To start off my school year, my class participated in a project where we had to create a podcast episode about why the world needs more Canada. I used the integration of indigenous history as my topic, and I wrote a multi-parapragh response, a script, and recording a podcast episode about it. This project definetly brought me outside of my comfort zone, because I’m not super strong at creative writing. I prefer more logical subjects like math, compared to English. That’s why I was really proud when I finished my essay because I felt like I was able to showcase all the information I found through lots of research. This project in general though helped me feel more confident in my ability to write, and create podcasts.
Literary analysis
To start off our project, we had to do a couple literary analysis, so we can learn how to find meaning in short stories by Canadian authors. This was imporant to our podcasts because we had to tie Canadian literature into our episode and use the meaning of the story to highlight the meaning of our story as well. The story I used was Totem by Thomas King. I thought this was a good story to use because it talked about indigenous identity and its meaning was related towards the oppression of the indigenous voice.Â
Thinking ThursdayÂ
Another small project we did at the start was our Thinking Thursday. We had to create a presentation about an item you saw in the news that tied into Canadian identity. This wasn’t directly used in our podcast but it helped me to understand how to tie in Canadian identity to different topics, which was actually used in my podcast. My Thinking Thursday was about the recent changes to immigration policies in Canada.Â
Essay/Three-act structure
To start off our actual project, we first had to choose a topic and made a thesis statement to go with our topic. This thesis statement was used as the basis of what we would write our essay on. As I said earlier, creative writing is not my strong suite. Even writing this reflection is too much writing for me (joking). The information wasn’t too difficult to find. The government actually has a whole section dedicated towards reconciliation so I was able to use a lot of that to support the points in my essay. After a lot of revisions and edits, I finally made my final copy of my essay. photo
Once we made our entire essay, we then had to turn it into a three-act structure. A three-act structure follows along the lines of having a setup, confrontation and resolution. I really struggled with changing my essay to this new structure because I did not write for my essay to have a specific conflict or resolution. Instead I decided to separate my essay into more of a beginning, middle and end, which only came after consistently questioning my teachers about what to do.
Podcast
The creation of the actual podcast was definitely the most embarrassing part of this project for me. It’s so awkward to listen to your voice in recordings and I had to do that for 5 minutes at a time, multiple times. I had to hide in my closet and try to move to get the best audio, while also yelling at my brother to be quiet. I think this section of the project definitely was helpful, because I know I’ll have to create more podcasts in the future as well.Â
Why does the world need more Canada?
This project helped me step out of my comfort zone and improve my writing and presentation skills, which helped in showing me the importance of sharing our Canadian stories with the world. In an increasingly globalized society, Canada being able to contribute to reconciliation, diversity, and inclusivity are more important than ever. By showcasing these values, Canada can continue to inspire change and progress on a global scale, which is necessary to have a fully equalized society, and have a better understanding of everyone’s history and culture.Â