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.
- 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.
- Bribe yourself with a treat of some kind, but DO NOT have it until you have finished.
- Go somewhere other than your room. ANYWHERE ELSE
- 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