major conflict in the future from happening.

Overall, I think that I did a great job in learning about our past, and how it has shaped us into the world it is today.  However, I feel like my final essay could have been tied more about Canada, and less about Europe.  I found it hard trying to find ways Canada contributed to the start of World War II, which made me not mention it very much in my final project.  To conclude, I believe that I did a great job, but could have improved in some areas.

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

Hey!

For our final project in grade 9, we have learnt about Canada’s history during WWI and how they were significant during it.  Canada was a driving factor that prevented the German army to conquering WWI, they fought and won many vital battles that eventually led to the ally’s victory.  For the exhibiton, we were tasked to create a museum about World War I.  So this project was displayed in the Spring Exhibition 2023.  I hope you enjoy reading about my last project in grade 9!  Hope to see you in grade 10!

The first thing we learnt about was museums, and how it works.  We went to a local museum located in Lonsdale, called Monova.  It showed North Vancouvers history, and was split into different sections like industry, passion, etc.  We learnt to engage our audience with their senses, make exhibits interactive and much more.  For keystone 1, I wrote a bunch of notes and answered questions about how museums work.

https://www.craft.me/s/qneqMf2nUu8H1Q

After learning about museums, we learnt about was famous battles during WWI that Canada fought in.  The Battle of Somme, Battle 0f Ypres, Battle of Vimmy ridge were all significant fights that Canada took the lead in.  They were successful in conquering many areas which had Great Britain and France struggling to deal with.  However, life in the war was not all that good.  In propaganda ads, they portrayed fighting in the front lines, glorious, and patriotic.  You would be “serving your country” with honour.  In reality, it was filled with death and destruction, with diseases that plagued through the trenches.  Life back in Cananda was also difficult, they enlisted “soldiers of soil” to increase farming to send to the front lines in Europe.  Not only that, but immigrants also that migrated into Canada were sent into internment camps.  This resulted in families being separated, people being mistreated and much more.  I took interest in this topic and decided to write my keystone 2 paragraph on it.

https://www.craft.me/s/yM1JUlJYa4czWP

For the final keystone, that we would be presenting in the exhibition, I chose to be in the group “Creation Vs Destruction.”  I feel like this really shows what happened during World War I.  Even though there were a lot of new technology used for destruction, there were also some good items such as radios, plastic surgeries, and others.  I used this idea and created a digital slider to contrast the inventions created during the World War I era.  This allowed it to be interactive and interesting to the audience.    Along with it, I wrote out a bunch of paragraphs, listing out each invention in more detail.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this project, it was fun and interesting learning about Canada’s history.  However, if I could go back and do this project again, I feel like I could have improved my final product (digital slider).  As I mentioned within my tPOL, instead of just making one digital slider, I could have made 4 different sliders, that would each fill the four computers that I had.  I feel like this was a missed opportunity because it would have been a lot more interesting and interactive.   Apart from that, I think I’ve had a really successful grade 9 year!

See you next year!

-Chris