Well, welcome back to another year of PLP. This year we are in grade 10 so we have a little bit more expectation in all of our classes. We stated the year off with a bang! There wasn’t much time to settle into school this early as we got right to work on two projects. It was a bit confusing for me to get into the year because we are on a linear system, which means that we have eight classes a year which I have never had before. I am used to having four classes per half of the year, so balancing all of my projects has been a little bit if a challenge, but I’m figuring it out. 

Our most recent project, ‘Why Does the world Need More Canada?’, we learned about Canadas impact on many things kind of like what we’ve done before in Gr.9 in a few projects. I think one of the most interesting thing in this project for me was learning about world trade, and how Canada plays a big roll in supporting world trade. For this project we had to choose topics of interest and make a podcast about them. I would be lieing if I said I was surprised by this, as this is a classic PLP 10 project and both my brothers have done it. 

For my topic I chose Canadas impact on the world through film and how it has changed over the past 15-25 years. I don’t really know what sparked my interest in this project, but it turned out to be a great topic for me, because of my families unique links to film and film making. One of the biggest aspect of this project was a multi paragraph or essay composition of what we learned after researching our topic for a week or two. This is probably what I struggled with the most for a few reasons; one reason was that I find it hard focusing when I write, I always have but recently its been a little tougher than usual, this was a big challenge. Another big reason was I was getting lazy, I didn’t understand why I had to write all of this myself when I could just get AI to say what I was thinking in a clear manner too. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it was a big struggle for me and took a lot of self control not too. I’m sure these sound like really bad or silly reasons to struggle in this assignment, but they were very real for me.
My multi paragraph response:

During the making of my podcast I got the privilege to interview one of my families closest friends Jasmine Barry. her and Her family are so connected to film its kind of crazy. Everybody in her family is in some sort of film crew, weather its acting, producing, or even directing, there is over 10 different links to the film industry in just her direct family. We had a great interview, where we both learned a lot. She answered all of my questions, and gave my podcast the structure it needs. 

To listen to our podcasts click this link: https://open.spotify.com/show/2iaDGGmVTzcZiLuGl3ai3h?si=fAvZY9SkS32UfFYG_0utrA

The driving question for this project was, “why does the world need more Canada?” This is a tough question foor me to answer. It’s tough for me because I am so proud of this country and I could go on and on about how much better in my opinion it is than other countries, but that wouldn’t be very fair. I am going to try to answer this with a neutral perspective of a teenager that has just finished this project. I think the world needs more Canada because Canada gets stuff done. We make progress, even though we are often at a disadvantage. We aren’t as big as our American neighbours, but without us, America would sill be incredibly small and different. Canada supports so many counties and people that would be left unstable and unsupported otherwise.

Overall this project I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn ore about Canadians, and how we all make an impact ono the world. Balancing this project with all of my other classes and  projects was tough, but we got it done!

This project I really had to wake up and realize, “oh, school has started I need to start with it or i’ll fall behind!” This was a great starting project, I loved making the podcasts and can’t wait too make the next ones!

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.

Welcome back to another one of my T-POLs. This year has been jam-packed with exciting and new opportunities for me, and in this presentation, I’ll be sharing some of them with you. Since my M-POL was only a few months ago, I will be repeating a couple of things I’ve said there and touching back on some of the experiences, good and bad, I’ve had earlier this year. This time around, I’m going to try to make my presentation a bit shorter, as last time I ended up speaking for 15 minutes compared to the 7 I was supposed to speak for. So without further ado, here are my 2024 T-POLs.

Engagement

This year, I’ve struggled significantly with learning engagement, which has slowed my progress. Most of my assignments have been at a proficient level, with only occasional assignments exceeding expectations. I realize this is due to my lack of effort, as I’ve been more focused on just getting by rather than truly trying and getting the most out of every opportunity. This issue has been a major challenge for me and one that I know I have to solve largely on my own. Understanding and overcoming this struggle remains a work in progress, and it will be a primary goal for me next year, as I know I can’t fix this problem overnight.

WWI

In our final PLP unit, we learned all about WWI and Canada’s impact on it, with our sights set on making a comic that would tell our story about WWI in an effective and helpful way. First though, we had to learn how to make a comic that could be clearly understood and enjoyable to read. Even though I really like comic books, it helped a lot that Mr. Harris is a comic book fanatic and shared with us his love for comics, both stories and layouts. For my story, I chose Wop May, a Canadian flying ace. He has been thought of by many to be the greatest pilot Canada has ever produced. He was in the last ever dogfight with the Red Baron, the greatest pilot to ever fly in either World War. I really liked him and his story because it was unique to other pilots and very heroic. In the middle of this project, I unexpectedly ran into quite a big problem. I broke my finger, so I was barely able to draw any of the sketches, as that required me to hold a pencil, which proved to be very, very hard. I figured a way around this by asking my friends and brothers for help, as well as drawing with my left hand. This ended up giving my comic a unique look to it while still telling the story I wanted to.

Loon Lake

Link to Loon Lake Post

One really big thing that we did this year was Loon Lake. At Loon Lake, we learned that our decisions can affect others around us in good and bad ways. These choices also shape our future. Even quick decisions can change someone’s life now and later. We focused on making positive decisions that would affect us in a way we would want to be affected in the future. This made a positive impact on me and I try to keep this in mind throughout my day.

This year our T-POLs are laid out a little bit differently. We were given a form to fill out with different categories, such as agency, self-regulation, preparation, and more. We were given prompts and had to check ourselves off in which we thought we were achieving either consistently, sometimes, or rarely. I think this was actually kind of cool because it gave me a perspective into how other people might look at my learning. Once we filled out the boxes, we were told to pick one in the agency category and two others in anything else. These

approaches to learning would have to be included in our T-POL, so this is what the next section of my T-POL will be.

Balance

Building off my last M-POL when I spoke about balance and how it is a struggle for me, this area became even more of a focus as I have missed a lot of school over the past few months due to sports because I was on the golf team and the track team. These sports meant I missed a lot of afternoons and full days of school. The challenge was making sure I got my work done to an adequate level. This was especially hard in subjects that I am not super interested in. I know that school comes before sports, but it is hard when I am not motivated.

Asking for Help

Something else that I have done that has helped me this year compared to last year is asking for support when it is necessary. What this means is I can acknowledge when I’m not doing an assignment to the level that it should be completed to and need help and where I can get help from. Most of the time help comes from my teachers, but it can also come from my family and my peers. This has been a very big step for me this year and I think it has shown in my work in a positive way.

Technology

The last thing I’m going to be talking about is my technology use. As you know, PLP is a program that is almost completely online, which means it is awfully easy to get distracted and play games or watch a show. Of course, we are not supposed to do this, but as I said, it is incredibly tempting and easy. This year I’ve done a great job of not doing that compared to last year because I have acknowledged that work is harder this year and it needs more attention than it did last year. I have no games on my iPad, and I think this has helped my work tremendously. It helps me stay on task, which is great as I understand what my teachers want of me more than some of my peers do.

Overall, I think that I am ready to move on to grade 10 not only because of my growth this year but also because of how I’ve acknowledged my struggles and learned how to support myself through these problems. Even in grade 8, I would’ve never been able to tell myself I’m struggling with this project and need help, though this year I can guarantee I’ve said that more than a few times. I also think that my grades have reflected my growth as a learner compared to last year. Through my projects, I have collected more than a couple of extending, with my lowest grade being proficient. I’ve had a really fun year and got to know some really awesome people, and I’m very excited for grade 10. I will continue to grow as a learner and learn more strategies to help me become a 100% exceeding student. I have learned that balancing sports and academics is harder than I once thought, but this balance is actually key to me being successful in both areas of my life.

In our most recent project we started learning more about Canadas impact on WWI. I chose to focus on A Canadian Pilot called Wop May, Who was in the last ever dog fight with The Red Baron. We learned about the key things Canada did in the War and how it made a impact, big or small to the story of our country. 

Our final products for this project where Comics that we would walk through Wops story and how it changed his life over the span of the war. This comic would be about 20 panels long and would go over the war and the story we made to help us learn about WWI.

The personI chose to study was Wilfred (better known as Wop) May. Wop was one of the best known pilots in WWI so everyone was kind of afraid of him. This made it quite easy to research him since there were a lot of sources about him. I learned a lot about how the old planes worked and often didn’t work because of how unstable there motors were. This was actually a massive problem in his last dogfight with The Red Baron, in this fight his guns jammed and made it nearly impossible for him to Sophie down The Red Baron, but he did it somehow anyways.

This was also our exhibition project which meant we had to present the comic to our parents and the general public. We set up our tables and pout decorations that matched our comics and the other people at our stations comics. This was really important because it really set the mood and helped us picture what it would be like in WWI. In the end the exhibition went really well, I got alot of people that came to my table, and I got to teach about WWI.

Overall I think that this project really helped me figure out what Can dads impact was on WWI. I learned a lot about how The aerial side of war caused tensions and fuelled a lot of the fight for WWI. It’s interesting to see how Canadian pride led to tension between countries and eventually big impact on war. While war can be motivating, it can also be dangerous for the future of countries if taken too far. This project has sparked my interest in studying WWI and its impact on the world.  

In our most recent project we started learning more about nationalism. I chose to focus on Russian nationalism which first started before WWI. We learned about the key people in Russian Nationalism and what they did to impact their countries. 

Our final products for this project where videos that we would talk through showing what nationalism was and what our countries went through pre WWI because of nationalism. This video would be about 3-4 minutes long and would go over our questions that we made to help us learn about Nationalism. These videos also went on YouTube.

The country I chose to study was Russia. Russia was the biggest country inn Europe before WWI so everyone was kind of afraid of them. This actually made my job quite a bit easier because Russia didn’t instigate WWI. I learned a lot about Russias power system and how it was often very unstable and unbalanced, most of the time because of the Tsar’s. I think that learning about Russia really helped when it came down to Natiolism because it was a very nice canvas to help me learn. 

Overall I think that this project really helped me figure out myself what Nationalism is and how it Affected WWI. I learned a lot about how nationalism caused tensions and fuelled WWI. It’s interesting to see how strong national pride led to tension between countries and eventually  war. While nationalism can be motivating, it can also be dangerous if taken too far. This project has sparked my interest in studying nationalism and its impact on the world.  

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.

Here we are again, our Presentations of Learning. Last time I did this presentation I was super nervous and thought I had to do perfect. This time around, I will do my best to be relaxed and more confident about what I say. So, without further ado, my Mpols, a reflection on my learning so far. 

This year so far had been very, very eventful. Some points that I will talk about in this post are: engagement in school, specific projects, Field studies, my concussion, and DI. Now, if you look at this list its kind of all over the place so I will do my best to connect and explain these points.

I think a good place to always start during these presentations is my learning goals I made at the beginning in of the year. These goals are something I will often be coming back to thorough this post but for now I will do a basic rundown.

It might be hard to read the text boxes on the page. but all of them basically sum up to say I will be a perfect student who excels at almost everything in and out of the classroom. As you might guess, this is crazy unrealistic. I don’t know why I didn’t learn from last year, but that just isn’t really something I should be aiming for. I should be aiming to get better and maybe even go above and beyond in some parts of my learning that I need to improve on, making me a more well rounded learner. I have since adjusted my learning plan to make them realistic, and  will be revising these throughout the rest of the year.

The first big thing this year that we did as a class was a Field School. We went to Alberta on this study in early September, which I really liked exploring with my friends. I always love Field Schools, so you could probably guess how excited I was to see how early we were going. 

This trip really started the year out with a bang and got us as a class excited for the rest of the year. We went to places I would never have otherwise been, such the exclusive part of Lake Louise, the view point on the Lake Louise hike, the Big Beehive and discovering the endangered snails.  To give you a bit of perspective, it was like giving a bunch of already excited kids Redbull just before a soccer game. This would make us crazy with excitement, which is kind of what this trip did. But it was definitely an amazing trip.

School engagement:

I would love to say that I am 100% invested and dedicated to school and school work, but that would be a lie. To be honest, I don’t know how dedicated I am with school. I like to be in class with my classmates and I like all of my teachers, but everything else about school just doesn’t interest me all that much. There are so many other things around me that get me distracted from school and academics in general. This is something I have been struggling with most of the year and am dong my best to help myself and problem solve. I find that as a result my work is certainly not at my potential. I learn best when my body is moving but even then I find myself getting distracted. I know being engaged in school is important especially as I move up in grades and I really want to try to find a way to put more effort into school, and hopefully get more out school as a result. And I don’t think it is a PLP thing, I am struggling to be engaged in mainstream classes as well. 

This is an image of my original thoughts and goals in relation to my engagement. This has since been revised. 

Favourite project:

Link to this project

One project I really liked was metaphor machines. These machines were products of our imagination and thought process which we developed over a span of a month and a half. I really like learning about the history of the Qing Dynasty and how it is reflected in modern day China. The machines we built took over a month, and they were extremely tedious to build because every detail had to mean something. For example, one of the parts of our machine was 14 marbles falling down a ramp and this represented the 14 provinces of the China and how they all collapsed into a rebellion against the dynasty. I think I am most proud of the teamwork that happened and the actual machine itself. During this project I got know some people that I’ve never really talked to before and that was a lot of fun. I personally am most proud of making sure the machine ran as I was the Building Director. I was proud to share our work with everyone during the Winter Exhibition.

Concussion:

In November, I got a concussion from a field hockey ball hitting my temple. This really set me back academically and physically as this took away one of the things in my life that helps me regulate myself, which is sports. It set me back quite a bit in school as I couldn’t focus at all in class, and was having trouble understanding almost all of the work, and it was taking almost all of my energy just to be there and socialize. As this was my first ever concussion, I didn’t realize how long it would take to recover. I kind of thought it would just go away within a month. I worked very closely with my physiotherapist, and they helped me through my concussion by giving me exercises and treatments that would help. As I needed to wait a while for physio clearance to play sports again, I didn’t really have balance between school and sports as it was only school and no sports. This really affected me because being active and playing sports is such a big part of my life.

DI:

link to this project

In PLP we participate in a tournament called Destination Imagination where schools from all over the lower mainland compete to win in different categories. This is my first time doing it since we didn’t do it last year, but my brothers did it in previous years and I’ve always watched them. My group this year had one of my good friends, two other grade nines and two grade tens. We don’t normally work with different grades so I thought this was going to be fun and  the grade 10s had done DI before so we were hoping that they would help us through the basic steps and help us strategize so that we could have the best possible tournament. Our group was tasked with making a machine that could launch a beanbag a certain amount of distance, as well as a play, that creatively described how the launcher fit into the everyday world. Well, we all had big parts in DI. Ultimately only four of us ended up performing. Our first performance went quite well. We stuck to the script and came first over all the groups in our category. For our next tournament, the provincial tournament, we improved big parts of our script and a little bit of our machine. We had learned how to work together well during the first tournament so we knew that we could do way better this time round. We ended up coming first overall of the entire province in our category! Although, for both the performances, the grade tens did not perform, I still feel very proud of our hard work and dedication. I’m actually looking forward to doing it again next year!

Conclusion 

Overall this year I think that I grew as a person and a learner. All of my mistakes I made this year, which were a lot, I definitely learned from. One of the things I did different this year compared to last year was asking for help. There were a couple times this year that I think I should be very proud of, those moments were when I asked for help when I needed it. Whether it was from friends, parents, or teachers it almost always cleared something up or helped in some other way. This to me was the biggest change I think I made this year. 

Overall looking back on my first semester in grade nine PLP, I think that I have met my goals, while also improving in all the places where I had hoped to. I have created pieces of work that I can be proud of, while also learning how to be a part of my class. Looking forward to the rest of the year, I hope to be able to continue developing my skills as a PLP learner, as well as provide work in every project that shows a complete and sophisticated understanding of the topic.

What is it?! Is it a fish. Is it a unicorn? No its a Frankan Stuffy! 

In our most recent project we did something a bit different than usual. We were tasked with taking apart a few stuffies and piecing them into a whole new stuffy. After we had our new stuffies, we made movies that explained how those stuffies came to be. This project tought me a lot of new skills that I’m glad I have now.

Before we even got to making our Frankan stuffies however, we learned about stories. We learned how all stories have a particular algorithm that they go through. This is called the hero’s journey. Once we learned a bit more about it, we learned about how we could incorporate the Hero’s Journey in our own stories. This would help give our characters  structure and depth, and would ultimately make a better story.

Before we got to filming however, we had to do a few things first in preparation. Some of these things were story boards, Log Lines, and even writing a short story. All of this was super helpful in the long run because it showed us exalt what to do when it came to actually filming.

My main character in this project was a Parrot Fish with a snow Leopard leg, and a Unicorn horn. Weird right? As you could imagine, I could do whatever I wanted to with this story. I decided to make our friend Bob the Fish a power addicted leader, meaning that he couldn’t help himself, whenever there was power he needed it. This turned out to be a harder topic than it sounds like to write about and even harder to are a movie about, but I made it work.

The driving question for this project was: How do we as writers make our message clear and engaging to an audience. I think that it is easy to write about something, challenging to write something and make it engaging, and even harder to do both of those while trying to get your audience to feel a certain way. This proved to be true this project, but as I said earlier I made it work, mostly by putting myself in a viewers perspective. This is my main strategy whenever I have to communicate my writing in another format. Another thing that helps me is making my product very simple, because simple is easy to understand. However with this method we often lose lots of detail, so it is not my favourite thing to do.

link to my Frankan Stuffy Video.

In conclusion, the Frankan Stuffy project allowed us to explore the Hero’s Journey in storytelling and challenged us to communicate our message clearly and engagingly to an audience. Through creating our own Frankan stuffies and films, we were able to learn valuable skills that will help us in future projects. Despite the challenges we faced, we were able to overcome them by putting ourselves in the audience’s perspective and simplifying our content without losing important details. Overall, this project was a fun and educational experience that pushed us to think creatively and outside the box.

Would you believe me if I said I came first in a Regional school competition, that we had to improvise half of? Well you better, because we did. This is the story of my Destination Imagination regional tournament that we did as a part of PLP. 

This project took place over a few months, during which we worked in and out of school to create a machine that fit certain dimensions, did certain actions, and went along with a certain story. This story was the backbone to how we were graded during the actual performance during DI, so it was important that the story was realistic, and original. As a group we realized this early on in the process of preparing for DI (Building machine, building backdrops, making costumes, making  the story etc.),meaning we were more prepared than the other groups in our challenge were. However, we had one disadvantage that showed itself a week before our Di Regional.

Our disadvantage was how us Gr9s had 0 experience in this tournament, and the Gr10s in our group, one week out of competition, decided not to come. This was a big problem. They had a bunch of our supplies from the presentation. This left us with 4 team members instead of 6. This was bad news for us because this left us totally inexperienced, and nervous with only about half of our supplies. Despite all of these setbacks, we made it work. With what we had we put together a 7 minute presentation that really represent our group and our ideas, and that we believed exceeded the expectations of our teachers, peers, and even the DI judges.

After our main DI presentation we had to wait until the second part of DI was ready for us, our instant challenge. Leading up to the instant challenge we had no clue what it was going to be. It could have been anything from building a tower out of our shoes, to making a full play. During the time between our presentation and our instant challenge we went around and watched other people’s performances to scout out our competition. We also discussed among our team the game plan for the instant challenge and how we could prepare for it. I’m not allowed to talk about the instant challenge, but I can say that it required all of us to work as one team to produce a solution.

Despite the setbacks and challenges we faced leading up to the regional tournament, our hard work and determination paid off. We were able to come together as a team, think on our feet, and push through the obstacles to deliver a successful performance in both the main DI presentation and the instant challenge. The experience taught us valuable lessons in teamwork, resilience, and creativity. In the end, we were proud of what we accomplished. Heading into the regional tournament, we were nervous but excited to showcase our skills and compete against other schools. We are excited to be recognized for our hard work and dedication with a first-place finish in the regional competition.

Overall, our experience in the Destination Imagination regional tournament was challenging but rewarding. We look forward to taking what we learned from this experience and applying it to future challenges, especially to provincials on April 6.

Today we will be exploring Louis Riel’s story, unraveling the life of a rebel leader and the struggle for Identity. During his life he created a massive impact to the Métis in so many ways, by creating opportunities that the Métis would not have, as well as giving each and every single one of them power in there own lives.

In our most recent project we learned about Louis Riel who has been a very controversial but impactful figure in Canadian history. He was a Métis man who realized how little his people had in perspective to European settlers and Europeans in general. He decided to start speaking out and express his opinions and concerns to the public and the government, he urged for Métis people to speak out and support them getting the rights that they deserved. He was supported by many but also hated by many, often because of the brave and unheard of actions he took to get what he wanted, or needed. I personally think that this is an amazing and courages thing to do for something that you are passionate for. 

However, all of these brave actions couldn’t eventually escape him from being captured in 1885. He was hung for high treason, and while many celebrated, many where unhappy. The Métis communities learned from Louis Riel that they had to fight for what they needed. I think that what Louis Riel did was honorable and overall a positive thing for Métis rights.

Louis Riel was no hero

Our driving question for this project was, How has the Portrayal of Louis Riel Changed Over Time? I think that the portrayal of Louis Riel has changed over time because of how we now view Métis and indigenous people as equals as we always should have, becasue of a changing society and changing societal norms. Throughout history we never saw them as equal to the European settlers because of racism and discrimination, however we now realize that that was wrong and should never be repeated ever again. My point is that I think our society has grown to see Louis Riel as an activist and leader in the charge for something that every human should have but didn’t back then. 

-the revisions from my first draft of my essay

Overall I think that this project taught me a lot of history about Métis peoples and there rights, or lack of, and how things around them have changed over time. I really liked this project and would definitely do it again.

Welcome back to my second winter exhibition. This year I knew what to expect and how to prepare for the challenges that come with exhibitions to make it easier on me and my group.

This year our topic was Revolutions. We learned a little bit about every revolution and then were aloud to choose one that we would be studying for the rest of the project. I chose to study the Xinhai Revolution, because that is one that I thought was very interesting and I knew it would keep me interested and engaged for the rest of the project. 

We learned about our revolutions for a few weeks so that we knew 100% of it. Our final product for this project was a Rube Goldberg machine, with the connections from the different parts of the machine representing different, significant  parts the revolution. Knowing this, we all understood that we had to know this revolution incredibly well so that the connections would be accurate and understandable. Throughout the process of learning about revolution we were put into our groups of everybody studying the Xinhai Revolution to discuss what we had learned, and compare our notes. I think that this was a very crucial to our understanding because seven minds work better than just one. 

Over the next few weeks after the research process we got together as our Xinhai group every day to start making the connections for our machine. This was helpful because it gave us time to get used to working together with each other before the actual building process. It was important to us as a group to be on the same page at all times, because when even one of us is not on the same page as the rest if the group, or not on task it could set us back quite a bit. While planning we were assigned roles which would help guide us when we were lost and keep us busy. I was given the role of Engineering/Physics expert. This meant that I had the job of making sure everything would work, and deciding what to add and or take away to make the machine run better.

When it actually came to building the machine, there were a few challenges. One of the challenges was being precise. This was a problem because we had to transfer exactly what was on our blueprint into real life with the materials we were given. One of the solutions for this we found, was trial and error. We would test one part of the machine over and over until we got the exact angle or exact length and then we would attach it to the board. This worked really well for us because it was efficient and easy to understand, so that everybody in our group could help. Another problem we had was finding enough jobs for all of us to do. This was a problem because the jobs we were assigned often didn’t transfer into the actual building, but instead helped with the earlier steps focussed on preparation. I think that I was good at finding work and when I didn’t have any work I would ask our project manager. A few times though, not everybody in our group did this and I would often find myself with a sidekick that wouldn’t do as much as they could, and instead just followed us around not being productive. This was probably our biggest challenge as a group, however we almost always helped each other and reminded them what there task was, and how to be productive with our time.

On the day of the actual exhibition we were all very excited and nervous, partly because I think we poured so much hard work into these machines, partly because we didn’t know if they would work. At this point we were down two team members due to time conflicts, but it was ok since we had adapted our script to fit just the five of us. As people watched us, we explained our machine, why each connection was important to the revolution, then showed them the machine in action. It almost always went well, and the few times it didn’t we swiftly got it working agin and tried again. When I look back on the night I think that we did a really great job working together and staying positive, while also sticking to the plan. 

Video of Machine

Our Driving question for this project was, How do Ideas Drive Change? I think that ideas spark change by questioning the status quo and inspiring new possibilities. When embraced and put into action, new ideas have the potential to shape movements and drive progress. In short, ideas serve as the driving force behind new transformative change for the better of our race.

Overall, I think that this exhibition wen much better than intimidate. I really enjoyed working with the people in my group, and would happily do it all over again. I think that the biggest things I learned this project where, teamwork, and patience. Without everybody in my team doing these two essential things, I think that this project would have not been as successful as it was.

Last week almost all of my class here at Seycove went to Loon Lake, a educational retreat about an hour away from the school. To get there we had to drive along a very scary logging road that took us through a dark forest, not gonna lie I thought we were being kidnapped. 

On this retreat we were promised a few things, good food, unique experiences, and an opportunity to bond and get to know each other better as a class. Throughout this post I will talk about how these promises were kept, and our experiences here at Loon Lake overall. Our driving question was, How do the choices we make set our future path?

At Loon Lake time was split up very precisely, divided between outdoors activities, eating, and lesions with Jono (About him) in the Canabode. The Canabode was a classroom like place were we would do the calm, focussed learning. This was hard for a lot of us because we would just come from running in the forest or being 50 feet in the air, to sitting or standing for up to 2.5 hours. Outside we would do new activities everyday, I think my favourite was probably the rock climbing wall, and the adventure race. Both of these activities made us get our hands dirty, and work together with people we might not normally work with.

At Loon Lake we learned many important lessons about our decisions, and how they impact people around us in positive and negative ways. One of the biggest ways they impact us is our future. We can change peoples life experiences in the present and the future just by some split second decision we make. We learned how to work toward only positive decisions. 

I think that the answer to the driving question in my opinion would be that the decisions we make impact people around us and the people around us impact us, so the most important lesson is make decisions that positively impact the closest people to us because they will set the path for our future.