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 offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.
It’s been a weird start to this year so far. I don’t think I’ve ever missed so much school before. I’ve been sick 3 times, I’ve had 2 concussions and 3 hits to the head, and I’ve missed many afternoons due to basketball. I don’t think these events have affected my work majorly this year, but the biggest impact it had was definitely in the horror movie project. I ended up missing the one week of preparation the class had before our trip to Loon Lake, so I wasn’t very involved in the pre-production aspect of the film. I wanted to have the role of production manager in the movie, but because I wasn’t there for the pre-production, I wasn’t considered for the role. This kind of reduced my enthusiasm to work at Loon Lake, because I was being given tasks that didn’t even seem like learning and was constantly comparing myself to the actual production manager. That was definitely the most disappointing time for myself this year. I didn’t feel like I was contributing to the movie in any significant way. So, looking towards other class and group projects, I want to focus on 2 things. I want to initially apply for a major role in the film so I can have an impact on the project and grow as a learner. I also want to improve the attitude I have in group projects. I contracted for a profile 5 in collaboration, which means I can facilitate group processes and encourage collective responsibility. I did not do that in the horror project, so looking forwards I want to focus on that for group projects.
Even though I struggled with the movie part of the horror project, the other aspects of that project went quite well. I missed the Seattle trip, but I would say I had a strong understanding of horror movies and their techniques. When I missed the Seattle trip, I felt like I was falling behind on my understanding of horror, so I researched and wrote a couple of blog posts about why people watch horror as well as how horror affects anxiety. This understanding not only helped me watch the horror movies in class, but it improved my performance in the many socratic seminars we had about these films. I felt like I could easily identify how directors were trying to scare audiences because of what I learned throughout the project.
In my learning plan I said that I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and try new things. In the dystopia project I think I accomplished that with my video about 1984. It wasn’t a huge step but I tried to make an animation for my video, and based on the amount of time I had because I missed a lot of that project too, it turned out fairly nice. Another place of growth was in the socratic seminars this year. I mentioned my growth in them in my TPOL last year too, but my fear and angst once associated with socratic seminars has nearly all but gone. This year I feel a lot more comfortable speaking in front of my peers and in a socratic seminar format, which was also something I stated as an area of growth this year in my learning plan. It might be that I’m not speaking in front of Alex O any more, or maybe I’ve learned to prepare better, but when I speak in a seminar I’ve not only found it easier to articulate what I am thinking, but I’ve stopped second guessing what I’m going to say. Of course I’m going to continue to push my comfort zone in projects, but I am proud of the progress I have already made this year.
An example of where I decided to not try something new came in PGP with my book selection. My area off growth for PLP was to be open to what was being taught to us, yet I declined to read Highly Effective Habits and instead chose to read The Brave Athlete. I don’t entirely regret my decision to read The Brave Athlete as I learned a lot from that book and use it when I play basketball, but I still could’ve read Highly Effective Habits and I’m sure I would’ve learned a lot from that as well.
So in conclusion, I’ve managed to work on nearly everything I outlined in my learning plan at the start of the year. I’m nowhere near finished improving on these skills, but this first half of the year has had growth in those areas. Something I want to work on for the rest of the year is being more of a leader and a positive member of group projects, as my role in the horror project was not one I like to think about.