This is the question I will be answering for this post throughout a collection of questions, and artifacts of my learning.

 

There’s no place for people in the future who aren’t willing to continually learn and grow.

Not only have I learnt this within the curriculum we’ve covered this year, but the way in which that curriculum has made me look at history, and all the events domino effecting from it.

As much as my past self believed that after a school year ends, I’m finally able to leave what I learned behind, this isn’t true. No matter how hard I tried I wouldn’t be able to leave behind the stories, tragedies, and lives I’ve learnt about this year.

There’s more of these posts to come, but during our “We Shall Overcome” unit we were assigned three “Think and Create” posts to reflect on connections, and points of interest throughout the unit. The one that I have posted right now is called: “‘White Gold’: The Slave Trade’s Role in America’s Sugar Industry”. This post explains one of the many artifacts I came across within this unit, a unit that I consider a never ending one. We watched, analyzed, and discussed movies such as: “The Murder of Emmet Till”, “Mississippi Burning”, and “Klansville U.S.A.”. 

We studied milestones of Black history in America, and the civil rights movement such as: Jim Crowe, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, and The March on Washington.

Both fortunately, and unfortunately, the timing of this unit couldn’t have been better. As I learnt in class about lynching, bigotry, and police brutality towards the Black community, I turn to the news, and its on the same topic.

This unit gave me the supports to deeply understand why we haven’t come far from our past.

 

Although the road was a little bit bumpy, most definitely the Macbeth Movie. Because of the outbreak of COVID-19 during the peak of our filming time, we unfortunately weren’t able to complete the movie. But the completion of a class movie wasn’t the only attractive part of this project. This was to be something new and exciting, exploring new terrain in our PLP careers, this wasn’t going to be just another video project.

I voted for a class movie the moment it became a discussion, I immediately began to imagine how amazing the movie could be if we were all able to focus on separate parts of it, and bring our skills to use.

I was assigned the role of production designer, which meant that I was in charge of the look of the movie, which meant I worked along side the art director, costume designer, and director. Although some of my classmates didn’t get the roles they originally wanted, lucky for me, there wasn’t any competition for my position.

I found my tasks within this project really enjoyable, I really like drawing, and putting concepts together, so production designer worked really well for me. A big plus while in this position was the fact that most of my work happened before shooting, so while on set I was able to help other departments with last minute tasks, which I think was quite helpful in the end. 

Thanks to Daniel, we were able to have a final product although we didn’t finish filming. The whole class was extremely impressed how the story ended up being pieced together even with the lack of clips.

 

In our beat poetry unit I learned how to apply my non-academic experiences to my work which is something I hadn’t done before in an assignment.

It was unavoidable though, the basis of this assignment was to create a collection of poetry that expressed your thoughts, and experiences. It was bound to be below the surface level, unlike most assignments.

I felt quite vulnerable as I walked up onto that stage, and read from my notebook. These were my words, my thoughts, being read out to a crowded room. I’m really thankful I was able to experience preforming like that. It took my learning to the next level.

This taught me as a learner, that by taking that extra thought within a project can make a huge difference in your overall learning.

 

As I wrote earlier in this post, the further I advance in high school, the harder it becomes to leave behind the things I learn. The subjects begin to hit closer and closer to home, speaking on topics I didn’t know I would ever hear in school, and I feel as though my blog doesn’t reflect the amount of information I took in this year. There was so much analyzation, discussion, and research behind the work completed this year and I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished as a grade 11 student. I am determined to carry on the new lens I acquired this year into my future learning.