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.”
This is the pledge that we are required to state at the beginning of our presentation. It serves as an introduction to what we will be presenting during our MPOL. These conferences are specifically designed to allow us to reflect on our learning, while also providing our parents and teachers with an update on our progress. Over the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a PLP learner, but also as a person. This is a program that lets us take responsibility of our own learning, really allows us to thrive. I’ve learned a lot about myself and others, as well as gained a bunch of new skills that I can apply not just to school, but to the rest of my life. In this presentation, I will show what exactly I’ve been learning in PLP, and that I’m ready foor whatever gets thrown at me next. Lets get into it!
First, I want to talk about the very first project that we did after summer break: The World Needs more Canada. This project was, essentially, just meant to make me and my classmates explain in essay format just how amazing Canada really is. The second I heard about this project, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was honestly excited to write my essay, because I thought that I had such a wonderful idea. I got straight to writing.
My plan for my essay was to talk about my personal experience, as an American, with the voting systems in America versus Canada. I was so sure of myself, especially because it was something I had so much experience. For years when I lived in the states, I would keep myself updated on politics, and the status of the candidates. I was very sure that I k ew what I was talking about. Sadly, when I went to check on my essay in showbie, I noticed that I had a mountain climber. I was devastated.
The feedback on my essay was that it was too personal. I was a little bit mad, and I hated that I got a mountain climber. I put so much time and effort into the essay, looked up statistics, did so much research, only to not even get a grade. Looking back on it, this was very valuable. Even though I was sad about getting a mountain climber, it just drove me to not get another one. I thought about what I wrote on my VMV, and I stepped it up. I haven’t gotten another since.
Second, I want to talk about a project called “Save Juno Beach.” Basically, Juno beach is a site where a very significant battle took place during World War Two. Many Canadian soldiers lost their lives, and there is a centre on the beach to memorialize the heroes. Our task was simple: complete an act of service for the community, and get somebody to sponsor us 20 dollars. Then, the whole class would put the money together, and send it to the Juno Beach Centre so that they could buy a flag to fly.
This project was incredibly rewarding for two reasons: one, I like learning about Canadian history, and filling in the gaps. It’s important to stay educated, so tragedies like war never repeats itself. And second, it feels really good to give back to the community, especially when they’re veterans who helped to defend our country, and are the reason that we are able to live the comfortable lives that we have. In Humanities, we learn about all kinds of sad and horrific events. For example, we are learning about Japanese internment at the moment. When learning about such appalling things, it often feels like there’s nothing a high schooler can do. In most cases, that’s correct. However, in this case, it’s not.
For my act of service, me and my friend Melissa volunteered at the West Vancouver Legion and handed out poppies, as well as collected donations. We raised over 70 dollars, and were sponsored the money we needed out of that. Even though we had never done something like this, we learned quickly. The second part of this project was also an essay. To be honest, the hardest part was getting MLA formatting down. The rest was the easy part.
Lastly, I would like to talk about Destination Imagination. You probably already know what DI is. A big fancy competition with performances and challenges to face. However, this event has an incredible amount of unseen effort and time was spent producing our final product. My group was focused on engineering, and we were tasked with building a machine that could propel itself up a rope, and encorporating it into a story. Because DI stretched beyond the time we had in class, we ended up spending a lot of our free time on the project. Because of some communication errors, we struggled with parts of our first DI competition.
When brainstorming ideas, my group decided to leave most of the design aspects to one of my group members, because he had a 3D printer, and had a ton of knowledge on engineering. Our first team choice element was a dance. We decided to choreograph a dance to the song Circus by Britney Spears, because it felt very on point. The dance, as well as the weights for our transporter, were our biggest downfalls.
For one, we learned part of the dance the day of DI. Our group’s communication was very lacking, so we had trouble all being at the same place at the same time. And secondly, when it came time to do our dance, we realized we forgot to bring the speaker we had brought into the room with us, so we had to do the dance without music. It was humiliating, and we definitely will not be making that mistake again.
With the weights, one of my team members, who was in charge of this portion, didn’t read the requirements properly. Instead of eight weights, each 250 grams, we had two weights that were 1000 grams each. This was a problem, as the weights didn’t fit the requirements. In the 45 minutes before our performance, we had to scramble to find and tape together random objects to be our weights. Essentially, that part of DI was a disaster. However, everything else went according to plan.
It’s very easy to learn from DI, because all of the takeaways are very obvious. For one, the speaker wasn’t there. And secondly, we need more weights. And last, my team needs to figure out how to respond to their messages. However, these are all fixable, and even though it was a scramble at the competition, we learned a lot about teamwork and taking accountability for next time.
To wrap up, I would like to talk about my overall growth this year. Grade ten has been full of new experiences, and projects. Like any school year (even though we’re only part way through), it had its ups and downs, but I feel like I’m changed to when I started grade ten. It’s scary to me to believe that in half a year, I will be re entering this school as a grade eleven. I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of new experiences to gain. Thank you for listening, and have a wonderful day!
Destination imagination, also known as DI, is a competition meant to let students think creatively to solve challanges. There are a number of different challenges, each with their own rules. The groups are randomly created, and even though you are allowed to make requests, nothing is garunteed. My group was assigned the engineering challenge, called High Wire Act. In this challenge, we had to create a transporter that would carry different weights up a rope. We had to encorporate this machine into a story that included a contemporary circus.
When brainstorming ideas, my group decided to leave most of the design aspects to one of my group members, because he had a 3D printer, and had a ton of knowledge on engineering. Our first team choice element was a dance. We decided to choreograph a dance to the sone Circus by Britney Spears, because it felt very on point. More on that later. We also had something called a “daring display.” This was basically meant to be sort of a mock version of an act from a real contemporary circus. For this, we decided that two of our group members would lift a third into the air, and he would jump through a hoop. This took a TON of practice and trial and error, and was one of the more difficult parts of our performance to figure out. However, it was very successful in the end.
We had a few different challenges with our performance during regionals. The main two were our dance and our weights. Basically, for the engineering part of the challenge, we were supposed to have up to 6 weights, each up to 250 grams in weight. However, the person in my team in charge of that portion didn’t realize this, and instead brought two 1000 gram weights. This meant that in the 45 minutes before our performance, we had to create makeshift weights out of random items. This was incredibly tedious and difficult, but nothing brings a team together like being super stressed while doing something at the last minute.