Hey everyone, and welcome to my TPoL (Transitional Presentation of Learning) blog post.

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.

Last year, I felt like I needed to improve on my paying attention in class, or rather my lack thereof. I have always had a bad habit of being on my phone in class, and it’s something I’ve been trying to work on.

At the beginning of the year, I was able to stay on track with my goals. I was on my phone less, paying attention in class more, and working on getting schoolwork in on time. Unfortunately, toward the end of the school year I got off track with my goal. Feeling overwhelmed, I slacked off with my work and procrastinated starting projects. I’ll elaborate further about how this impacted my learning and how I have worked to get back on track with my goals later on in this post.

One of the most fun projects we did this year was The Great Debaters. I won’t go into depth about the small details about the project, but you can read my blog post about it here. During this project, I stretched on doing work outside of class and with a lot of homework which is something I have always struggled with. For the most part, I was able to push through on my work and continue to get things done on time, and when I didn’t, I feel that it was made up for by the quality of work. Cooper and I ended up having a very positive reaction in our debate over gun control which when voted on by our audience, came to a tie, which was probably the most positive outcome we could’ve had.

I’m proud of the stretches I made in that project, and in the others I’ve had to do this year, but like I previously mentioned, I got off track toward the end of the year and slacked off on my schoolwork. With the help of my math tutor Jonathan, who was an absolute blessing to have to help me, I was able to get the train back on the rails and start again with handing everything in on time and to expectations.

I learned a lot from this struggle of getting off track with my learning that I’m going to carry forward into next year and my life after high school. Primarily, I learned just how easy it is to get off track, and how hard it is to get back on track, but I really already knew about that. What I really learned was that once I get back on track, it is totally worth the effort I’m putting in. I just need to put my foot down and power through my work, because it’s only gonna get worse if I put it off.

This connects to the success behaviours I’m touching on in this presentation, which are Agency, Self-Regulation, and Preparation. All of these success behaviours were things that I struggled with, and things that I still do struggle with, but I believe that my improvements with my work and quality + getting back on track with my schoolwork and progress as a learner toward the end of the year have demonstrated evidence that I have successfully improved myself with these behaviours.

Spring exhibition was another highligt of this school year. Cooper and I again teamed up to create a poster board highlighting both the actions of upstander Carl Lutz during the Holocaust, and the connections between concentration camps in Nazi occupied territories in Europe during WWII and Canada and the USA’s Residential School system which systematically stripped indigenous people, specifically children, of their culture. Not to toot our own horns, but I think we did a really great job with the project. We are both super proud of it and three people cried while we were presenting because of how touching it was to them. Again, I hate to brag, but I’m so proud of that project and Cooper and I were able to follow through with our vision for our project and how well it was received by the audience. This connects to the success behaviours I am working on/highlighting in this blog post/presentation. During the exhibition and the days leading up to it, I really had to put my foot on the gas pedal with my work, and I was successful, I just battened down the hatches and did a lot of cancelling plans to work on this project and such. This demonstrates all three behaviours, self regulation, agency, and preparation.

Exhibition Posterboard

This brings me to the end of the blog post. This year, I fell short on my responsibility, integrity, and respect with some things that happened this involving myself and 11 other students that need not be discussed, but since then, I’ve been working on my ownership and accountability and have been trying to contribute to making the Seycove community a better place. I’ve been working as well on my accountability as a learner, and being responsible for my work and assignments. I believe I have – for the most part – succeeded in accomplishing my goals despite a bumpy road.