Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert of 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 giving me feedback I can use to improve as a learner.

It is hard to believe that another year has already passed. It feels like last September was just a week ago. This year I have grown, learned, and reflected more than ever. In this TPOL we will explore this, and I will prove to you that I am ready for grade 11.

Throughout this year I have been reflecting on my VMV—my vision, mission, and values. The statement I wrote at the start of the year stated:

To impact myself and those around me positively, I always show up as the person who will do that. I remove unnecessary stressors so that I’m always available to take care of myself and be kind to others. I am a person who makes sure that my mental health and physical health are properly prioritized (i.e., going to peer-to-peer support groups like Gals and Pals, swimming, and singing in choir) while still maintaining high grades that will gain me access to a well-regarded post-secondary institution. I stay connected to my community by singing in our school choirs and impacting this community positively by being a role model to younger students. I stay devoted to myself before anyone else, because at the end of the day, I am all I have, so I must serve myself and the people around me in a way that aligns with my values.

I have mostly fulfilled this. Of course I can’t be perfect, but I have taken the steps to be the best version of me so that I can be there for myself and others. I try my best and realize that I can only do so much. I have stayed connected to the choir community, stayed devoted to myself, and maintained my grades, which writing out makes me realize how much I really have put in this year. That’s not to say that I have always felt balanced and well and happy. It’s been far from easy, especially as some of the people I care for most have definitely not had great years. This has caused me to put an immense amount of pressure on myself, and at points I have felt quite helpless. The only reason I got through this was my support system. Had I not had all of them, I don’t know where I would be right now, but it definitely wouldn’t be as self-assured and successful as I am right now.

There were also 3 sections that I chose to focus on: engagement, self-regulation, and conduct and integrity. As you may recall, at my MPoL, I calculated my average for demonstrating each of these success behaviours in our projects overall. I talked about how I hoped to improve my averages before my TPoL. Sadly they have not improved, but in fact they have dropped. However, though my average may have dropped, I have grown more in this semester than the calculations show. I have ended this semester with an 80% in self regulation, and 93% in conduct and integrity and engagement. Since these stats haven’t changed much, in this pol I have chosen to focus more on the my vision and mission sections of my VMV.

(a rating in a blog post)

A year ago, looking at these numbers would have made my stomach drop and spun me into a spiral. I am not the me of last year anymore, though.

Every year I pick a word to live by. In my last TPOL, I expressed my desire to be resilient in grade 10. I think that this shift in mindset perfectly expresses this.

So sure this demonstrates growth, this demonstrates learning, but how can I reflect on my experiences from this year to prove that I am ready for grade 11? There are 3 projects this year that we have done that I think can help with this. They are what I think is the best work I have created this year, maybe even in all of school. They are examples of how I am able to use my time wisely, find topics that interest me, and connect my ideas to make deep, insightful work.

In the Juno Beach project, I demonstrated my ability to learn from past errors. In the first project we did this year, I felt I didn’t create the best work I could because of planning issues and a bad outline. I took the lesson I learned from this and created possibly the best writing I have ever created.

Screenshot

In the Change Makers project, I demonstrated how I continue to push myself to use different media to customize my project. I have never been someone who likes to edit videos. I have made this known for a very long time. I just don’t like things I’m not good at. What was different this time was the passion I had for my idea. Even though I’m not great at editing, because I cared so much about my idea and the story I was telling, I made a great video. Watch it here:

In our most recent project, “Definitely NOT the 51st State!” I showed my ability to adapt my learning style by quickly learning to use the Zettlekasten system thoroughly. By using this system so well, by the time that we were ready to create our speeches, I could just use one of my permanent notes as the basis. Because of this, I then had the time to revise my speech a total of 5 full times and almost fully memorize it, which made it more impactful and easy to deliver. I have always enjoyed public speaking, and this project showed me that I have the skills to be good at it.

Overall, I am very happy with my progress. I have done my best and done well. That’s all I or anyone else can ask of me. I look forward to this summer where I will be focusing on “experience” and this fall where I will be focusing on “diligence”.

Checking out until September.

Neko

How do creativity, collaboration, technology, influence, and design create experiences that change how we see and engage with the world?

This is the question we set out to answer for our project, Change Makers. This is a big question, and this was a big project (the highlight obviously being a week in Walt Disney World), and finally, after a month and a half of learning, I’m ready to share what I found out.

In this project we explored the driving question and how people with ideas considered “crazy,” like Walt Disney himself, change the world. This project was also another challenge-based learning project, which is a little different than our normal project-based learning projects (though, of course, this was project-based as well).

For this project we were asked to create our own video in one of 4 categories while on our field study. I was part of the People Power group, which was incredible, as I truly believe that people are what make Disney’s stories come to life. I came up with this statement to drive my learning: At Disney, the real magic happens throughout the connections between cast members and guests. These interactions don’t just reflect people’s past experiences with Disney—they help them create new memories and inspire them to create their own happily ever after.

I picked this for many reasons, but mostly for 2 big ones. The first reason was that I wanted to go deeper into why Disney represents childhood and dreaming for so many people, as I’m interested in psychology, and since this is a careers project, I was looking for a way to connect this project to what I’d like to do in my future. The second one was more personal, less academic, and definitely a little silly, but I knew that if I focused on this, I could interview characters while in the park and meet them. I knew that this would bring a special touch to my video that my classmates might not have thought of. Maybe this idea started as something a little ridiculous or embarrassing, but this year I’ve been learning more and more about how doing things that others might consider embarrassing opens more and more doors, so in the end I consider this a very good idea, as it sets my video apart.

Watch my video here!

As I mentioned before, and as I’m sure you noticed in my video, this project involved a field study at Walt Disney World in Florida. I can say without a doubt that this was my most successful field study yet. I connected well with classmates, stayed on track, was prepared, and, of course, I stayed hydrated. Before we left, we all made goals and agreements for how we would act on this field study, and I definitely followed through. Even before the trip started, when choosing meals, I picked the options that would be the most filling so that I would stay energized throughout the day. I packed thoroughly for the Floridian sun. The week before we left was a chaotic one with many deadlines, but looking back I am grateful that it was because without that push from my teachers I wouldn’t have been nearly as successful.

Finally, we hosted a film night where each group presented a video of all of their videos together. I unfortunately could not attend, but that does not mean I wasn’t involved. In our first meeting as a big group, I took charge and delegated all of the tasks that needed to be completed. I also wrote the script.

Last but not least, let’s again take a look at my VMV.

Self-Regulation 3/3 May has been a chaotic time for me, but as the school year comes to a close, I seem to be finally figuring out self-regulation again. Though this project was stressful at times, it was the good kind of stress that helps me get stuff done.

Conduct and Integrity: 3/3 Throughout this project, especially the field school, I responsibly showed up for my classmates. I was a leader in my group and was always willing to lend a hand to other students with filming, brainstorming (I heard NEKOOO HELP ME PLEASE more than once), or just knowing what we were doing next.

Engagement: 3/3 It wasn’t hard to be engaged in this project, as it was about Disney, and I love Disney. I was always engaged both in class and out of it in Florida. I have also demonstrated growth through this blog post.

Thank you again to all the teachers, parents, and my fellow classmates who helped make this trip and project happen. Until next time!

Neko

Hello and welcome back to my blog!

In this project we investigated the question:

How do we use a satirical radio play to communicate the shifts in Canadian society following WWII?

We demonstrated our understanding and learning by creating a radio play. We all worked together to create a script that touched on both satire and historical things. This project was a big improvement from the mess that was our Romeo and Juliet project; it was much more organised. This is because of the way the script was written; a production team made an outline before, and then we wrote each scene in smaller groups. Next time I think that I would want to focus on adding more historical details because although it did make fun of some 1950s stereotypes, there weren’t enough historical details to truly show our understanding.

The competency we focused on was 🧐 Analysing: I can analyse ideas and make supported conclusions. Making conclusions informed by textual elements, including significant sources over time.

I demonstrated this with my textbook notes, which you can read through this link.

https://poets-find-fp9.craft.me/lLzVQQxB5saTpx

I’m very proud of them as they show a complete understanding.

The content we focused on was creating a thoughtful, satirical text for a live audience in the form of a radio play, and I have to say I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to accomplish this, but we did. You can watch it here.

Onto my VMV!

Self Regulation:

In regard to this, the only thing I can think of saying is WE ARE SO BACK. Throughout this project I got my assignments done in a timely manner without burning out completely! I did get quite stressed at points, but I was able to work through it. I gave myself grace when I was on the music trip and unable to complete everything on time. I also didn’t take on every responsibility I could, which definitely helped, which I will talk about later on. 3/3

Conduct and Integrity

I worked very well in a group on the project. It was easy for me to work with Aidan and Kennedy because everyone did their bit, unlike other groups I’ve been in in the past. I was a positive example and reliably helped a peer who didn’t understand assignments with their work. 3/3

Engagement

I wasn’t able to take the leadership role I wanted because I was away for the time that the storyline would have been developed, but I didn’t give up and not try to be a leader for the rest of the project because of this. Instead, I worked as the DRI within my group of 3 to make sure we were on track, and when the opportunity arose, I took the role of narrator. This was a great way for me to play to my strengths because I’m used to singing on mic because of the number of choirs I’m in. I was very happy to give myself the extra work of being in every scene if it meant being more involved and important to the process and outcome. 3/3

Until next time!

Neko

Welcome back!!!

In our most recent project, we were focused on health literacy. In this day and age this topic is more important than ever, so I was very excited for this project. But before we get into the learning, let’s take a closer look at the new format of learning we used for this project!

Challenge-based learning. What the heck is that? It’s similar but not the same as project-based learning. From what I understand, the biggest difference is how much control the learners have over what they study. I really enjoyed the chance to push myself and drive my own learning in this project, because, as I talked about in my MPoL, I learn best when I get to learn about topics I care about, so this was a really great experience for me. Here’s how I learned about my topic through the challenge-based learning project.

Engaging!

So, at the beginning of this project, we got to pick between 3 topics: physical health, mental health, and health literacy. Being the psychology-obsessed person I am, I obviously picked mental health. We then created guiding questions and chose a challenge, which turns the question into a call to action.

Here’s my question:

How can we learn about different mental health illnesses like anxiety and depression so we can spread awareness and erase stigma?

I picked this question because I think that the vast majority of hate of any kind comes from misunderstanding. In a time where it feels like there is more misinformation than ever, hate is spreading faster than ever. Mental health and mental illnesses are one of the topics that are under this threat the most and one of the topics most likely to hurt people when they are misinformed, so I thought that it was very important to focus on this question.

This is my challenge:

To encourage others to educate themselves on how struggling with mental illness can make life harder for other people so that more people know how to properly support the people around them, creating a chain of empathy and understanding.

I am all about kindness and learning, and when you pair those 2 together, you can create some really great things. This was my opportunity to showcase this.

Investigate my eventual statement plus the questions bubble thing.

The next step was to investigate, which I did. We started by asking questions about anything we thought we’d need to know to answer our own questions. These were some of mine.

We then researched these. I did this by interviewing a youth worker and watching TED Talks. As this was a short project, we didn’t do a tonne of research, especially because most of us already knew a basic answer to the questions we asked. Eventually this was synthesised into this statement about my research.

“Mental illness is still a taboo topic that many people feel uncomfortable talking about. This creates a system of avoidance, as people would rather dumb down the experiences of those who have mental illnesses than truly understand. Mental health isn’t visible like physical health is, which makes it easier for people to say that people are just making it up. When this shame culture is created, it makes those who are struggling less likely to ask for help. By sharing and talking about experiences with mental illness, people can be educated to approach the topic with empathy instead of judgement.”

I am very happy with the amount of research I got done in this time period and was excited to transfer it to video form.

Act

Finally, we got to the act part. This is where you take your big idea, your questions, and the learning you did and transform it into something that can spread the message of your learning. We were asked to make a short (meaning like 2ish minutes) long video to communicate our findings.

As you can see, this is not the most polished thing I’ve ever made, but it wasn’t really supposed to be. Since this was such a short project, I focused on the learning instead, and I am very proud of this. Something else I’m proud of is the animations in this video. I have never used Canva before but managed to figure it out on my own very quickly. I’m excited to see where this new skill can take me in the future.

Here’s the full workbook I completed:

Lastly, let’s look at my VMV.

VMV

Self-Regulations

While in my last project for Maker, I gave myself too much slack; the fear of not getting better in this one caused me to forget to take care of myself. I did still manage to take breaks but often got consumed with the stress of trying to be better to a point where I couldn’t even take a minute without stressing about school. I did maintain balance with my other activities and reached out for support but failed to manage my stress and anxiety, so I think I get a 2/3 for self-regulation.

Conduct and Integrity.

I was so, so, so happy to work with the group I did for this project. Normally a group work hater, it turns out it doesn’t suck so much when you can rely on the people you’re working with. While this wasn’t a group project, we did a lot of group brainstorming and critique, and I couldn’t have asked for a better team. 3/3

Engagement

As I talked about earlier, this project was really great for me because I got to pick something that I care about. I regularly participated in class, and as I pushed myself more after the disappointment of the podcast project, I showed growth. 3/3

Finally, this is the reflect, document, and share part of our project. If this work that I’ve done makes one person stop to think about this issue, my purpose has been fulfilled.

Until next time!

Neko

Hi!

I’m back with another DI blog post, and sadly this is likely the last one I will ever write. ☹️

However, I do have some great things to report on regarding the provincial Destination Imagination tournament. As stated before, I wasn’t able to be there for the regional tournament, and sadly I wasn’t able to be there for the provincial one either due to the Seycove Senior Music trip. This doesn’t mean I couldn’t contribute; it just means that I had to get creative with how I could. As stated in my first post, the first step I took to making sure I was involved was adding the AI character into the script and recording my voice. Even if I wasn’t there, I was in a way.

I found it difficult throughout this project to figure out how much to involve myself. On one hand, I was going to be away for both tournaments, and it was important to me to give our grade 9s the space to be leaders, and on the other, I am an overachiever. Let’s take a closer look:

What went well:

• Giving other people the space to lead. I’ve known myself to be pushy in the past in group projects because my groups didn’t have what it took to create something I’d be proud of. This year I was lucky to be with a group that I could trust to contribute meaningfully instead of disappearing the second something needed to be done. This completely changed the way I think about group work; finally, I could rely on my group members!
• I figured out how to be a part of the group while not being there. As part of our solution, my group made up an AI character that I voiced. They then played a recording of my voice at the tournament, which the appraisers loved and kept me involved.
• I rewrote our script when we looked at our scores after regionals and realised that our technobabble depictor. While Finn made a robot for us (shout-out to Finn for making a robot in like 5 days), I rewrote our story to include it. This was another good way for me to contribute when I couldn’t actually be there.

Areas for Improvement:

• contributing more, earlier on. At the beginning of DI, I was working on a lot in other classes, which meant I didn’t contribute as much as I could have. Next time I would try to meet up with my group more at the beginning. We struggled with our story a bit, which took up valuable time, and I wish we had finished it earlier so we would have had more time on the go.
• My own confidence. At points I didn’t share my ideas because I was worried that they would be considered silly or stupid. If I hadn’t done this, I could have been a better role model, and our presentation could have been better.
• Considering all the elements from the beginning. A big part of our feedback from the first tournament was that we were missing our technobabble depictor. Obviously missing an entire component impacts your score a lot. If we had considered this earlier, we could have taken the time to understand what we were supposed to make. Instead we went full steam ahead with other elements.
• I think my group as a whole could have more flexibility. Even though we talked about it in our team contract, at points group members (including me) weren’t as open to others ideas as we could have been.

Overall, this year’s DI run was a big point of growth for me. It showed me how to take a step back, how to contribute what I can and know my limits, connect with people across grades, manage a capable team, and continue to gain confidence when sharing my ideas.

Thank you so much to all my group members, I couldn’t have asked for a better team!!!!

Until next time!

Neko

Hello! I’m back!

This project was about so many things. Stories, audio editing, and so much more

We started with the driving question: “How do I craft the story of my learning?” and the core competence of reflecting on learning. “I reflect on my learning to generate new ideas or reinterpret others’ ideas in new ways and use it to form reasoned decisions for my future choices.”

Now I want to start this off by saying that this project has not been my best project. It launched at around the same time as DI and got lost in the chaos of what is prepping for regionals, but that is not an excuse for not creating great work. Not balancing my time well in this project just means that I have lots to learn from it. Let’s dive in.

So, as I said, in this project we learned about storytelling and how we can use audio to tell stories. We were told that we could make our podcast about any sort of story from our lives. I think by far the hardest part of this project was thinking about what story I was going to tell. Everything either felt too small or too personal. I finally decided that there are stories that need to be told, and even if it was deeply personal, I had one of those stories. My podcast is on body image and how social media impacts teenagers (specifically myself).

The first thing we did was a pitch. This was mine.

This was a great starting place, and completing this small assignment really helped me get the ball rolling for the next one until it didn’t.

As I started the script writing process, it quickly became intense. As I said before, this is a very personal topic to me. Every time I sat down to write, I would get emotional. This led to me avoiding writing it completely, which wasn’t hard to do as I was DRI of our humanities project at the time and was busy with many other things. Eventually the script was completed when I was in Europe for the month of March, but this was a very low point for me. I don’t think I’ve ever pushed off an assignment like that before, and I hope that in the future I don’t let it happen again.

Finally I got to recording the podcast, and if you’ve read this blog before, you know that audio is my least favourite way to tell a story. However, this part really surprised me. I enjoyed it! I had a lot of fun making theme music and recording myself. I think that this is because I have had the chance to record audio so many times this year; I’m much more confident now. If I were to do this project again, I would focus more on getting some really cool audio effects in there. I think it would be more engaging to the listener. While I have gained some confidence in my editing abilities, I still have a lot of room to grow.

Here’s the episode:

I think this has been my worst project this year. And a year ago, I would have been endlessly beating myself up over it. But I’m not last year’s me, so instead I am going to go through what made this project a FAIL.

1. Poor time management—I should have finished as much of this project before I even left and time-blocked properly so that the work didn’t pile up and stress me out so much.
2. Not setting better reminders. Usually I am the QUEEN of using the app Things, and I can definitely tell that since I didn’t, I was less successful.
3. Spotting stress times in advance. A “stress time” is a point where I have a lot of schoolwork due, a lot to do at home, and still have all my extracurriculars to do. When I spot them in advance, I have the opportunity to avoid them by doing stuff before it is due so that I have more time later.

Next, let’s look at my VMV:

Self Regulation: 1/3

While I wasn’t a perfectionist in this project, I definitely did not balance myself properly. I know myself well. This means I know that for me to not complete a project as perfectly as possible, I have to be absolutely drowning in the other things I am doing. I am not a person who only puts in 50% of the effort. Up until this point I have been able to get by by pushing and pushing and pushing, but this is a strong example of how this method will eventually not work. I did, however, manage my stress throughout this project. Instead of freaking out every time something wasn’t done perfectly, I would take a step back or a break and then try again. Next time I think I would benefit from pushing just a little harder before taking a break.

Conduct and integrity: 2/3

The only reason that this isn’t at a 3/3 is that this wasn’t a group project. I gave reliably good critique and encouraged my classmates about their ideas.

Engagement: 2/3

This is the first time that I have given myself a 2/3 on engagement throughout the year, and while I demonstrated interest by picking a topic I’m interested in and participated a lot in class discussions, since I didn’t write this blog post on time, I do not feel that I have properly demonstrated my growth through reflective posts.

So, how do I craft the story of my learning?

I craft the story of my learning by taking a good look at how I learn. Then I can translate what I find into the other media that can help me push myself to learn more (like me and audio). By using the tools that are provided to me and that I have learned, I craft something that shares my understanding of any topic.

Thank you; see you next time!

Neko

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert of 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 giving me feedback I can use to improve as a learner.

It is that time of year again. The time where we look both forward and back on what I have achieved and yet to achieve this year. Except this year I have been preparing for this moment for almost 5 months. Starting in November, I have been making my posts in a way for my future self. For me now, and me in June and beyond. I have been actively assessing myself on my VMV at the end of every project to make sure I stay on track with my growth, and I have honestly never seen myself stay so on track with so many goals at once. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at my VMV together.

As you can tell, and as I’m sure you know by now, I am a person who likes to do a lot of things. Like, a LOT. From choir to school to piano to being part of our school’s GSA leadership team, I have a lot of responsibilities, and a lot of the time all of those responsibilities are a lot to handle. This year has been all about doing all of that and doing it well, while still taking care of myself. It has been hard. It will continue to be hard. But as the year has progressed, it has gotten easier. That’s what I want to talk about.

But before we do, let’s look at MATH.

These are the sections of success behaviours I chose for myself at the beginning of the year to focus on in my VMV. This has been calculated by giving myself a score out of 3 for each behaviour (based off of the 3 goals I set within each behaviour). I then found the average for each behaviour and the actual average, which came out to 92%. As you can see, I have been doing ok. There are clearly some sections I am more proficient in and some that still need some work. Let’s quickly highlight a project for each goal to look at my strengths and weaknesses.

First of all, engagement. This is by far the easiest for me. I find it really easy to get excited about learning because I love learning. It’s not hard to do something you love. I think that the project that showcases this the best was our WW2 project, Saving Juno Beach. I think the essay I wrote for this project was the best piece of writing I have ever done. The best piece of schoolwork I have ever created. This is because I was passionate about my chosen topic. One of my goals for this year was to “ demonstrate enthusiasm and curiosity for learning by picking topics I am interested in when given the chance. This is the perfect example of that. Here is my essay in Zine format below:

Throughout the project and all projects we have done this year, I heavily participated in class discussions, which I think is what makes me the learner I am. By always contributing to class discussions, I am always listening to others perspectives, which helps me deepen my own learning. Finally, in terms of engagement about blog posts, by changing the way I write blog posts, I have demonstrated great enthusiasm for continued improvement.

On to Conduct and Integrity. This section is mostly about leadership, something I continue to work on and do a lot of as I continue with PLP. The project I want to focus on for this section is our Romeo and Juliet project, because although it did … challenge me at times, it helped me grow as a leader a lot. In this project I had to do a lot of nagging. I despise nagging. I would much rather people do their own part of the project and actually listen when instructions are given instead of me telling them what to do all the time or, worse, having to do their part for them. The challenge for this was staying kind. We are often told to give kind, helpful, and specific feedback, but I struggled to do this when my group members rarely had much for me to give feedback on, which made this difficult.

However, when it comes to working with people who know what they’re doing, I have successfully become much less of a “control freak.” I will be the first to say that I can come across as bossy sometimes. A hard shift for me this year was learning how to not be that when working with people who know what they’re doing. Another good example of this is DI. I was blessed this year with a very good DI team. I realized pretty soon into our project that I finally wasn’t going to have to do that. The difficulty was figuring out how to not be bossy when people didn’t need it. I look forward to continuing to work on this throughout the rest of the year.

Finally, we are onto the last category, the one I struggled with the most but also the one I felt that I grew the most in. Productivity and balance are things I have been continually working on for ages, and I continued to work on this year. My VMV goals in this section focused on seeking balance. I have been very successful at times, and at others not so much.

I have noticed that the projects where I am the most engaged are the ones where I am the most productive, because when I am engaged, it is much easier to care about a topic or assignment(cough World War 2 project cough cough) . I am very, very good at getting a deep, insightful understanding of the topics we learn about, but when it comes to communicating that through my work, I sometimes struggle. Throughout the year I have tried different strategies and methods of staying on task and getting stuff done, and I will be trying more throughout the rest of the year. For the rest of the year and beyond, I would like to try to use this formula for a more successful rate of focus.

1. Remind myself of one of these quotes:

Your education is more important than your entertainment.

Study until you are excited to take the test/share your learning.

Many other people would like to be in your place.

1. Bribe yourself with a treat of some kind, but DO NOT have it until you have finished.
2. Go somewhere other than your room. ANYWHERE ELSE
3. Get as much as you can done in one go.

So yes, I have found getting stuff done hard this year, but that does not mean I didn’t grow in my abilities of self-regulation. This year I have done the thing that has come up in all of my MPOLs for pretty much the first time ever. I have found balance. Not all the time. Not even the majority of the time, but I can proudly say that for around 50% of the projects we did this year, I did not:

Go into a stress spiral/anxiety attack.

Wait until the last minute to get stuff done.

Held onto the bad feelings that come with what I consider a bad mark for more than a week.

And 100 percent of the time I have reached out for support when I needed it and managed to get it done eventually, at a level up to my standards.

Yay!

I’m very proud of this achievement, as doing this is something I never thought could happen while maintaining the grades I expect. But it is!

Overall, throughout this year I have stayed on track with my goals. I have made changes to my routine, taken breaks when I needed them, put effort into other activities, and still have had a social life. I am incredibly proud of this achievement and look forward to keeping up the good work throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you!

Neko

I think that apologies are one of the most important things in life. No one is ever perfect, and no group of people has ever been perfect, nor will there ever be a perfect group of people. Wrong decisions are made every day. Apologies are the reason that we do not fall apart and constantly fight with other humans. But what makes a good one? And what can we learn from our past and our country’s past to keep our apologies alive?

First of all I will start this by saying that this blog post will look a little different than my classmates. This is because I was away for the final part of this project (which was the big show your learning section). I still feel that I learned a lot in this project, however, so I’ve decided to make this post even if it will look a little different.

First of all,  I will start by saying that this blog post will look a little different than my classmates. This is because I was away for the final part of this project (which was the big show your learning section). I still feel that I learned a lot in this project, however, so I’ve decided to make this post even if it will look a little different.

Let’s get into it! These are the two things we focused on during this project to show our learning.

🧩 Concept: Identity

I can identify and explain how identity matters across different societies and time period. I can apply my understanding of identity to the world today and my place in it.

One of the first things we did in this project was spend six days taking notes and listening to Ms. McWilliam. I enjoyed these lessons—she’s an excellent explainer, and I appreciated how little text was on the slides, which made it easier to stay engaged. Throughout these days, we focused on topics like the Komagata Maru, Japanese internment in Canada, the Chinese Head Tax, the meaning of an apology, and how British Columbia came to be. I was shocked that I had never heard of most of these events before—except for Japanese internment, but only briefly. Learning about them now was eye-opening, and I hope they become a bigger part of the curriculum for younger students in the future. As someone who lives in Vancouver, hearing about the injustices that happened here was both surprising and unsurprising at the same time. It’s disturbing to realize how much of this history is overlooked. These events didn’t just shape laws and policies—they shaped the identities of entire communities, determining who was accepted, who was excluded, and how people saw themselves in Canadian society.

One of the most impactful parts of this learning experience was reading Obasan. The book is written from the perspective of a woman remembering her childhood in a ghost town where her family was interned. Experiencing history through a character’s point of view made it feel so much more real. The novel also showed how different generations of Naomi’s family responded to their internment. Her elders remained silent about their trauma, while younger family members pushed for justice. This highlighted how identity is shaped by lived experiences—those who lived through the internment firsthand may have internalized shame or fear, while later generations, growing up in a different time, had the freedom to speak out. It made me think about how history isn’t just about events—it’s about the lasting impact those events have on people’s sense of belonging and identity. Even today, we can see how past injustices affect the way people of colour navigate Canadian society.

Here are the notes I did in these classes:

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/99ce281d-3a26-71a6-64f5-818a11cc4c63/438CBBFE-383B-4B2E-9917-AA13A7ABD197

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/99ce281d-3a26-71a6-64f5-818a11cc4c63/D641B9DA-AAF5-4E7C-8C84-68E590CB2EB1

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/99ce281d-3a26-71a6-64f5-818a11cc4c63/7BDB512A-3280-4DBF-AB53-82415FD51A8C

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/99ce281d-3a26-71a6-64f5-818a11cc4c63/581365D0-49B6-4771-B731-3B7FB78D447E

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/99ce281d-3a26-71a6-64f5-818a11cc4c63/859ECDE8-9182-4FD5-87F7-0922D1C11EDC

✏️ Skill: Supporting Thoughts

I can use my tools and skills to effectively communicate my thinking for a variety of purposes, audiences , and meaning with well-chosen evidence to support my ideas while maintaining excellent grammar.

After learning about all of these topics, we were assigned to make a smart brevity note about one of them. I was assigned the Komagata Maru. While some of my classmates were not excited to make another smart brevity note, I really enjoy making these and appreciated the opportunity to improve on showing my learning in this form.

Here is the note I made.  

https://docs.craft.do/editor/d/99ce281d-3a26-71a6-64f5-818a11cc4c63/79C98D5C-3221-40DD-9DBE-E51EB2AF93C0

I am really happy with what I made, but next time I would like to go even deeper. I think that by using a couple more sources, and spending a little more time doing research, I could have made this even better. Yet another thing to improve is my spelling and grammar. Somehow I forgot to put this through grammarly and it shows. ( I normally make it practice to triple check all my assignments for good spelling and grammar so I’m actually quite disappointed that I forgot to do this as it is such an easy fix).

Finally, the last thing I created for this project was something I made up for myself. Yes. I made up a homework assignment. While on vacation. I guess I was feeling confident.

I was in Vienna Austria and my family took a walking tour (I am planning on making a post of this trip too, so stay tuned!). One of the first things we passed was this memorial (for context the last assignment I should have been doing for this project was designing a building a concept for a memorial based on the event assigned to us and showing all the symbolism).

I created this:

https://poets-find-fp9.craft.me/AmSB3855TESI4c

Originally as I am sure you can tell this was supposed to go over more memorials across Europe,  but this was the only one I ran into organically and our days were too busy to try to schedule something else in.

When I reached out to my teacher these were the guidelines I was given:

• What does the memorial symbolize?
• What is the story (that you can find) about the memorial?
• how does the location impact the message of the memorial?
• what apology is the memorial keeping alive?

I am really really proud of this piece of work. By having the initiative to do this on my own, I got the chance to customize my work. I also feel that this shows that I am a person who  “Demonstrates enthusiasm and curiosity for learning by picking topics I am interested in when given the choice” (this is from my VMV by the way. I was very motivated to complete this and complete it well, because I was truly interested in my work and didn’t want to disappoint myself by creating something not up to my standards.

Finally, the driving question.

How can we keep an apology alive so the wrongs of the past are remembered—and not repeated—today?

I think that this is very important to think about, especially in the current political climate. As time moves onward, it is important to remember the wrong doings of the past. When we remember something we can learn and reflect from it to make sure that what is wrong isn’t repeated. History repeats itself, yes, but when we are properly aware we can prevent this.

Overall I have found my work decent in this project. It was nothing incredible, but I wasn’t completely a mess. I definitely could have been more organized (because of travel and changing some stuff up, I became very off track especially with reading the book even though I did eventually finish it.

Overall I have found my work decent in this project. It was nothing totally incredible, but I wasn’t completely a mess. I definitely could have been more organized (because of travel  and changing some stuff up, I became very off track especially with reading the book even though I did eventually finish it. 

I look forward to improving in our last term! Until next time,

Neko

I will preface this by saying that sadly I was not able to participate in this year’s regional tournament, nor will I be able to participate in the provincial one. Somehow, I will be/were out of the country for both of them. This actually makes me quite sad because I do really enjoy the tournaments, and I really enjoyed working with my group this year; they are all extremely capable and reliable, and I would have loved to have the opportunity to compete with them.

That said, I felt very comfortable leaving them (though obviously I felt and feel terrible about it) because they are so capable. This was demonstrated through all of the prep work we did in and out of class.

From the start, my team worked together well. We quickly came together as a team and began to think of ideas. Everyone was great at keeping up even if they were out for the day, so no one felt behind. We always do our best to keep everyone involved and feeling included.

Eventually we came up with our baseline idea (which I won’t reveal here) and began to make props. We successfully delegated who would buy what and who would create which items. Ella and I made team choice elements, while other group members built some other exciting things (we helped with that too, of course).

Then it was time for our check-in/first dress rehearsal with Ms. Kadi. Going to be totally honest, this did not go that well. We didn’t prepare our story fast enough to really know it inside and out, and we missed some key elements of the presentation. We didn’t let this discourage us, though; we took it as a learning opportunity and focused on improving our performance for the next rehearsal.

Eventually it was time for the dress rehearsal. Sadly, one of our group members wasn’t able to make it, so I stepped into her role for the day (something I did for her multiple times). Our improvement from the last rehearsal was clear; we had better props, a better understanding of the story, and a better understanding of each other. This really improved our performance quality. One thing I do want to focus on improving as we prepare/improve our performance for next time is our technobabble depictor. The struggle with this was that no one could figure out what it was really supposed to do. I’m excited to collaborate with my team on possible solutions to this problem ASAP!

Finally the tournament. Again, sadly I wasn’t there, but in a way I was. Since I wanted to be there, we created a character for me ahead of time, and they played a recording of my voice. I’m not going to reveal much, but in our feedback, 3 out of the 4 appraisers loved this idea and gave us lots of positive feedback on it. I’m really glad I could still contribute to the tournament in this way.

Of course, it is also important to talk about how I feel that I have personally grown throughout this project. Something my teachers have been telling me in basically every Pol since grade 8 is that I need to learn how to take a break. It took leaving the country to do that. In past years I would have been scrambling, taking responsibility for everything (AKA the burnout train). This year I literally couldn’t. I still contributed and continue to contribute, but I let myself not expect everything from me.

Overall, I am incredibly proud of my team and what they accomplished while I was away, and I am also proud of the initiative I showed to keep myself involved. I could not have asked for a better team for my last year with DI with PLP (I’m currently considering doing DI with some friends next year). Gold stars to all my team members, and for the rest of you reading this, watch out for another humanities post dropping soon!

-Neko

How can learning from others’ career journeys help us shape our own?

This is a big question, as most driving questions are. In this project we spent the day in the life of a professional of a career we were interested in, to see if we were actually still interested in it afterwards. Luckily for me, I live with someone in the field that I want to go in (roughly). My mum is a nurse practitioner (which you’ll learn more about later), and I have always wanted to go into healthcare of some kind so I was really excited for this opportunity.

These are the big ideas that we set out to accomplish and understand:

Lifelong learning creates career and life opportunities.

Competency

😁 Communicating: I can communicate in appropriate and effective forms.

• Understand how systems are a lifelong process which creates opportunities to reach goals and open new opportunities
• Understand the relationship between career-life roles: post-graduation options, personal passions, work, family, education, volunteerism
• Connect to goals and find work and study which would enhance them
• Learn about support networks for future potential future paths

I can confidently say that I have fully fulfilled all of these goals. I have been researching admission requirements for psychology programs (the specific part of health I’m interested in) since December of 2024 when we did our marketing me project (read about that here). I had already learned all about the paths I was interested in and what it would take to get there in our previous project because I wanted to push myself, and that really paid off in this one. Throughout this project, I kept communicating with my mum and her colleagues at Canopy Health (the clinic where I spent the day). I have lined up more interviews past this project to learn more about the paths I’m interested in, even though it’s not required because this project made me realize how many people are ready to help you if you ask.

Thinking 🧠: Reflecting on Learning

I reflect on my learning to generate new ideas or reinterpret others’ ideas in new ways. I use my thinking and reflection to help me make decisions for my future.

This competency was reflected in both my Smart Brevity note and audio reflection. I used critical thinking to determine what was most important to put into both of my brevity notes so that they maintained detail without being overly long.

These are the brevity notes I created:

https://poets-find-fp9.craft.me/mslXQprQoKC2pZ

https://poets-find-fp9.craft.me/WnzjfCXgzDgSZR

I also created an audio reflection and will post it here as soon as it has been added to Spotify.

This reflection really pushed me. I will be the first to admit that audio is not my favourite format. I would choose to write 10 scripts over recording 1 five-minute podcast any day, but I am also someone who cares about doing well in school. This means that even though I hate editing audio you can bet that I will put everything I have into that reflection if necessary. I am very proud of the work I created, the audio is crisp, and the story makes sense and is engaging. I think this is my best work with audio editing yet and hope to build on this skill in our new maker project which is all about podcasts. Yay…….

Last of all my VMV reflection. 

I touched on almost everything in my last humanities post, and since we did these projects simultaneously, all of the things I reflected on about self-regulation and being engaged in the class ( I love English class and this project was so customizable how could I not be reliably actively engaged???). The one point I dont think I have touched on yet is these posts. 

Over this past year, I have seen the quality of my posts improve drastically. I changed how I write these posts in the first semester and now find my progress across projects easier to track now. This makes sure that I dont get stuck on things as often. I am very proud of this progress, and as a result of if blog posts are now something I look forward to immensely. 

Thank you so much for reading, until next time,

Neko