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

This project we learned all about the Holocaust through many different ways and eventually created a product about a certain Upstander. This project taught me quite a bit about the Holocaust in many different ways which enhanced my understanding of the event. Before this project I would say I knew some information about the Holocaust but not a lot. I mainly knew in detail about the “Holocaust by bullets” due to my interest in WW2 from the Russian perspective. However, I think this project was really informative and should be taught to every student to hopefully prevent anything similar from happening in the future. 

Free write:

We did a free write to kick off the project about the impact of stories. Admittedly, my free write was not the best however, I think I was able to improve with the second try. I really liked this exercise due to it focusing on us getting something on the page and than making better. If I were going to do this activity again I would attempt to get critique on my writing process and learn from that feedback. 

Holocaust Learned Activities:

I really enjoyed how throughly we learned about the Holocaust through multiple different mediums. We read articles and timelines on what happened and why it happened in the first place. We got stories from witnesses and a presentation from a previous PLP teacher who’s family was impacted by the Holocaust. All these diverse mediums helped us in my opinion have picture of what happened and the impact it had on victims and their decedents. Overall, how we learned about the Holocaust helped me to have a better understanding of the Holocaust from multiple different perspectives and experiences. 

Reading Maus:

For this project, we were tasked with reading the book Maus. This book is about a comic artist who interviews is father about his experience in the Holocaust. This book uses anthropomorphic animals as characters to showcases the Nazis’ racists belief. This book I would say is quite good and I would recommend to anyone who likes good book or comic books. The art is quite good and I was quite impressed by how the artist drew his comic panels. I think I did an overall good job taking notes on the book and making sure I do not make too many notes. In general, I would say that Maus was quite good and I enjoyed the reading process. 

Symposium 

Near the end of our project our class went to the Holocaust Symposium at UBC. In this symposium we got to hear a lecture from a professor of 20th century German history, a panel with a Holocaust survivor, and a video about a filmmakers relationship with his grandmother who survived the Holocaust. Overall, it was a very informative experience and I’m very grateful that I had a chance to go. 

Literary Critique Essay:

After we completed reading Maus, we were tasked with doing a literary critique on Maus. For mine, I chose to do a physiological analysis of the father of the main a character, Vladek. Writing this essay was a bit difficult for me due to having a surgery during the time of writing. However, I think I did a good job creating a well researched essay and accepting and seeking out feedback from my teacher. This essay show me how I needed to practice more writing skills in the future.

Upstander: 

For the final product of this project, we had to research on a Upstander and showcase how they supported human rights. I decided to do mine on civil rights activist Malcolm X since I wanted to learn more about him. Right after I was approved, I dived into research and learned a lot about Malcolm X and the black civil rights movement in America. If I were to do this project again, I would try to do less research since 70% of my research did not get included in the final product due it making it too long. I particularly wanted to try to make a video since I wanted to try out some video editing due to not doing a for a while. If I were going to do this project again, I would try to create more visuals for my video. I feel as though my video is bit sparse for visuals and in the future I would like to use new and exciting editing techniques. 

This project showed us how we can understand complex historical events that affected millions of people. Through this project we were able to see how different people were impacted by the Holocaust which made our understanding much more rich. Overall, this project help us to somewhat understand issues that can be too difficult to comprehend.