“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.”

The school year is already coming to an end. It’s been a big year for me. A lot has happened, ups and downs, but it has been a year of growth. I started the year with confidence, believing that it’ll be better than the last, and it was.

This year, I’ve had many opportunities to see where I’m at in terms of skill level, especially ones that I’ve put in my VMV.

I’ve colour coded it. Green are the ones that I feel that I’ve done well on this year. The yellow is the one that I didn’t have any opportunities to work on it. The red are the ones that I did not make any growth on.

This year, I think I have done a lot better on engagement and collaboration. The engagement is evident in on the Victoria trip. In that project, we were learning about how museums and governments have a role in acknowledging and addressing historical injustices. We had a talking circle with people working at the Royal BC Museum, and I was really prepared for it because I’d made some questions.

Participating in any setting that has a lot of people is really nerve racking for me. I have a very quiet nature and I like to keep to myself most of the time. Because of this I’ve always struggled to get any of my ideas out there in group discussions or actively collaborating with my team. This year has been a huge improvement for that, as evidenced in the spring exhibition.

I also struggled with filming of me—voice recordings or videos of me. I knew that those were the weaknesses that I really wanted to overcome this year, and I feel like I have really pushed myself, stepping out of my comfort zone. If you compare the work I did last year, like the podcasts, or even the animation that we did at the start of this year, to my most recent videos, you’d notice that there has been some significant improvements. I am now much more comfortable with recording myself. It feels like whenever I want to get over something like procrastinating or fear of recording, if I just go for it, I usually improve.

This is me working on the working effectively in a team part of my vision.

One thing to mention about the curiosity skill is that I’m not actually really quite sure whether or not I’ve actually been able to grow on that. There has been so really interesting topics that we’ve learned this year, and I was curious about things, but the question is—have I shown that? Like in the Cold War project or the Write Stuff project, both of which I got to do a lot of research into topics that I was really interested in.

I thought about something that I could try next year—a technique to help me better grow my skills. So after every project, big assignment, exhibition, or like a talking circle, I could make a time to just reflect on that experience. Take a talking circle for example. I’d ask myself “How did I feel about that?” “Did I contribute enough? “Was I prepared?” Then I’d know which areas I’d need to work on for the future. I could also ask “why?” if anything wasn’t good so I can know what I need to do to change.

I’ve been able to develop my skills and grow a lot this year, so I feel that I am ready to go into grade 12 with the same confidence as this year, and see how else I can further strengthen my skills and continue to grow. All of my projects this year has been completed at a proficient level, so next year, I want to really reach for those extendings.