Month: June 2020

TPOL 2020

Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade? Why did I feel I was ready to advance to the next grade last year? Or the year before? Definitely not my spelling, or my grammar. My writing has become better, but that isn’t the only reason I should advance to the next grade, is it?

Hopefully this video makes it clear what it is.

If you chose not to watch the video, saving me some humiliation, I would like to talk about something I came upon when creating a time capsule video for this TPOL. Which I am keeping tucked away safe, because this TPOL has already been too humiliating. This concept that I strolled across, is the concept of school being fun. We all “hate” school. Who wants to do work? No one, thats who. But recently I have been receiving a lot of  recognition for my work, and it made me think, why have I all of a sudden found this sweet spot of work, where I work hard, but homework doesn’t control me, and where I get recognized. I pondered this, and I realized that the only answer that I could come up with was that school is enjoyable, so any work load isn’t something that makes me uncomfortable, and this also explains why I can put my best work forwards.

“Its just…. It’s fun. Learning is fun, and I think that thats the biggest thing I should always remember. Is that, if learnings not fun, I’m doing it wrong. And that I just need to stay realizing that growing the understanding and the education that I already have is a pleasure, and its a privilege. And I think thats what I’ve been able to see this year, and I think thats why I should advance to grade 12.” – Quote from me. from my time capsule for this 2020 TPOL.

 

via GIPHY

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The Scottish Play

I barley remember that we were even in school at one point anymore. Though things are clearing up, and things are beginning to go back to normal, I still cant believes that we’ve been learning from home for 3 months. Time travels fast when your not doing anything, I guess. Anyway Macbeth, thats what I’m here to talk about. So if anyone has ever told you about Macbeth, theres this curse that should also be mentioned. Now to preface this, I don’t know if I believe in curses personally, but there is definitely something I believe in about this play. The previous grade to attempt this jaw dropping stunt, that is recreating Macbeth but in a different era, incorporating history from the era into the play, was the now second year university students when they were in grade 11. Simpler to say 3 years a ago. As part of our class we watched their final product, and to be blatant, it grew our ego’s. It was a work in progress to put it nicely. Apparently they had lost the camera chip that everything had been filmed on, and I believed that more and more as the project went on. Here’s the backstage clip I could find of it.

Now after watching it we knew our grade, jam packed full of hard working individuals, could do better. And in the preliminary rounds, we did. But all of a sudden we weren’t doing so good. Our final product ended up looking like the previous attempt, just instead of the war, it was the dramatic and twisted 50’s. So this long and elaborate blog post will take you through the ups and downs to how we ended up with a video with blank title screens reading “In the classroom.” Too start I would like to let you guys watch the video, give it a good watch and realize our potential to make the movie great.

Now alike the group that attempted this feat before us, we failed, but due to something that was out of our control. Covid 19 hit, and it hit us hard. All of a sudden its a week before the end of school (for spring break) and everyone is sooooo excited to get some sun, or to escape the classroom, when word starts traveling about how so-and-so’s trip was just cancelled, and how you realize that that sucks, but it won’t happen to you, you think.

So the teachers were in Vietnam and Cambodia. Yup. Thats right. In the height of the pandemic, my teachers were in Asia. So we had a sub, and we were puttering along in our work, we hit a few bumps with certain actors/actresses not being able to attend certain filming days, but we got through that. We even had a plan to film a whole bunch of scenes after spring break because Macbeth got sick,(which in the lead up to a pandemic its a good idea to stay home.) So we banked on the week after spring break to shoot all the shots we were missing. Little did we know that there wouldn’t be a “week after spring break” that we could film in. That maybe there wouldn’t be a week like that for a long time. After spring break, and we all realized that we wouldn’t be able to finish the movie, we gave what we had to the editors and they crafted the video linked above up for everyones viewing, which I have to admit is pretty incredible. (Also check out this video that Luca Jacoe made because its awesome.)

IMG_6692

They took some very random shots, and turned it into something better. I felt like the whole story about Covid interrupting our filming is a good image of the Macbeth curse. The Macbeth curse was something felt by many members of theatre as well as people of the audience. Things like fires in theatres, or strange lighting incidents, more major (though I dont quite know if true) include deaths from actors attempting to act in Macbeth, and so I think its funny that the past 2 times a PLP group has tried to recreate Macbeth, we have failed.

Now enough chat about failure, lets talk about what happened before we torpedoed. Right from the beginning.

Too start this unit we were tasked with answering in our own way, “Why Shakespeare?”

I honestly did a lot of research for this question, and I remember my theory being ripped to shreds in class, so obviously I didn’t quite know why shakespeare. What I left with is that Shakespeare alone created 1700 words in the english dictionary. And his plays help us to figure out what life was like back in the 1500-1600’s. After we had a understanding about what Ms. Willemse wanted us to take from the book, we began to read the book/play. We read the book through this app that made it so we were reading the acts, but we could also watch a video depicting what the scene would look like in play form, which really helped to digest the information. While we were reading the play we were also learning about the 1950’s, and to prove that we were actually absorbing information we were tasked with writing TWIL’s. TWIL stands for This Week I Learned, and when writing your TWIL you had to connect Macbeth, with the 1950’s. Here are my 3 posts I made about my connections to both topics.

Post 1 – http://www.blog44.ca/adlihb/2020/01/25/this-week-i-learned/

Post 2 – http://www.blog44.ca/adlihb/2020/02/03/this-week-i-learned-week-2/

Post 3 – http://www.blog44.ca/adlihb/2020/02/10/1740/

As well as posts we also wrote quests, (quiz and test combined). Our quests sort of forced us to look deeper in the book and realize what other meaning lay hidden within all the most important quotes. So in our quests we were given 3 quotes from the text we had read following that quest, and we had to tell Ms. Willemse, who said the quote, where in the plot the quote happened, and connect it to a theme. It sounded simpler then it was, because the second I got in there, I personally forgot everything to do with theme which sucked a lot.   

After we had accomplished all the preliminary tasks, we began the actual film. The first task was to apply for a position in the film, which did not include acting. Roles like Editor, Production Manager, and Costume Design, all fell into line. In the end Alivia was the Producer, Jesse was the Screenwriter, and Giorgia was the Director. These roles were at the top of the pyramid, so I mentioned them here, but I think it goes without saying that everyone else who worked on the film was equally important. Once roles had been assigned (Ahm Ahm Line Producer) we began the actual journey to the film. My role in the film production was very background. I made call sheets, and a lot of them. This is an example of a call sheet.

Basically all a Line Producer does is remind people of what scenes are being filmed where, and what needs to be there, and who needs to be there. So I personally think I was a very boss line producer, making sure that everyone could be where they needed to be at all times. I even sent out email’s to everyone reminding them of their filming days, like this one.

 

After all of this, spring break arrived, and I already tried to sell you on the curse, so I think my work here is done. All in all this project was fun. I enjoyed the freedom of having the leaders for the project be students and I think we benefitted immensely from that. I know that the teachers will always nag us about how we never finished Macbeth, but I think personally that we did all the heavy lifting. We learned so much from that project, with or without the final product. 

Thanks for reading guys!

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Atomic Habits

Recently PGP 11 has been working on a project to exemplify our understanding of the Atomic Habits book, written by James Clear. The guidelines of the project are as follows, (also in the photo below).

You had to pick something to think about such as a certain habit, a summary of all the habits or even some research into the graphic that interested you. After you chose a think item you had to pick a way to show your understanding, the two chooses offered were to make a video and the other was to create a tool to help you understand and use the think time that you choose. There was a third option that was “your choice” as well. Now once you’ve created an item you have publish it to your learning portfolio and explain it, and I choose the option to include how I am going to move forward with Atomic Habits.

This graphic will really help explain what the process was to choose a project that exemplified my work with Atomic Habits. For anyone who doesn’t know what I mean when I am talking about Atomic Habits, I wrote a separate blog post about it that I will link here! And if you would like a brief understanding of Atomic Habits then your in the right place as I was just about to depart on one. 

Atomic Habits was given to my class around November/December 2019, and we had to read it before school came back in January after Christmas break. As time went by I started to realize that my time was running out to read a book that would create so much time for me, the irony was too evident. I had poked and prodded at the book in December but I hadn’t made any real progress, during winter break though I really sat down and started to read. And I personally think that you have to consume all of this book in a small amount of time, unlike other books where you can leave it on the shelf, and read as you please. So I followed my own idea about how to read the book, and I read it all in like 6 days. After I finished I was like “ok, now I’m done. I can go read something else.” As in, I had no emotions towards the book, I just considered it another school book. Now it stayed that way for quite some time, really just until I picked it up for this project did I realize what information I had actually been using this whole time. To prove this point, the week before this project I had been telling my brother about the Valley Of Disappointment, he was talking about his cooking I think, and I had been telling about how I can make waffles (the only thing I can make) without a recipe, and he said that he wasn’t any good at cooking. So a little light came on in my head and I remembered this graph about where you wish you could be and where you are, so I told him about it, and since he’s a 14 kid, I don’t think it actually sank in, but it helped him to realize that just because he couldn’t make waffles like moi (the master) didn’t mean he couldn’t make them, and that one day he would be able to make them without a recipe as well. 

More then just the valley of disappointment stayed with me, (like how your environment impacts your habits, that’s really cool) but for the project I decided to focus on the first chapter of Atomic Habits. In this chapter James Clear goes over a few things like the 1% better every day graph (still don’t understand that), he also talks about a few points that are probably some of the most important in the book. The argument I have prepared for this point is that without these points the rest of the book doesn’t stick. “The fundamentals” is what the chapter is called. In this chapter James Clear discusses 4 problems that he has found with goals and habits in general. For my story I chose to exemplify all of these points. (These points are really hidden, but they’re there.) His problems are as follows: 

  • “Problem #1: Winners and losers have the same goals.”
  • “Problem #2: Achieving a goal is only momentary change.”
  • “Problem #3: Goals restrict your happiness.”
  • “Problem #4: Goals are at odds with long-time progress.”

Excerpt From Atomic Habits

Here’s my final project

I choose to show these problems through the lens of 2 young girls. The main character (who if you’ve noticed remains nameless) is a want to be pro swimmer. She joins a swim team without the proper swim tests and when she gets there she realizes that this swim team isn’t like the other ones that’s she’s been on, and she realizes that she isn’t going to become a pro swimmer because she isn’t as good as the other girls. So the main character leaves, and back at school her and her friend, Breonna (who is on the swim team) discuss what the main character is feeling, and that’s how atomic habits gets brought up. I found the connection that the girls made between atomic habits to the swim team to make the connection clearer to me. In the sense that the girls didn’t need the biggest goals ever to use the book to their advantage. They just needed to strive for something. 

One last point before I’m done here, is that the main character doesn’t have a name because I connect to her so much that I would read it as me. And I think that if you read it as you, then it’s you. I found that writing through the lens of others helped me to understand myself, what my goals actually are and what these problems that James Clear created actually mean. So without further a due, please read the short story, and tell me what you think. 

Thanks for reading 

Adlih

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