Great. While everyone is out partying it up in the Summer sun, splashing around in the water and enjoying the nice weather, I’m still here on my last week of school stressing about yet another parent, teacher and student presentation. Great. It’s TPOL time.

As usual, the teachers ask me to reflect on how I grew as a learner, what I learned and how I’d like to move forward towards next year. Well, I think we should change this up a wee bit. Rather than starting with a cheesy montage of the year, let’s take an adventure back in time to the start of Grade 9.

Ok well that’s just embarrassing. Here it is, younger Kiera at the start of September having no idea what was in store for her. This year, our main focus in class was learning new video skills and methods, so, it’s only natural that my first project I show you is my video project from the beginning of the year.

Voila! Here it is! Let’s just cut to the chase. Here is my Metaphor Machine Video. Pretty basic. It consists of voiceovers and angles but otherwise a pretty basic video. At the time, I was extremely proud of how this film turned out. Now looking back on it, I realize how far I’ve come as a learner. I never really noticed this until now when I revisit projects from the beginning of the year.

And I’m not trying to put myself down by saying the video wasn’t good, it was, it just didn’t live up to its full potential. I made it a goal of mine to be able to reflect critically and positively on my work. Since my last MPOL, I’ve tried to look on imperfections and fails as a chance to learn and improve. Therefore, let’s compare this video to one from a more recent project. My World War One Video. Although slightly different concepts, the video still shows much improvement from the media used, to the audio and even the use of words and the script itself.

No, this wasn’t just a magical transformation. In fact, it took literally a whole school year, which, might as well have been forever as well as many many video projects and drafts. But, it’s true what they say, each time you try, you improve a little more. With each draft I did and each video I created, I got to expand my knowledge and skills in video making. I soon learned about the importance of consistency in media, film sets and more! So let’s take a look st a more recent video. One with a similar concept but a completely different approach. Here is my World War One Video. This was actually just finished a few weeks ago and was, in fact the last video project of the year!

The video focuses on the role of Women in the First World War. Besides taking in the information, pay close attention to the use of angles, sound quality and overall consistency. See an improvement? I certainly do!

In fact, I made it a personal goal of mine to push myself this year. This doesn’t just mean challenge myself but to face things that, in the past, have been considered a fear or something I’ve been super uncomfortable with. This project showed great growth in accomplishing this goal as I’m really not a child loving person, however, in this project, we were required to share our final videos with the grade sixes and sevens from Cove Cliff Elementary. Therefore, I had to face my fear of kids.

So moving on, let’s have a look at the Scientific and Mathematical side of this year. To show my growth in this category, I’d like to take a look at my Card Game Project and my Matter Cycles Project. The reason I chose these two is because I had a similar work mindset and had the same partner. Therefore, I found these two projects a good comparison.

The Card Game Project focused on different exponents and methods. This would then be presented in the form of a card game. Unfortunately, for this project, my mindset wasn’t in the right place and I was away for the majority of it meaning a lot of the responsibility fell on my partner, which, is very unfair. The project itself turned out ok but it definitely wasn’t the best. Some of our calculations and math was wrong but hey, first attempt at learning people!

Therefore, for the Matter Cycles Project, when I was paired up with the same partner again, I made it a goal of mine to put my absolute best into this project. This time, my partner and I worked equally and I was much more focused, and, the final result showed the extra effort. You could really tell that this project was done by a team and as a team.

Finally, let’s have a look at PGP. In other words, the newbie of this year’s courses. One that, at the beginning of the year, we knew nothing about. However, this particular course helped me accomplish one of my biggest goals this year. How to handle stress. Ok, sure, I have a serious stress issue like I don’t handle stress very well at all. In fact, I break down terribly under stress. However, PGP, although not the most interesting of courses definitely helped with this. Let’s have a look at the beginning of this year. I’m pretty sure the amount of stress attacks I had was above 3 a month. Yeesh! Of course, once reading about the seven habits and time blocking, this all changed…

Learning to use THINGS helped me manage my busy schedule. It provided me with a visual that allowed me to priorities tasks to maximize my time. I think, if there’s one thing (get the pun?) that I’ll remember going into grade 10, it would be the importance of keeping a clear schedule and staying organized. Plus, there’s the added bonus sensation you get each time you tick off a task on your to do list.

Now, I ain’t no fan of speeches or long essays that go on forever. So, I think it would be a great chance to conclude this incredible year. I’ve changed so much as both a learner and a person. I’m not the same person I was at the beginning of grade nine and, usually, I hate change. But, the things I learned this year will carry me into next year and hopefully, these skills and improvements I’ve learned will help me for the rest of my life. Thanks for reading!