Ahhh. T-pols in all their glory have arrived. As the school year is coming to a close it is time I reflect. This is my first experience doing a t-pol and judging how my m-pol went I am looking forward to it. 

This post and my discussion will take you through a journey of my entire Grade 9 school year. The good, the bad, and everything in between.

I beleive there has been massive improvements since the m-pols. I have gotten sensationally better at many things. For example, while attending “Homework club” for several weeks straight I learned how to write a blog post to my fullest potential. And it is much easier. Using hashtags, and categorizing things, changing fonts, bold, italics, etc. I learned how to do all these things and make my blog posts just that much better.

In the post I would like to talk about how I can relate my deep thinking question from my m-pol to all my PLP subjects and assignments. How I have grown and how I can improve.

My Goal in Mpols was to be completely organized by the end of the school year. In every aspect of my life not only school. Since then I have realized that this is not a realistic goal. That is an extremely big goal and is very broad. While I think I have been very good at being organized in school, being organized in other aspects of life has been very hard. I put so much effort into being organized in school related things that I lose track of other things. Forgetting I have soccer that afternoon, or thinking its Tuesday instead of Wednesday. Small things like this have been slipping my mind lately. I need to be able to put effort into both and maintaining high standards there too. 

Let’s focus on how I have improved in school and why.

My method of staying on top of work and due dates is a calendar. I have it hung up right beside my bed. This has been working exceptionally for me. Every time I get an assignment I write it up there with its due date. Then I Plan out which days I want to work on that assignment. This works well for me because at night when I lie in bed I can think about the next day and already know what I have to do. This works well because it is a PHYSICAL reminder. It’s always there, with things and “reminder” apps they give you a notification but that doesn’t help because if I am doing other things on my IPad then I discard those notifications. Here are a few examples:

Witness to History. This project was about connecting with our communities and literally “Witnessing History” during the Covid 19 pandemic. It talked about how we are a part of this history and in the future kids in school will be learning about the pandemic and we have first hand experience. During this project I used my calendar method and it worked great. Everyday I knew what milestone I was on and currently completing. I would get it done quick and efficiently.

Another part of my organization method that was crucial to the plan working was my time management. There were certain times of day where I didn’t like doing homework. Anytime past 5pm was not “viable” for homework. I either had soccer, or gaming with some friends. This forced me to finish all my homework before that “deadline” or I would feel massive guilt and it would be very probable that that assignment wouldn’t be completed for a LONG time. Because, the next day there would be other homework to complete and I wouldn’t have time for it.

Let’s take another example. Humanities. The Great War project. I was on top of every single milestone. I completed them all super efficiently and that allowed me to do more of what I wanted to do. This project was about learning about WW1. On top of this we did group chats reading differnt books. My book was Private peaceful, each week we completed a different reading task. In the end our goal was to make a class book about everything we learned in WW1.

Let’s talk about Grade 10 and how I think this year has prepared me for grade 10. Grade 10 is our first “real” grade I would say. Grade 8 and 9 are all about learning how to handle highschool and grade 10,11 and 12 are about getting the best grades you can to ultimately help with university. This year has taught me so many valuable lessons. I have also made so many memories I will never forget. I learned that class participation is VITAL towards getting a good grade. Or while due dates may be “flexible” that still means they need to get done around the due date. Not left for months later. I also learned to stay on your teachers good side. And stay there. But my biggest lesson I think I will take onto grade 10 is to treat all classes the same. Because, mostly towards the middle of the year I didnt treat all my classes equally. I prioritized some certain classes over others. This caused my grade to drop in the other classes and I had to work all of term 3 to get that grade back up. I realized that this is dumb because university’s dont only look for your top classes. They look at ALL your classes. So I need to exceed in all of them not just a couple.

In conclusion I think my grade 9 year has improved me tremendously but I still have much more to grow. I am so thankful for this year as it was a pivotal year for all my studies and to show what kind of student I am. How do you think my methods will carry over into grade 10 and do you think they will work?