Hello and welcome to the Penguin Hideout!

Its come time time of year for mPOLs, our midyear presentation of learning. This year I was asked too reflect on progress made towards my “mission”, which was a kind of “where do you see yourself at graduation” type situation set at the start of the school year. Mine was “I am a student who can be engaged in my work, self-regulate, communicate, and collaborate. This helps me achieve my vision by reinforcing my good habits and helping me break worse ones. I also helps me enjoy my projects, which in turn makes me do much better work, as well as feeling proud of my own work and learning from it.”

Now that was all fine and dandy but now that we are actually a good part of the way through the school year, the teachers want to make sure we are actually making progress on our goals that we set for ourselves which I figure is fair. No point having a goal if you forget about and don’t work towards it. So now I’ve got to do just that.

So lets break this down. I said that I wanted to:

  • Be Engaged in my Work
  • Self-Regulate
  • Communicate & Collaborate
  • Learn from my work

Well that all sounds good, but how am I actually progressing these skills?

Engaged in Work:

I think my best example of this so far this year our WWII project where I created a sophisticated essay to go into our class zine. I really enjoyed this project, and I found the content interesting which definitely helped me focus and be engaged on my final product.

The War That Shaped Canada

Self-Regulation:

This is definitely a skill I’m still working on although I’m not to bad at it. I mainly get distracted when I’m overwhelmed with work and it feels like to much to handle or start. Better managing my time and working more efficiently will clear up some time so that these projects aren’t overwhelming. I need to do some more research and potentially creation of some methods that will me allow me to do this.

That being said I think I did this very well in our latest PGP project. I was able to focus on my work and just things done, and as a result, I had less work to do later and didn’t get bogged down with work, which would in turn make it harder for me to focus in the future.

(Blog Post Being Made)

Communicate & Collaborate:

I think a great example of where my collaboration and communication skills are at right now was our latest humanities project, where we read and analyzed Romeo & Juliet and then created a modern parody of the play. Throughout the project I maintained constant communication with the DRI and other main people working on the creation and presentation of the parody, and I was very happy with myself after I created a combined script for all the acts and a formatting guide, as the previous format had caused some chaos; I was just happy it all worked out in the end but I was proud of myself mor making something that ended up being very useful even though It was not part of my role.

Here is what I created

(Blog Post still being created)

Learn from work:

In terms of learning from my work and learning skills applicable in real life, I think the project that was designed to just done that has done so. Marketing me was one of our PGP projects were we essentially learned how to be professional and create a bit of a brand identity for ourselves. Not only do I find this really fun and have been using it for a lot of things, but I also now have a job interview scheduled, and i had sent the resume we made in class, so I think I definitely learned a lot of stuff from this project.

The name’s Streeter; James Streeter

Now moving forward, I’m thinking about how I can extend in my work and make some truly impressive things. I’ve feel already seen a large jump in the quality of my work this year, especially with my PGP podcast, which got praise from my interviewee that made me very happy. Continuing to refine my presentation and making real-world connections are what I believe will bring my projects to the next level

Building my collaboration skills with others though communication and practice will also be instrumental in my future success. It’s a skill I’m always trying to work on, but always find difficult as I prefer to work by myself, but Destination Imagination and our Romeo & Juliet project have definitely improved my ability to collaborate with others, and work towards a common goal.

Thanks for reading, come again sometime!