Jan
2020
My final MPol
It’s come to that time of the year again when emails are sent out and it is time to prepare an Mpol. I would first like to begin by saying the POL declaration:
“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 weaknesses. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”
Since I have been going through this for 5 years now you would think that I would be repeating topics and unable to think of new creative ways to express myself. However as this is PLP and there is always something on the go, that is most definitely not the case. Our presentations are supposed to focus on one driving question which is “What is your learning goal that you want to reach by the end of this school year, and how will you meet it?”
With that in mind I would like to address that in the future…
I would like to be able to push forward and step outside of my comfort zones both with my classmates as well as within projects.
My first example of how I would like to push myself and did in certain aspects however didn’t in others and would like to improve on in in the future was our taming of the shrew project. In this project we began by Reflecting on why the novel we had read over the summer (for me that was: A prayer for Owen Meany) was a classic. This was then a good lead into the next section of this unit, which was reading and looking into The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. We looked at the role women had at that time as well as women’s roles through a few different decades. I found this unit very interesting because I had never truly been interested in Shakespeare. However due to the interesting aspects of the play that we looked at and the different points of view I was very intrigued by this project.
The fact that we were able to see bard on the beach and see a different reenactment of this play made me interested which also plays back to my goal I mentioned at the beginning of this conversation that I would like to express myself in different more interesting ways such as the way bard on the beach expressed them self in an intriguing way which is helpful and inspiring.
Then it was time to get in groups and work on our own projects regarding taming of the shrew and women of the time period. So I was assigned in a group with Mimi and Ethan and we were assigned act five which in other words is the “grand finale”. We were assigned the 60’s and were told to animate this scene based on that time period.
This is where I believe my goal for the remainder of the school year comes into account. I believe that in the process of changing the script and changing how I thought in regards to this subject I did accomplish that and thought of things out of my comfort zone. However in regards to the animation itself I believe that I could have done better.
I have always struggled with the technology side of things and feel as though I have never been good at animation. In this project if I were to redo it again, I would like to challenge myself to be more creative as well as put myself out there more so. Though I was happy with the final result I do wish I had as well as my group put in my effort and then would have resulted with a project that I was even more proud of.
The next project I would like to talk about is the famous horror unit. Going into this unit I was weary to say the least. I have never been a huge fan of horror or even seen any in general. This unit confused me as too why exactly we were doing it and how it would benefit me.
However despite all of these doubts I pushed forward and stepped outside of my comfort zone. There are a few specific examples that show this, the first being that despite being scared and weary I still wanted to learn. I stuck through and read the books, watched the movies such as Get Out and did all of this because I wanted to push myself and truly wanted to understand.
And by doing so I was able to understand the topic and actually found it very interesting. I learned that the horror industry truly does reflect on our society and what is going on at the time. That horror allows people to face there fears without actually dealing with them.
That doesn’t mean that I know will be watching horror movies every night and reading books about it until 3am but it does give me a better understanding of why others do.
Another aspect of this project that I put myself out there and feel as though I stepped outside of my comfort zone was in Seattle applying to be producer. I felt this was stepping outside my comfort zone because first being that this is a horror unit and that would mean I would be even more hands on in a way in the production process. And second that it is a hands on role that means you must be in charge and apart of the class in every aspect. However I was not given that role but instead given post production supervisor, script supervisor, camera operator and location manager. So a fair bit of work that enabled its own challenges.I believe this was one aspect that I pushed myself in the project and put my all in both to the project as well as with my classmates.
And finally what I would like to discuss is our most recent fire where we researched what makes an event of person significant through researching topics mentioned in Billy Joel’s “We didn’t start the fire” song. I found this a very interesting topic was somewhat excited to begin researching. I chose to research Malcom X and my driving question was “How did Malcom X’s controversial opinion on the civil rights movement cause him to be a significant figure to this day?”. Being given the opportunity to do anything I want and research and show an artifact regarding anything was a big task and an opportunity to push myself into areas that I may not think are within my comfort zone. So deciding to research Malcom X at first I was weary because I didn’t want it to seem as though I was putting in less work because we had researched the Civil Rights movement previously. However after doing some surface level research I realized that this one man had done so much and I was genuinely curious about his significance. So in one way I did push myself to look at the civil rights movement differently.
Then when it came to the actual artifact we were too create this was where I struggled. I wasn’t sure how to express what I thought and felt in a way that others would understand and was actually interesting.
As you know from previous Mpols and meetings such as this one that. Feel that. Have always struggled with writing. So with that in mind and still being hesitant to the idea, I decided to take the full leap and have my artifacts be poems.
This truly pushed me out of my comfort zone to a place that I was not expecting however in the end was glad I did because I am proud of my final results.
Overall in the few projects that we have completed in this school year I feel as though I have pushed myself into new comfort zones but would still like to further myself. I know with projects and fellow classmates it is easy to rely on others and simply say that I’m not good at it so I’ll take the easier way out. And in the past I definitely have done that. However for the future I would like to push myself to think outside the box, take risks, put my voice out there with classmates and not rely on others skills or my present skills but rather to learn new ones.
In conclusion thank you for listening and I would like to propose to you the question:
Do you agree that I should push myself and not be afraid to step out of my comfort zone and abilities? And what advice would you have for me moving forward in which I could improve myself and have the confidence to step out of my comfort zone?
