Hi. Welcome. I’m back. It’s another school year, and I’m in grade 10 now. So far, I’m off to a pretty rough start, and the teachers are pushing us, expecting us to be more mature. It’s only been two months since they last seen us, how are we suppose to magically be more mature in that little span of time. Also, I just have trouble focusing sometimes, so I miss some important things.

There are somethings that are best left out of social study courses, and one of those is learning about politics. This project wasn’t like fully about politics, but it did include it, which sucked. Eh now that I think about it, it was less about politics and more about rights. Still, that was my least favourite and most confusing part of this project. I zoned out a bunch, so I basically missed the whole lesson on it. Another par of this project was about Canadian identity, and what makes it up.

The first things we talked about was the hate crimes that are happening in Canada, the Charter Rights and the concept of a “Just Society”. I think Ms. Madsen, our teacher for this project, lost the hard drive for the slid show, so it got a little delayed. Maybe it wasn’t a hard drive but something happened. It was all really boring, and I didn’t pay attention to any of the stuffs that she said. Luckily, the slide show that she presented was assessable through basecamp. It was such a relieve to know that, because we ended up having to do two assignments based off of the slide show. I would’ve been screwed.

For the next part, we needed to do some research on a chosen topic that connects to Canadian identity. I chose to inquire about scientific achievements of Canada. There was a topic that I would’ve chose, but someone else already chose it. I don’t remember which one it was, I think it was immigrations, but I’m not sure. I’m glad I decided not to choose immigrations though, because I feel like researching scientific achievements is a much better fit for me. I really like science, like really like it. So inquiring about the achievements that Canada has made would make it more fun.

But first, we did a lot of practice on asking questions, asking the need to knows in order to become an expert in our research. We did a practice run on the identity of Canadian women. We didn’t do any research on it, but we did come up with our NTKs. We learned how to ask more specific and deeper questions that can guide us along the way when we do research. When it was time to do se search on the topic that we chose, I was fully prepared and I knew what I was going to do. I learned some really interesting things along the way, and I just feel like I chose the right topic to research. There were so many things, and I had a lot of fun.

At the end of the project, we got introduced to a concept of a human library. This may sounds strange or confusing, and believe me, I was really confused at the start as well, but it’s actually a pretty neat concept. Let me explain it to you. It’s basically a place where you can safely talk about things with another person. It’s just like having a conversation. I don’t know its hard to explain, but it you want to learn more about it, then click here.

Anyways, we hosted our own human library event and the teacher wanted us to bring at least one book with us. I think maybe only half of the class brought a “book” (a person who will share their story). We had some trouble picking a date and time for this, but we managed. Even then, some people still couldn’t make it. They will have their own little human library event. The day wasn’t the best for me though. I was free, but it was on a Thursday, which is one of the few days when all my friends are free to hang out.

The books that we brought has to have a unique or different experience from others. I brought my mom, because we moved here from China 7 years ago. She grew up there, and is a different race from people here, so I thought she would be the perfect one to bring. On the day of the event, we got assigned some roles to do in preparation of the event. There were people who design the layout of the library, people who made name tags, etc. I got to be the one who made the roles and expectations. It didn’t take too long to make, so I had some free time at the end of class.

After school, I stayed to help set up the library. It took us a while, but we managed to finish setting it up just before the guests started arriving.