“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.”

As the first half of the school year comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on my progress as a student and thinking about how I can continue to grow and improve in the second half of the year. Despite being a good student, I have a few flaws that I think are holding me back from reaching my full potential. I have a tendency to get distracted easily, especially when I am working on something that doesn’t interest me, and I often find it hard to stay motivated when things got tough.

One of my biggest weaknesses as a student is getting distracted in class. I often find myself getting caught up in my own thoughts or getting sidetracked by things happening around me, and this can make it hard for me to focus on the lesson at hand. In the second half of the year, I want to work on overcoming this distraction and becoming a more focused and attentive student. One way I can do this is by setting specific goals for myself, such as paying attention for a certain amount of time or taking notes on a certain number of pages. By setting these goals and working to achieve them, I can stay motivated and stay on track.

Another area where I want to improve is in my motivation and focus when faced with difficult situations or subjects that I am not interested in. It can be easy to get discouraged when things get tough, and I have found myself struggling to stay motivated in these situations. However, I know that these are also opportunities for me to grow and learn, and I want to be able to embrace them as such. In the second half of the year, I plan to work on developing a more positive mindset and finding ways to stay motivated even when things get tough. This might involve setting goals, finding ways to make the material more engaging, or seeking support from my classmates or teachers.

However, the mPols are not only a time for critique and development, but also a time for celebration of all the great learning and understanding I’ve gained and to reflect on what Im proud of. 

Unfortunately I’ve only had 1 PLP course this semester; Humanity’s. Despite this, I think that I still have enough evidence of my learning to back up my growth this semester. At the start of the year, when I filled out the infamous learning plan, I set my goals high. I mean, If your not gonna set your goals high, than your pretty much setting yourself up for mediocrity, and this is obviously detrimental to ones growth especially if you know you can achieve more than your comfort zone. 

Yes, Extending is a big goal for me. Extending means pushing yourself and your work above the call of duty, going the extra mile, and demonstrating your understanding in a unique and special way, unlike the norm. I knew meeting this goal wouldn’t be easy for me. I couldn’t coast into class and expect to just meet it because I said I would. If you want an extra exceptional grade, you have to put in extra exceptional work. 

The first project in humanity’s that we did was “Gold Digger”. A very literary project, we had to write a fictional story about a made up character living in 19th century British Colombia, the age of Gold. With the History of the BC Gold Rushes at the centre of the project, which I already had a bit of background knowledge in. I’ve never been strong literary so I knew my greatest challenge would be the creation of the story. After a long time brainstorming I had a decent plot for my story. However, once I got to writing, I was sloppy and rushed. I switched between past tense and present tense over and over again because I couldn’t decide on whether the story took place in the present or in the past. This would bite me in the butt later on. I handed this in feeling ok with my work. Not satisfied, but okay. I knew I had switched up the tenses, but honestly, I didn’t really care, and I learned that “not caring” was another weakness of mine. I hate to admit it, but its true. What grade did I receive for not changing  what I thought was a “minor detail that wouldn’t really be noticed”?

An Accomplished. To some people, this grade is acceptable, alright, “good enough” but this wasn’t the grade I set for myself at the start of the year and by me, this was not acceptable. Do I think it was the bare minimum? No, I think it was a high accomplished, but thats still not Extending. 

Fast forward to next project. Ology of apology where we had to apologize for the racist atrocities of 20th Century Canada. Despite me never hearing about the event I had to present (the Komagata Maru), this project was right up my alley. We got to build things and use technology to create graphic designs and I let my creative mind run wild. First we had to create a manually automated slideshow about the story of our event using pieces of evidence that had historical significance to the story. When I say I put everything, I put everything into this slideshow. I made it just how I imagined it to be. This work, I was really proud of. And as they say, hard work pays off because that beautiful rainbow emoji was worth every second spent on this keystone (lots of seconds) 

I felt like I was on a roll, so I kept this momentum going. Our second keystone was to write a letter about why and how our event was atrocious using our evidence that we included in our slideshows. I felt like I wrote a very well structured letter and put a lot of thought into grammar mistakes that I neglected in the first project and also extended beyond my regular vocabulary by using a thesaurus. Another Extending. 

But to me, the only grade that really matters is the final grade. This shows your final proficiency and your progress though-out the project. You could get a developing for the first keystone and an extending for the last, and this shows your growth through the project.

This was also a special project because it would be presented for all to see at the PLP Winter Exhibition. We had to create a monument that related to our project and a theme of avatar. We were all put into groups of 3 and each member of our group was researching a different topic (Cale, Xander and I)so we had to connect Chinese head tax, Komagata Maru, and Japanese Internment to a chosen theme of avatar which was imperialism. If connecting 1 wasn’t already hard enough, we had to connect all 3. Again with the momentum I had built, I wanted to really extend myself, so the day after we were given notice that we would be building these monuments, I went to Dollarama and bought $30 worth of materials for my envision. It was a bold design and I honestly had no idea if it was going to work, but I had to try because I really believed in my idea. Here’s a fast forward look to the final product. 

The idea of the pice was supposed to be the three boats representing the 3 immigrant groups coming to Canada as the boats they would have come on but also representing their hopes and dreams of a new life, sinking and fading away. The puddle in a sidewalk (if you couldn’t tell) was an analogy to how the Canadian government treated those groups. Like toy boats sinking in a puddle. 

As far as quality of work goes, I think that the unique touch of water for the puddle, instead of engineering some cheap workaround or alternatively shows an extending level quality of work. The attention to detail for the sidewalk is clear. Every single “crack” was painted and thought out with the moss in the cracks bringing it all together and making look like an actual sidewalk. 

I was extremely content with this project. A lot of work, thought, designing and purpose was put into it. And if you put in extending, you get out extending 

I started to see something I hadn’t seen before in humanities and that I wish it didn’t take me this long to really cement in my mindset.  

The extra effort you put into projects gives you the results you want. The results you aim for aren’t always the results you might get, but the quality and amount effort you apply will reflect your results. This would show in my next project.

Theres a large controversy about teaching Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in school today. Its not a very interesting play and I think the plot is a bit weak. This play is special because its not about the quality of the play, it’s about the novelty and the history of the play. 

Remember earlier when I talked about me disliking writing, well the first part of the project was writing an analysis 2 lines from each act, and connecting them to a modern adaptation. Seeking to extend, I didn’t do just lines, I did Scenes, And It took twice as much time as just doing one line because I had to analyze multiple characters which meant more guiding writing. I hated It, but I kept up my effort and consistency and over a nice 5,886 words later. I and finished. And I know the saying, Quality over Quantity and I made sure that the quality was presented.

Ha. 

After the grind of all of this writing was over, we could start with my favourite PLP project yet. I didn’t know this when we first started but again we were put into groups. And had to modernize or recreate a scene from the original play. We collectively chose the fight scene between tybalt and Mercutio. We decided to go in a different direction than the modernized violence which would be expected with a modern adaptation of this scene, but instead using a chess game as an analogy to the fight. It perfectly fit, Two colours on the chess board, Black and white two families. I decided that it should be in monotone black and white, to exaggerate my desired dramatic tone. I set a scene up which I imagined in the vortex, our theatre at school. One single spotlight down on a table with two grand lounge chairs. I dont want to get into too much detail, but I set up the scene and all the shots. It was hard to be the director with the vision for the entire thing and also be a main actor in the play. I probably could have worked on my collaboration skills here as I set up all the shots, the other members in the group worked as camera people. But since we only had one scene, the jump cuts had to be complex and sophisticated. After I edited all of it, I was really proud of the work, the most proud I have of any humanities project I had done, And received a lot of praise from peers, and teachers and even the principal but I thought there always a way it could have been done better if I was working behind my camera. 

The final product reflected my effort.

 

However last year I recognized behavioural issues in the classroom that was effecting my learning. This year Im really trying to improve on this and so far, I think I have. I believe I’ve been much more focused and less distracted and disruptive in class. When I do start to become distracted or disruptive I become aware of it and stop it. While it still is a challenge for me, I think I’ve made big strides in becoming a more focused and attentive learner and improved since last year, but more can be done to fully cement this into my classroom habits, through the habits I mentioned earlier. Thank you