November 18

A Horrific Dystopia

Parasitic

This is the dystopian book that I wrote in class, I highly encourage you take a look. 

During this project we read classic books based on dystopias like 1984, Fahrenheit 451, handmaids tale, etc. I chose to read the handmaid tale with a group of 3 other people. At the end of the time we were giving to finish these books, we had a small group book chat. I admit, I felt like I could’ve connected to other topics and research a bit better, but I still think I did better than I actually did.

We also brainstormed ideas that people were worried about. Things like global warming, viruses, problems within the economy, classism, etc.

I originally landed on gene editing and CRISPR tech, but slowly morphed my story into being centralized around parasites and gene editing together

My story wasn’t very cohesive at the start, it was many ideas all mushed together with no actual idea about where the plot would go. After a long call with my friend and a lot of critique from my writer step dad, I finally landed on a plot and world that made sense in my head. Now the problem was writing it

I like to think that writing is a strong suit of mine, but I’m not the kind of person that likes to read, so I know I’ll be a level below the people that do actually read. Either way, I gave it my best. I asked for a lot of critique and feedback from my stepdad, who happily obliged, along with my friends, who not so happily obliged. Without their help I wouldn’t have ended with a story I could say I’m happy with.

This project definitely challenged my critical thinking skills as it required a basic knowledge of authoritarian societies and dystopias.

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November 6

That’s a DIC(tator) move

Our first project of the year has just ended and it was great! It was a very interesting project on dictatorships and authoritarianism

We started our project by looking at Timothy Snyder interviews and we read his book, “On tyranny”. We held a Socratic discussion on the book and its connections in class which I definitely could have done better on, which is reflected in the grade I received for it. I struggle with large group discussions like that because of how many people want to talk so I’m never sure when to jump in. I also struggle because the topic moves around too fast so it’s hard to properly prepare.

Then we were put into groups to research and present a short presentation about a famous dictator. The group i was put in was given Mussolini to research and explain. I felt like i didnt add enough to the presentation as i only researched his childhood and death so i didnt learn too much about about HOW he rose to power

Afterwards we were added to different groups to participate in a full class documentary on authoritarian control, our class, along with our DRI Silas M, came up with nearly everything about the video like what topics we wanted to cover, how long each groups video should be, etc. after a good class and a half we decided on the topic being

1. Propaganda

2. Institutions

3. How the people fall

4. How to fight back

my group chose to do 3.

Unlike how group videos have been made in the past in this program, we all worked on our own separate parts instead of one person working on one large area like script. We all chose our own areas to talk about. Magnus worked on intro/outro, Sofia talked about books and education, i talked about the psychology, and Ronan did a kind of miscellaneous topic. After editing everything and finding the b-roll, our video ended up being around 7 minutes long. Mixed with the other 3 groups, the final video was around 20 minutes long.

Watch the whole thing here!

we had a showing of the documentary last week, although there was a small turn out, it was still fun to watch the full video

my groups section was closer to the end of the video and seeing all of the amazing editing and b-roll made my section feel like a rushed mess. I think i definetly could’ve spent more time on my editing especially since it’s always been one of my weaknesses.

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June 19

Last ever tPOL… kind of

“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.”

As the year comes to an end, we must focus on the tPOLs driving question: Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

This year has been really tough on me with mental and physical health. I’ve had nearly chronic pain and really bad brain fog that has effected my work for most of this year. There have been times in class where I just cannot think at all about the work I need to do, which ends up stressing me out in the long run.

Usually after a break, I’ll come back feeling rested and back on track to do work but after the band+choir trip, I fell super behind on humanities work and wasn’t able to get back on top of things properly. Once I was finally up to date with my work I felt exhausted and that feeling has lasted. 

I might just be having a rough year with my classes and mental health, but my lack of work ethic and focus can also be heavily improved on.

I have demonstrated growth in my classes, all in their own ways.

For the progress I made on my VMV that I touched on during my mPOL, I’ve successfully improved in some of the target areas like in engagement. I think I’ve demonstrated enthusiasm.

In most, if not all of the projects we’ve had this year have given us a freedom with picking whether this be topic, focus areas, etc. I think because of this freedom I’ve been able to be fully interested and motivated on topics I like.

Another area could be agency, more specifically asking for feedback. I may not always ask a teacher but I’ve noticed a boost of how often I ask my friends their opinions on my work or getting help with proofreading

In self regulation, I’ve noticed a lack of equally paced homework. As for taking breaks, I realized thats impossible because life wont pause for me and the longer pause I need, the more homework accumulates.

The rest of the VMV I’m choosing to leave out becauseIi have not changed my answers from the mPOL, so to summarize them; my mission talked about working in groups and my role in them which I basically demonstrated what I wrote in it for the last exhibition. 

For example, I made the most out of available resources, I focused my energy on making physical elements that come naturally to me, and I applied the rest of my time to smaller things we needed to race to finish day of. The only part of the mission I did not succeed on was not letting work discourage me, but again, I touched on that during my mPOL.

To summarize my vision, I wrote that I wanted to become someone who can be their best person on the day I graduate and that I wanted to work towards someone who can work outside of a school setting.

For anything I didn’t mention from the VMV, I don’t think I improved in this area because of the mental and physical reasons I explained earlier. I wrote in September that I wouldn’t get discouraged or dissociate because of work but of course, only putting that plan in writing wasn’t going to magically fix anything, especially without a plan

Overall all of our projects have helped me grow my skills and strengths as a learner and also just a person. Yes, I’ve had moments where I literally just can’t do anything but these moments have taught me how to cope with my weaknesses and improve on them.

I wish I was able to really improve or grow in the areas I set for myself, specially since my mPOL, but these last few months have been tough so I found it hard to properly put the effort in to improve as much as I wanted

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March 5

WDYM IM ONLY HALFWAY DONE

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.

Vision Mission Values

Vision: “The best person I can be at my graduation is a learner that can focus and has strived to be the best person without taking shortcuts. I want to be someone who can handle a post secondary education and be able to collaborate outside of a school setting.”

Mission: “I will improve how I work with others and make the most out of the environment and our work. The way that I can make a group better is by bringing my physical and artistic skills to the table. My skills can help bring creativity to our projects and physical displays in exhibitions. This makes a group’s multitasking easier, for example; one person focuses on something they can do, while I build, draw, or think about anything we need to add, which saves us time in the long run. I want to keep myself accountable and help build on my focusing and resilience. I want to be able to not get discouraged by setbacks or mistakes I make during the process.”

Values:

Reflection and Changes

Focusing Exclusively on the last sentence in my “Mission”; I have not quite met this goal.

Lately I’ve gotten very discouraged when I come across any obstacle. This is an issue mainly with my self esteem. For example: during writing assignments I get very caught up in the fact I have less work done or that my work isnt as good as others people. I make everything an unspoken competition with the people near me and I constantly lose. I get upset over not understanding the work or not thinking of a good opening sentence so I get stubborn and stop doing it entirely, this closely resembles something I believe is called “learned helplessness”.

Theres a video out there explaining what it is really well but to sum it up, a teacher gave her students a sheet with 3 anagrams. Half of the class had easy words like rat(art) or lime(mile), while the other half was given impossible words. The last word on both sheets were the same, but the side that had the impossible words weren’t able to get the word/gave up while the other side of the class had all managed to get the word.

As for the vision, I believe I’m on track to become the person I described, I know I’m able to collaborate outside of a classroom. I’m on my way to be someone who can actually take their own accountability, an example is flight training and ground school.

Looking at my values, I feel like I’ve been able to hold up most of what I set for myself. Even though it’s not always in BCFP or humanities, I’m usually engaged, answering questions and adding to discussion whenever I can. I’m able to take care of myself and not get buried in work even though my schedule can be overwhelming at times. I take mental breaks when i need them and lock in when it’s necessary.

Something I know I need to work on is my agency. I’ve somewhat mentioned in other areas that I need to work on my agency and my accountability. I know that I’ve definitely grown in this area but I’m nowhere near the place I want to be. I can be very lazy with my work, once I’ve handed it in I’m not touching it, I’ve been on a steady decline in my energy with school all year and its really hitting me all recently. As I’ve mentioned, setbacks are very discouraging and I have not been accountable for my work lately. I used to stay at school after choir until 5:30 some days just working on math homework. This habit has unfortunately fallen apart and most days I don’t finish my math homework by the next class, which can get me super behind since new work is being assigned every class.

By the end of this year I want to really be able to be accountable for my work and my life without much parental support. This is mentioned in my “Values” under agency.

Thank you for coming and listening to my mPOL, I appreciate the time you’ve taken out of your day to listen.╰(*´︶`*)╯♡

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February 19

Anthropology Artifact

For this project PLP 11 made a collaborative craft document featuring a deep dive of each of our chosen artifacts. Our teacher sent this document to the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) as a resource they could use. My chosen artifact was a curved knife from the Musqueam nation.

We started this project by analyzing different branches of anthropology then we had a quiz on them (I scored 15/15). After our quiz we chose our artifacts from the MOA website, just looking at British Columbia alone there are over 10,000 artifacts available to choose from. Even though there were a lot of choices, many didn’t have significant information or had a lot of repeats (ex. Spoons). My first choice was a beautiful amulet

Unfortunately the amulet didn’t have enough information so I chose a curved knife. The curved knife had information and enough backstory to research it

After we locked our choices in we made a smaller craft document with basic information and sources with related information, you can see mine here: https://fourteen-crows.craft.me/hNuak7JMyLMlKB

We were added to a craft document to create our own personal page which you can also see here: https://s.craft.me/qubstpVChbFSQ1

I could have done better during this project, I didn’t manage my time wisely and I was super burnt out during a lot of this project. This all led me to rush the last elements of my page and not give my best work. To avoid this happening next time I can ask for help around me to help get me started

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November 29

“Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am”

What an explosive way of starting the school year with the project I’ve been looking forward to the most

*(drumroll)*

 The Manhattan Project!

Unfortunately the project was not what it should have been, this year we didn’t get to do a field school in a related area (ex. Los Alamos), which was the whole reason I was excited for this project. Seeing the photos from last years grade 11s made me so jealous and eager and its almost entirely the reason I stayed in PLP, but I digress.

During this project we learnt how to use a Zettlekasten and smart brevity and put all our notes in that format. These formats didn’t particularly work with how I have my notes and assignments organized in craft, so I mostly ignored them once I could (If I could explain what they are I would).

After taking all of our notes in class we put them into a smart brevity format and handed them in. Once we did that we then chose the topic for our animation and started to storyboard and plan it. Our topics had to show how the manhattan project affected the world, for good or for worse. My topic was about the reaction of the bomb and how it led to discoveries in science and how that effects the earth today.

Initially we had one week to animate a 1m 30s (minimum) video. If you’ve ever drawn or animated you know thats almost impossible to do alone, but after multiple sleepless nights and a lot of shortcuts, I handed it in on time!… Just to find out we got a week long extension. 

Here’s my animation since I’m sure you’re DYYYING to know

After that extra week I was hoping our videos would be shown to the class, which they never were. That really bummed me out because some elements of my animation were references only some of my friends would get.

The project wrapped itself up very quietly as we transitioned into our next project

Category: Humanities | LEAVE A COMMENT
June 17

Least favourite part of the year…

It’s tpol time, the pol of t’s, the transition presentation procrastination of learning.

This year we filled out a checklist of behaviours we demonstrated this year and im mandated to choose 3 to display.

From Agency I chose  the “Accepting Feedback” section.

I chose “Consistently: Accepts feedback and makes revisions”

I think I’ve grown in this area this year, I know that in previous years I didn’t change a lot when it came to revision from peer critique. This year I’ve learnt to trust the opinion of my peers and consider what they say whether it be on my presenting skills or my work.

In humanities for example, the Pechakucha project from Seattle. The feedback I received from teachers and classmates on presenting and slide layout taught me how to better present my learning (with how I present or build my presentation).

In maker my improvement would be shown with Destination Imagination. During the whole process of building and creating we had teachers checking in on how we were doing and what our plan was, often getting advised on good/bad ideas. With the feedback and critique we received from our teachers we formed a better story and presentation, getting us 1st in provincials.

How I can improve: .Theres not many things I can improve on in this area, I can keep their perspective in mind or ask a larger audience instead of a small group.

The second behaviour I chose was from “Conduct and Integrity”

For respect I chose “Consistently: Respects the rights and opinions of others;
always listens when others are speaking”

This applies to both humanities and maker. I definitely think this is a skill that I’ve improved on this year. Along with this coming from maturity, I do think that I’ve also put in an effort to change and respect who may be speaking or presenting. I do not have recorded evidence of this in a project, but I know that I’ve had my fair share of “be quiet” in the past. This year I’ve noticed a significant decrease of teachers telling me to be quiet, whether this is a result of my ADHD meds or understanding why I shouldn’t be talking if someone else is, I still have changed no matter what and I’m proud of myself for learning how to shut my mouth after 16 years.

How I can improve: I can encourage my friends to pay attention more or I can properly listen to what the speaker is talking about.

The last behaviour I chose was from “Self Regulation”

For balance I chose “Rarely: Often overwhelmed by commitments and finds it difficult to manage balance between outside activities and school“

This applies to both humanities and maker. The reason I chose this was because I’ve picked up a lot of choirs this year and finding a balance between choirs and homework was really hard. Usually after choir I would stay at the school and do my work, usually working from 4:30 to 5:45, I didn’t have much time when I went home because I usually had some sort of chore and then dinner, the only time would be sometime after I showered, but my wifi gets turned off at 11, preventing me from staying up doing homework. This year especially I definitely had regressed from last year with less of a drive to do homework and less care about my work being in on time. I also started prioritizing math and science over my PLP work, leaving me extremely burnt out for most of the year because of how long I take on my math. Even when I had free time, I would procrastinate out of stress which led to me being more stressed which started the procrastination cycle again, so I tried my best to not remember my work and only use class time.

How I can improve: I can find a better way to regulate myself while I’ m stressed so I can properly do my work or I can make a better schedule that gives me enough time for homework, even if it means cutting out time with friends.

How does this help me answer the driving question (How can you showcase evidence to demonstrate that PLP Success Behaviours have prepared you to advance to the next grade?)

I think these show my improvement this year along with the improvement I want to make next year. The goals that I want to set for myself for next year are all to do with my focus and work drive, like giving myself time to do homework or actually doing homework at home, prioritizing homework, making sure I get things in on time, and generally being more organized. Specially because next year is going to be harder with more difficult classes so I know I need to change my behaviours to succeed for next year

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April 8

I’m so DI-DONE!!!

So DI just ended once again. If you don’t remember what DI is or this is your first time hearing it, here’s a quick summary:

Destination Imagination is a non profit organization that hosts a challenge that anyone with a group of friends can join. Theres are different challenges that you can choose from, their subjects are engineering, arts, improv, science and technical. Different age categories get scored differently and have some changes to rules.

We didn’t have the option for improv this year so i chose technical since the challenge was to make a working pinball machine sized up. This year we were grouped with the grade 9s so we had to meet them and pretend to like them (thats a joke I loved my group). My group consisted of James Streeter, Max Naiman-Bobroff, Ryan Burnett, and my 1 other grade 10 teammate Keenan Houlihan.

We started working in our groups in mid January, only 3 months away from regionals. We were panicked and didn’t quite know what we were doing, so naturally we put it off until February.

Our story was about a foster child running away and getting lost inside of the labyrinth in Greek myth. As hes walking he encounters multiple different characters, he meets a dying man that warns him about the maze and its dangers. As our main character walks, he meets the Minotaur who starts to fight him. As the main character starts loosing, (drunk) Dionysus enters and splits up the fight, introducing himself as the main characters father. He explains where he has been and then gifts him a Molotov cocktail to use against the Minotaur. Dionysus walks off as the character progresses into the maze as he meets the maker of the maze; Daedalus. He makes a deal that he would let the main character leave after he plays daedalus’s pinball machine. He plays, gets the master sword, and leaves the maze, ending the story.

The roles were:

Ryan as the main character

Keenan as the Minotaur

James as Dying man and Daedalus

Myself as Dionysus

Max as nothing because he couldn’t come to the performance

 

By the time regionals came around, our solution was barely working. We went into the performance expecting nothing, here’s kinda how it went:

The story was going great but we get to the pinball machine and nothing was working. The ball kept getting stuck and we needed to touch it to get it to work, the silence was loud and we couldn’t get scored on our round because we kept touching it.

That performance was rough but surprisingly we got 3rd (out of 4 teams)

But of course, the story didn’t end at 3rd.

The day of provincials.

our instant challenge was at 11:30. It went really well, we were making the appraisers laugh, we knew we did good.

We modified our machine so the ball wouldn’t get stuck and i modified to sword to look more like the Mastersword from Zelda. Everything went well during the story, i forgot a few of my parts which led to me not being able to give him the Molotov, But everyone was laughing at what i was doing and saying.

The pinball round went great! The ball didn’t get stuck and we had a stick that i would use in case it ever got stuck. Once it did inevitably get stuck, i picked up the stick and called it me “godly powers” pretending to use magic on the ball to get it unstuck. I was narrating most of what was going on and it seemed like it worked really well! Nobody touched the ball that would end the round, and it wasn’t awkwardly silent!!

The scores were in and we were gathered in the gym.

Third place was announced. It wasn’t us. I started getting worried.

Second place was a tie. Oh god neither was us. I lost hope in getting the podium

The best instant challenge. I was crossing my fingers, knowing we deserved it. They called our team and we were ecstatic. We were walking back to our seats.

“First place goes to Labyrinth Legends” what? Mid stride we turned around as they were calling us back. We got first..? We walk back while cheering amongst ourselves. We didnt expect to get anything higher than third. They hand us the metal trophy, mounted on granite.

 

Category: Destination Imagination | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 15

A Crazy Presentation

We just finished another project called “Cray Cray Yay Yay” where we studied crazy people and their effect on the world, not literal crazy people but people who were called crazy for an idea they had.

We started this project with the apple “Think different” campaign. We got to choose a person featured in the video to make a “mini pecakucha” on.
If you don’t know what a pecakucha is, it’s a presentation with the format of 20×20. 20 seconds each slide for 20 slides.

For my “mini pecakucha” (20 seconds for 10 slides)  my options were pretty limited since most people were chosen to pick before me. I ended up picking Thomas Edison to present on. When I tell you that this presentation was SUPER rushed I mean it, I wasn’t finished my slides and quecards until maybe 10 minutes before my presentation. I was literally rushing to finish my slides in Math.

Our final piece of the project was a full pecakucha in a group of 3-4. My group was Chris, Callum, and Jasper, our topic was “think different” so we focused on how these ideas were new and different at the time and how it was considered “crazy”

Before we fully started working on the full presentation, the teachers brought most of the class to Seattle to really understand where a lot of these “crazy people” came from and their stories. We visited some pretty well known places like the MoPop (Museum of Pop Culture), Microsoft, The Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Climate Pledge Arena (not for a hockey game unfortunately), and The Museum of flight, along with some less Seattle famous places like ifly.

Last night we presented our full pecakucha with our groups. We have been working on this project for almost 2 and a half months so I’m pretty happy it’s over now.

Here’s what happened during the presentation:

What went well

  • All of our slides were completed and approved by the teachers
  • We didn’t get behind or ahead at all, every time we practiced we were always a little behind our photos, but during the actual presentation we did really well with timing. If we messed up during any part of our slides the improv or what we said put us back on track really well. A few last sentences were rushed but it mostly stayed on track
  • we were really well memorized on our scripts, we didn’t stutter over many words.

What didn’t

  • I feel like our tone could have been better or some of us could have been louder for sure. I know a few people sounded a bit monotone at some parts.
  • our stage presence could have been better I guess? I feel like we looked frozen aside from me and Chris’ hand talking
  • coordinating what to wear better since not everyone was wearing black formal clothes

How to improve

  • Practice. Practice. Practice. We were told it shouldn’t sound like you’re reading a script or that it’s fully committed to memory because you want it to sound like you or sound “conversational”. I felt like I was still messing up a few words or sentences, not going in the direction I wanted them to.
  • eye contact, I definitely remember looking at the slides or anywhere but the audience so I want to work on that
  • Not part of the presentation but the work I put into the group, I definitely am not proud of the amount of work I put in and I feel really bad to Chris and Callum for putting so much work in for me.

How did I contribute

  • I put some doodles and extra drawings on the slides.
  • info about some people and photos for the slides
  • ideas for our thesis and notes

How the field study helped me learn

  • One of the topics in my notes were about Kurt Cobain. Since he was from Seattle, Nirvana had a whole section to itself that talked about its upbringing, history, behind the scenes, etc.
  • helped me connect to the project, driving question (Why does it take a crazy person to change the world) and ideas

Extra photos and videos from the project

a few photos of me Ofc 😌💅💅💅

Huge thanks to my team mates (check out their blogs at Peter Steele fan club  Christians Portfolio Callum) and the teachers that arranged the event and brought us to Seattle❤️❤️
Category: Humanities | LEAVE A COMMENT
February 29

Halfway!

“How do crazy people change the world?”

We’re halfway through our project called “Cray Cray Yay Yay” where we study and talk about crazy people whose ideas revolutionized the world. Some of us went to Seattle to really experience the topic. Our teachers thought it would be great to write a small essay of things we learnt. My Thesis was “Crazy people create crazy things with multiple uses in mind to bring their innovations to the masses, and allow them to evolve over time.”

This is what i wrote:

Example 1: Planes/Plane Models

Planes and the different models and their uses. Military planes and spy planes were made and used from the First World War, constantly being researched for safer and more efficient models. Taking an old war plane like the Albatross or Fokker and comparing it to a newer military plane like the B-21or the F-35 Lightning, you’ll be able to see the change and understanding of its design. Other planes that have evolved in design and their use are freight planes that deliver foreign goods and mail and commerical flights that carry people from city to city. 

Example 2: Music

 Music and how it has evolved into many different genres is based on things like culture (like traditional music or instruments), age, social circles that influence or share interests, and different artists giving their music its own creative flare or spin. Examples of its evolution has evidence dating back to 35,000 years ago. Humans have always been making sounds and music as a way to share an express themselves, from grunts and hitting rocks together to classical piano with complicated sheet music to an app on a laptop and a microphone in someone’s closet.

Example 3: Art

Just like music, evidence of art has been around just as long, if not longer than music has. Art has constantly been evolving and its inspired many people like Picasso, Micheal Angelo, Van Gogh, and not as well known artists. Art has evolved from finger paintings in caves made from flowers and spices to beautiful oil paintings in cathedrals and museums. Most of the artists with famous paintings never expected to be recognized by historians, a lot of artists wanted to tell a story and do what they enjoyed doing without really benefiting much. Art is interpretation, it can inspire and evolve into different shapes and forms (like glass) with time, art went from cave paintings to biblical images to a banana taped to a canvas, who knows what it will be next.

Personal Paragraph:

Crazy people inspire many around the world, theyve inspired me with their creations and personality. A “crazy person” that changed music I particularly like was Kurt Cobain, his ideas and morals were different from the music at the time, he did so much against the norm (on purpose or not). He didnt care about what people thought of his music, if people didnt like his music he wasn’t going to change his music, instead he would wait for people to change instead. Im not a huge fan of his music, but I still agree that Nirvana took the world by surprise.  

Work Cited:

Museum of flight tour, Museum of pop culture, previous projects/assignments

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