A Post About School

Hello!

Welcome to this post about school! That is the subject of the Student Blogging Challenge Week 6. School is fun! Let’s get into the post.

What was that intro. Yikes.

I go to high school. It is a pretty small school, with only about 500 students. I am in a program called PLP.

I don’t know what my problem is. I can’t write anything remotely interesting today. My brain has been fried by all the storyboards I have to make for homework. Oh dear. I’m a mess.

Let’s try again. How about we talk about PLP. What is that, anyways?

PLP (the Performance Learning Program) is a “district enhanced program” where students learn through project based learning (PBL). In PLP we like to use lots of acronyms. For example, mPOL, tPOL, PBL, and PLP.

PLP is the reason I have this blog. I write a post every time I complete a project. You can look through them. There are a lot.

I am in Grade 8 (or eighth grade, or Year 9, or whatever you want to call it). Last year I was in elementary school. Where I live, middle school is not a thing. We go straight from elementary school to high school.

I was in  French Immersion from kindergarten all the way to Grade 7. That means that all my classes where in French: math, science, art, PE, social studies, etc. Not English, though. That would make no sense.

Then I decided that I wanted to go to PLP. My friend Quinn recommended it to me, and after looking at it some more, it seemed really cool.

In order to get into PLP, you have to go through a rather rigorous application process. You have to:

• Fill out a survey with a bunch of questions about you and your hopes and dreams,
• Create a 2 minute video about something that you’re proud of,
• Go for an interview with the teachers,
• Go to another Group Interview, where all the applicants do activities together.

It’s a lot. And this is all for a high school program, for goodness sake.

I still wanted to get in, even after reading the application process. I was committed.

I only knew 2 other people applying: Quinn, and my other friend Kate. All my other classmates and friends were going to a whole other school. It was scary, but I still wanted to go into PLP.

I got to work on my application. For my video, I talked about cupcakes.

That sounds really lame, I realize.

In Grade 7 I had a really awesome teacher. Her name was Mme Quiring (Mme is short for Madame, which means “Mrs” in French), and I think the entire class loved her. We wanted to do something special for her birthday, so we all pitched in some money to get her a present, and my friend Marika and I volunteered to make cupcakes.

Now, I am not a master baker by any means. The only reason I volunteered was because I had recently found a cool book in my basement that was all about cupcake decorating, I was really interested.

The book What’s New, Cupcake? by Karen Tack anc Alan Richardson. It keeps me entertained for hours on end.

So Marika and I made cupcakes. They were shaped like roses, and they were beautiful. In my eyes, anyways. They looked a bit misshapen to anyone else.

We gave them to Mme Quiring, and I think she liked them. I’m pretty sure. If she didn’t, she did a good job of hiding it.

Here are some photos from the creation process.

I just realized that I’m supposed to be talking about school, not cupcakes. I am very scatterbrained.  Oh well, hopefully you like reading long rambling posts.

Well. Anyways.

PLP. I was talking about PLP. The application process. My video. Right.

I don’t think I’m going to put my video in here. It seems like the kind of thing that should remain private somehow. Sorry. The above 350 words are pretty much the whole thing, anyway.

I got an email saying that I was accepted! I was happy. Especially when I heard that Quinn and Kate got in as well.

Over the summer, though, I had a bit of a panic. All my friends except the 2 I mentioned earlier were going to another school. I was quitting French Immersion in order to go to this completely new program, and I freaked out. I wanted to get out, but at that point it was too late.

Plus, who gives out homework over the summer? Geez.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought. We did a lot of cool projects and even went to Oregon. I’m not complaining, but after a year of trying out PLP I’ve discovered it’s not for me.

There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not my style. There’s a bit too much homework for me, and I’ve found that I don’t have enough time for the things that matter to me, like reading, drawing, playing outside, and spending time with my family. I’m constantly holed up in my room doing work. The fact that I even managed to write this post is a miracle.

Plus I’ve discovered that I miss speaking French a lot. I’m losing my fluency, and I don’t want that to happen.

Another contributing factor in my decision to quit is friends. I hate to admit it, but I’ve barely made any friends this entire year, and I spend every waking moment with Kate. There’s no problem with that. I love Kate. But it would be nice to see my other friends sometimes, too.

So next year I’m transferring schools. I’m very nervous about this, since I don’t really know what to expect, especially with the whole COVID-19 thing happening. But I’m sure it will be fine. I usually overthink everything, anyway.

That concludes this post! What a random thing to write about. The vast majority of this was about cupcakes. Clearly I need to work on structuring my posts better.

Is there anything at your school that you would change? Do you like cupcakes? Leave a comment!

Stay safe and healthy!

Cheers,

Evelyn 👩🏽