The following is an exploration of Birds on a Wire through a narrative on the learning concept of racism.
The New Bird
It was another day on the wire, the pigeons and I were waiting for a street human to drop something or leave something behind so we could swoop down and take it for their selves. They love showing off their prizes to the rest of the group. To be honest, I don’t like hanging out with the other pigeons. They all talk the same, think the same, look the same. They have the same goal as everybody else. To be the Best. It is so tiring to keep looking for new ways to have power. But I stick with them anyway because it’s easier to fly as a flock than to try flying by yourself. Because when you fly by yourself, you have to lookout for other birds. Vicious birds that see you as an easy target. Other birds who want to steal your dinner or nest. So, I stick to the wire that we’re all perched on, quietly wishing I could fly away. Abruptly a new bird, small and about seven different shades of green flew down and perched itself on the same wire as us. This bird was undeniably beautiful. He seemed so unique and full of life. I was about to tell the others we should invite him to perch with us, but they had already seen the new bird. And they did not look happy. Suddenly, a human walking by dropped a French fry from a bag. The biggest pigeons lifted his wings to move but the new bird was already off the wire. In seconds, the bird retrieved the French fry and ate it. For a moment we were all speechless, but then big pigeon got angry. “Hey!” he shouted, “that fry was mine” the new bird was startled “oh I’m sorry” he said in a calm tone I thought it was up for grabs for whoever got to it first.” “Well, you thought wrong! This is our wire, right pigeons?!” “Yeah!” they all shouted. Except for me, I was still to shocked to comprehend what was going on. “You can’t just fly in here and steal our food!” screamed a pigeon “yeah, get off our wire screamed another! “Screamed another, but the new bird paid us no attention, he sat there, concentrating to find more food. Enraged, the pigeons swooped down off the wire taking me with them. We all went back to our nest and all the pigeons started making signs of harmful words and images that would offend the bird. Big pigeon handed me a sign. I didn’t want to take it, but I had to, or I’d be outcasted. We flew back to the wire, all of us against one bird. When we arrived, the pigeons started yelling at the small bird. When the small bird saw us, he looked annoyed and flew away. We looked victorious, but he looked free, and for the first time I noticed that his green wingspan was bigger and more powerful that any pigeon’s.
The novel, “Whirligig” by Paul Fleischman is about a boy named Brent who goes on a journey across America after a fatal car accident in which a girl named Lea passed away. On his journey his personality grows, and he really finds himself. This novel explores interconnectedness, the hero’s journey, unseen forces, restorative justice, and balance. In my DMs of this assignment, I tended to focus more Brent’s journey, how far he had come since the beginning of the book to how he is now. However, I did make references to balance, interconnectedness and how Brent’s whirligig’s may have affected others. In the DMs, Stephanie tells Brent how she appreciates the whirligig because it brought she and her boyfriend together and opened up her mind to new things. I also mentioned self-identity and how Brent’s interests were truly his. At the end of the story, Brent mentioned how he wanted to build a whirligig in every state. My most recent post was of the kickoff of his quest, a Pelican whirligig in Oregon. Brent’s post was fun to make because I got to be creative. Trying to imagine what sixteen almost seventeen ‘try hard’ boy would sound like in an Instagram caption was challenging. I had to think critically because I had to write something that was overconfident, slightly insecure, without being silly. This was not easy and took a bit of time to think about. Although it was difficult, it was fascinating to see the difference in the captions from his first post about the new BMW Z1 to his first whirligig on his big journey. In all, the story gives a great perspective on personality growth and I overall enjoyed the project.
Whirligig novel assignment
To the Honourable George Heyman
Hi, I’m a student from Riverside secondary school. Recently I have done some research on the Squamish nexen plant that closed down just over twenty years ago. I found the information fascinating and a bit disturbing. The goal of the Squamish nexen plant was to extract mercury from the land and waterfronts do make pulp for the paper industry. In doing so, they tore up and took over 5 kilometers of lagoons and a lot of shorelines to extract mercury. They used mercury to manufacture mercury-cell technology that helped make caustic acid and chlorine with was then used to make pulp for the paper industry. The mercury quickly contaminated the area, and it became a hazardous environment for life. I am glad that it is currently shut down, but I do wonder why it was running for so long? And if you were thinking of bringing it back? I do hope that you do not. Wishing you success in your cause.
-N.M
Ask
Finding good guiding questions for this topic was hard because the Squamish nexen plant was up and running twenty years ago so I could not compare anything to the future. I was able to come up with, What would the canada look like if we still used the Squamish nexen plant, but besides that it was hard to think of anything else. So I mainly stuck to facts. one of my questions was what is the Squamish nexen plant, because I had never even heard of it.
Acquire
Gathering information was a bit of a struggle. Because the Squamish nexen plant was long ago, and quite specific I was very limited to my options. I was able to use google, and one article from gale engage. I got pictures from pexels and flickr which turned out great. I tried using topic finder and world book advanced but neither of the search platforms new what it was. Luckily the sites that I did find either gave me a direct answer to my question or a bunch of leading hints to an answer, so I was able to find enough Information to answer my question
Analyze
analyzing my work went pretty smoothly. I cited all my sources that gave me the green light that my information was accurate. And all the texts that I read mostly summarized the same idea of the Squamish nexen plant. What its goal was, why it was dangerous, how it affected the environment and so forth. When words in the text did not make sense, I had to define them, and when I did the text made a lot more sense and I was able to compare one text to another to see if they were similar. using these strategies helped me gain enough information for my questions.
access
I think overall the project could have gone better. I found myself frustrated at some points for even though I found enough information to answer my questions I would have loved to have found more.i think I had this problem because the topic I chose was very specific. it was about a system in Squamish that operated over twenty years ago with one goal. to create pulp. Another reason why I think this was a hard topic to research is that it was a private cite and it was so long ago. That limited me very few pictures and sources. I found myself at some points wondering if I would have information or images. So I think what would help me next time is to choose a subject more focused on the present so I can be more supplied with my sources.