If I asked you to describe hope on the spot, would you be able to? This was exactly how we started our most recent project, along with describing the word’s components; resilience, survival and adversity. This was not however the only part of our project, in fact, our final task would be to assess stories of adversity, identify components of hope within them and define the lessons and inspiration that we can draw from them in the form of a video. 

“What lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity?”

 

After defining each word through various case studies, we put our knowledge to the test in the form of a blog post. This allowed me to also get a sense as to what my thesis statement for my final product would be (ie. answer to the driving question). From the post, I made my answer to be that these four words are apart of human nature, that hope is like a breath of fresh air and that stories of hope are proof to other individuals that the adversity you face in your lifetime is a key component to reaching a kind, grateful, happy and resilient persona. I was quite proud of my post as I always do my best to put my best writing and thought into our projects. I defined each word, answered the driving question and included connections between what I already knew and what I had learned in this project so far. 

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to talk about my family friend, Mary Jo, as her story of hope has inspired many and allowed her to succeed in everything she has set her mind to. This allowed me to have a solid plan and pitch for my video as well as leave room for other topics that we would learn more about on our field school to the south of the United States. 

In my pitch and plan, I included my inspiration that stuck with me from the beginning of this project as defining hope as a feeling rather than a thing, like a breath of fresh air. I also included three thesis statement options, from which I ended up combining two of them. Finally, from observing previous videos that displayed stories of tragedy and hope, I knew I wanted a ‘dramatizing’ aspect, whether it have been the music volume dropping or my tone of voice,  because I knew that these would make the resolutions and aspects of hope even stronger. I also had the goal of speaking the least amount possible to allow the interviewees to lead it and make a greater impact to the audience – no narrator, but a narrative. However, I would have to speak to introduce topics, make connections, my conclusion as well as whatever needed to be said to allow for the video to flow more naturally. 

We saw a lot of excellent examples of hope, adversity and resilience on our trip, in fact if I could, I would have used several examples and interviews from all of the places we went to. However, that was not possible due to having a five minute time limit on our final video. On top of including Mary Jo’s personal story I knew that I wanted to talk about Lyndon B. Johnson and Thanks-Giving Square, and wound up sticking to that plan when I began editing because I knew exactly how I was going to do it.

While editing my video, I wanted to make sure my video sounded great even with just the audio, so I made sure to switch between my voice, the interviewees voice and the music, quite often to keep the listeners engaged. However, I knew that my image had to be strong as well, and I hoped to make the audience feel as though they were presently living in their stories. To include my inspiration from the beginning of ‘hope being like a breath of fresh air’, I made sure to take as many clips of trees, plants and flowers as I could to show whenever I talked about hope in my film. 

Hope and resilience is a part of human nature, and the stories of these individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity can allow us to gain perspective on our own struggles and challenges by helping us find the strength we need to keep going.

When it came to the final product, I intertwined the stories of Mary Jo and LBJ while including interviews from Mary Jo and a staff member from the LBJ Library and close by saying that anyone can have hope and resilience, and that you don’t need to be a particular type of person, evidenced by Thanks-Giving Square, a place for anyone to gain hope, resilience, gratitude or whatever they may need to overcome their life situations. 

I am quite happy with my performance in this project, I crafted my video to be at a sophisticated level and even when I was not conducting interviews at certain locations during our trip, I was always keeping notes of aspects of hope that I could find in each location we went to. I had several ideas from the beginning of this project that would have allowed me to help answer the driving question and was able to support them with the research and experience in a new place and culture. From this, I was able to find deep connections between what I already knew and what I learned, as well as allow that evidence to support a great thesis statement. I have always enjoyed being able to see what we talk about in our projects in my everyday life, and this project was certainly was one of them. My class and I went to the south of the U.S. to study stories of hope, however, hope is all around us. It could even be the tree in your front yard, as the wildlife around us has had to withstand the effects of climate change caused by human kind. Yet, they still supply us with ‘breaths of fresh air’. 

“We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel was a song that came out in 1989, the year the singer turned forty years old. This song included brief references to 118 significant events that happened from his year of birth (1949) to the present day (1989). These events represented the issues facing the world, but particularly American society and the conflicts and issues that continue to “burn” to this day. Our task in this project was essentially to pick one of the said events and gain immense knowledge on it to the extent that we can teach a lesson on the topic to the whole class as well as create a lesson plan, web page and educational video. 

“How do we make choices about what is worth remembering?”

Not knowing much about her aside from the basic stereotypes, I chose Marilyn Monroe. I wanted to learn about the things that made her more than just a pretty face as well as her appeal that led her to impact American pop-culture to this day. Out of the other topics chosen by my class, Marilyn was the earliest, meaning that I would be the first to present to the class. I knew this going in but it didn’t bother me as it would allow me to go out of my comfort zone which meant that I could live up to the goals set in my learning plan. Plus by getting it done early on, I got the bonus of having more time to focus on improving my lesson plan and web page afterwards. 

When it came to the lesson we not only had to present, but teach to the class which was something I had never done before. In doing so, we had to come up with activities and videos to keep our peers engaged, but make sure they also walk away with an understanding as to the topic’s historical significance. Another challenge to keep in mind was making the lesson possible for other teachers to follow it as well as teach to their students. My lesson started off with a whiteboard activity where the class would write down anything that came to mind when they thought of Marilyn Monroe, which went exactly how I wanted it to; they were filled with  stereotypes and things that had to do with her appearance. My goal for the lesson was to not only teach about Monroe’s significance as to how she’s impacted the fashion and movie industry, but the fact that she was even more popular due to the aspects of her personality that made her “more than just a pretty face”. Aspects such challenging the status quo by starting her own production company and being an activist for gay and civil rights which was something pretty rare at the time.

The rest of my webpage included several things: a paragraph assessing Marilyn’s historical significance, a video guiding you through the webpage and also assessing her significance, the lesson plan, a timeline that includes significant dates, an authentic quote by someone I interviewed and MLA citations of all the sources used. So yes, it was quite the web page. Although, my one disappointment from this project was not being able to get as great of an authentic quote as I had hoped. I contacted about five museums and experts but unfortunately got nothing back. I wound up interviewing my grandma who was alive at the time but lived in Canada, which didn’t have the same effect as someone living in the United Staties but was unfortunately my closest connection that I had to Marilyn. Other than that, I was quite happy with how everything else turned out. My webpage was eye-appealing, easy to follow, had visuals, included many extension opportunities and several sources. 

I took on several flex opportunities this project by going to tutorial times when I needed it and always asking for feedback to make my assignments better. My goal for our next  project is to extend my creativity by coming up with more of the ideas to improve my project. To do so, I would make sure I have a great understanding of the teacher’s expectations from the very beginning. I was quite fond of having the flexibility to choose from such different topics as it meant that we could chose something that we were genuinely interested in, which led to each and every one of our presentations being super interesting and engaging. I particularly enjoyed doing research on Monroe and watching a couple of her most popular movies, but it was still saddening to learn about her tragic death and how she’s been sexualized over the years. This movie star, signer, model and business woman is known world-wide and still continues to inspire celebrities, costume and clothes designers. Despite having passed away over sixty years ago, Marilyn Monroe continues to be relevant and talked about to this day, which says a lot about her significance in itself. 

What has happened to the word “feminist”? In this day it’s somehow used as an insult, but let’s not forget what it’s true meaning is. Feminism means to have equal rights and opportunities for all genders. Without feminism, we would still be living in a world where women didn’t have the right to vote, to own their own property or even have jobs the same way as men. That being said, there is still work to be done, which is why people of all ages should still be educated and shown that history is not to repeat itself and we are only to move forward. In this project, we created children’s books to get younger generations interested and educated in the concept. 

How do we encourage children to support women’s rights?

As this project was a bit on the shorter side, we were quick to chose our book topics after having a few lectures on suffrage and the second, third and fourth waves of feminism. Ciara, Holly and I were inspired by the book on David Bowie by the “Little People, Big Dreams” series. We decided to make our book about Gloria Steinem’s life who was a nationally recognized leader in particularly the second wave of feminism. We were soon to realize how it was a lot tougher than it seemed to simplify her life, as well as breakdown complex topics such as abortion. 

Our first step was to create a storyboard. We decided to focus our story primarily on women’s healthcare, because Gloria’s experience with undergoing an abortion at a young age and her mother being mistreated in the hospital due to her mental illness were some of the biggest reasons she decided to become an activist. Obviously we couldn’t state abortion by name in the book, but considering it as healthcare made almost the same impact. 

As a class, we watched The Taming of the Shrew and 10 Things I Hate About You to come up with an answer as to how women are depicted in literature across time, and why it’s important to have strong representations of women. Meg and I agreed that it’s important to have positive representations of women, because it allows children to see that women are strong and independent. However, a positive representation doesn’t always necessarily mean a woman that doesn’t want to get married or have kids, or fit into what you call a “stay-at-home mom”. We compared the two Disney stories of Merida from Brave and Rapunzel from Tangled. Merida wanted to rule her family’s clan by herself and without a man she was forced to marry. Rapunzel did fall in love and get married in the end, yet she was still a strong and independent woman that was curious to see and experience the world. Thus, a strong representation of a woman isn’t restricted to one representation. In fact, the more the better, as it allows children to see that they could be whatever they want.

In the end, we presented our books to a kindergarten class at a nearby elementary school. The book was well-received by the children and they quote-on-quote “loved everything” about it. Although I wish my drawing skills were a lot better, the message was the most important part. Children at that age may still have trouble understanding the concept of feminism, but our book certainly depicted a strong woman that did a lot for the world in terms of equality and I hope that they were able to realize that. 

Hello and welcome to my first blog post on PGP in a long time. This project has been themed around self-improvement, which has provided me with a lot of useful tips and advice that I will incorporate now and into my future. Tips such as making great resumes, listening to guest speakers about their career and university life, and reading books that promote the art of self-improvement. In this project, we were tasked to chose a book in the “self-help” genre, create an artifact to represent it and present it to the other grade 12s at our school. 

What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship?

I decided to read “The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking”, a book that arguably gives you the ultimate key to success in anything and everything. I was quite fond of the book for the most part, and had quite a few takeaways that I’ll certainly remember for a long time. One piece of advice that I took back came from the element called “following the flow of ideas”. This described an ability to step back in your thoughts, and come up with a number of ideas and themes that you want to ensure are addressed in your essay. Only once you have determined these ideas, you start to craft the essay. This allows you to come up with a good essay, perhaps even better, in a faster amount of time. 

Now before even starting to read the book, we were tasked to create author biographies, which actually allowed me to make more sense of the contents of the book. It was written by Michael Starbird and Edward Burger, both of which who are professors in mathematics but who’s witty personalities even come out in their writing. Edward is CEO of the St David’s Foundation that advocates for health equity in central Texas, and Michael is chair of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers and uses his position to advocate for the use of inquiry-based learning methods. This shows how much they truly care about making a difference in the world, outside of forming the young minds of students. I believe this knowledge also contributed to more success when it came to my final presentation, as the audience could tell how much I truly knew about the book and the authors. 

I decided to base my artifact off of a metaphor that the authors mention in the book. They argue that using the 5 elements allows you to think with your “eyes open”, which essentially means excelling to your full potential. These elements are meant to make your life easier with very little additional work, as doing any task with your eyes open is much easier than doing it with your eyes closed. To represent this metaphor I created two boards, one titled “eyes open” and another “eyes closed”. I asked the audience to pick one of the elements from a list and write it down with their eyes closed and then again with their eyes open. By the end of the presentation, I expected to have a board that was very messy and disorganized, and another that was much better looking. This outcome would support the author’s argument in a simple and engaging way as well as hopefully get a few audience members interested in the concept. 

In the end, the execution of my artifact and presentation was quite successful. The audience was generally engaged in my presentation and thoroughly enjoyed seeing how badly they could write with their eyes closed. I not only made it fun and interactive, but had great knowledge and evidence to back up the metaphor it represented, which allowed me to have insightful conversations with audience members including teachers. Finally, I was happy that I was able to establish a personal connection to each assignment and activity, as I believe that it is an essential pathway to success in the course. I always brought things back to my “calling in life”, and how I hope to affect the world through my future career aspirations in the form of healthcare. The book I read expressed that success is not something you attain, it’s something you’re constantly aiming for and this a piece of advice that will certainly allow me to move forward with lifelong learning. 

“Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

Hello all and welcome to my very last tPOL…eeeek. It is truly nerve-racking to think that this time next year I’ll be graduating, but let’s get onto this presentation shall we? 

I want to begin this tPOL with the goals I set in my mPOL earlier this school year. My first goal was that of Communicating which meant that by the end of the year, I wanted to feel more comfortable and confident while speaking in front of others. Around the time of my mPOL, I would get excessively nervous before and while I had to speak in front of others. Now…I still get excessively nervous. However, there were still ways that I actually improved in this competency. Coming into this project that we just completed for the spring exhibition, there were two opportunities in which heavily included speaking – Socratic Seminars and presenting our products at the exhibition. 

Looking back at the Socratic Seminars that were held the semester before, I hardly spoke if anything not at all. On the other hand, I had spoken much more when it came to the set of Socratic Seminars held in this project. This is because I put in the effort to make myself feel much more prepared before the seminars. I decided that I would not only heavily review my notes on the text,
but do additional research as well as read analyses made on the films. Doing such made me feel much more sure about what I had to say, making me therefore feel more confident. This also applies to presenting my portrait at the spring exhibition as I had done extensive research on my Community Impact Maker which was well received by those that I was presenting to.

My next goal was in regards to Collaboration – using leadership skills in a group context that fit best with my strengths and weaknesses as well as taking on leadership roles more often. I believe that the spring exhibition is a good example of how my leadership skills have grown. The “Service” group in which I was in was only working together for about a week, which is what made working as a team very important. I took on a leading role in this group, but that didn’t just mean I was telling everyone what to do. I was aware that one of my biggest strengths is organization, so my priority was to make sure that we were getting everything done and staying on task.

This school year, I’ve ultimately gained a new understanding for the term “leadership” and have started to apply it to actual projects. Being the “leader” of a group project doesn’t just mean you’re bossing people around, it means that you are ensuring every member gets their ideas in. The final execution is not only limited to the leader’s own vision, and the leader should strive to bring the people and ideas together because everyone needs to collaborate. Where I really think I’ve represented this was in the Spring Exhibition because I used my strengths to my advantage which lead to the success of my group’s area. *

My number one objective for next year is to finish my last year of PLP with no regrets, I’m also applying this to every other aspect of my life. I did however have one primary regret from this school year, the Macbeth production. We started this project after I had finished my mPOL with the goals I stated earlier in Collaboration and Communication. In this production I could’ve participated in either by taking on a big role in a department or taking on an acting role. I unfortunately did neither which lead me to highly regretting the ends of this project. I consider this to be my F.A.I.L of the school year, but now I know that it won’t happen again. 

Another lesson that I learned from this school year came from the Manhattan Project Project and Winter Exhibition. I took a risk in having my project’s topic to do with the effect of chemo therapy. I later realized that it was perhaps too sensitive, personal and sometimes even tragic to talk about especially in a exhibition setting. Presenting to others during the exhibition became very uncomfortable and I came to regret both my topic and art choice. Although I regret it, it was a huge learning experience for me. 

Now onto something I feel I should celebrate. Obviously, I felt my Spring Exhibition went successfully but I also consider the Playlist of My Life project to be quite worth celebrating. Although a short project, the Playlist of My Life showcased the best of my skills in text analysis. I was able to naturally integrate poetic devices as well as describe my connection to the songs in perfect detail. Most importantly, I went deeply into my own interpretation of the meaning behind each song – well explained and found as interesting by my peers. 

If you look back at where I was at in grade 8, coming out of an entirely french school in which I was “learning” english as a second language – my writing wasn’t all the greatest. Now I’ve improved immensely and have finally gotten to the same level as my peers. 

Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade level? On the outside I’m not, in fact I’m terrified to start grade 12 next year just like any other high-schooler. However, on the inside I feel as though I have adapted to a senior level of education in humanities. I have well developed skills in text analysis as well as in persuasive writing. I’ve improved my leadership skills and broken “speech related barriers”. Finally, I’ve finally started to find my voice when it comes to my blog posts. Blog posts aren’t particularly meant to be as formal as a traditional essay, so I’ve always carried that kind of mentality with me – which has allowed me to better express my personality through the media and writing used in posts. Through that, I’ve found how I’d like to represent myself to those viewing my university applications – because this is ultimately what the purpose of my learning portfolio has been all these years. *