What’s the easiest way to make big changes? Is it a change of schedule, a new diet, or a different attitude? Well, according to James Clear, the tiniest changes can have the biggest results. In this blog post, I’m going to break down exactly how this system works, and why it’s changed the way I view habits. 

What makes a habit a habit? This is question I found myself asking during our most recent project, Atomic Habits. In this project, we read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. A habit can be defined as an action that you repeat over and over, day after day. A habit can become part of a routine, which makes breaking a bad one such a struggle. This same philosophy also means that starting a new good habit can be just as difficult. When something is part of a roultine, it’s done automatically. It’s hard to randomly start doing something new in a whim. 

To solve the before mentioned issues with creating good habits, James Clear created a method for making a new habit easier. First, you need to make a new habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. This might not make sense at first, but I’ll break it down. 

OBVIOUS: Making a good habit obvious can be as simple as leaving your gym bag with your work stuff at the door, so you don’t forget it.

ATTRACTIVE: Making a habit attractive could be having a weight goal to think about while you work out.

EASY: To make a habit easy, you could do something like planning out a workout routine ahead of time. 

SATISFYING: By making a habit satisfying, by doing something like rewarding yourself with an hour of Netflix after a workout, you can create a good association with the habit, which will drive you to complete it in the future. 

James Clear also has four steps to quit a bad habit. They are to make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying. They are the inverse of the four laws. For example, to quit a bad habit like smoking, you could make it invisible by throwing out all your cigarettes. Then, to make it unattractive, you could remind yourself about the dangers of smoking. To make it difficult, anytime you buy a new pack of cigarettes, you have to go for an hour long jog. Finally, to make it unsatisfying, maybe you’d have to eat something gross afterwards. He also implements this graphic, which refers to Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. I suggest you read the book to learn more. These are just examples, but I found this incredibly useful to implement in my daily life. 

For this project, we had to create an “artifact” that showcased our knowledge of the James Clear method, and how we planned to implement it into our daily lives. My plan was to do a sort of visual representation of the thought process of how I try to improve my shooting form in basketball.

Another product of this project was something called a “pop art.”  For this assignment, we had to create a piece of art that showed our learning intentions for the year. To read all about what mine means, click here.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you’ve learned a little bit about how I think, and how the smallest changed have the biggest affects! Have a great day!

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve probably heard about the American election. All the new outlets have covered it, and it’s all everyone has been talking about. In contrast, the Canadian election is a very hush hush topic. I had to watch the news to even know it was happening. In this blog post, I will explain my experience with both systems of government, and how the rest of the world could use a little more Canada. 

In our latest project, titled “The World Needs More Canada,” everyone in the class chose a different topic that reflects how Canada should be a role model for other countries. We started the project by picking a current event topic to present to the class. I was born and raised in America, so when I saw the story about the attempted trump assasination, I knew it would make sense to present it. By the time I got to present my topic, I had created a document that explained the event in detail. If you want to check it out, you can click here.

The final product of the project was one episode of a class podcast, which proved difficult in a number of different ways. The topic that I chose was the difference between the multiparty system in Canada versus the two party system in America. I wanted to focus on this because I have personal experience with both, and the two elections are coming up soon. This meant I had to do a ton of research into the political state of both countries, and I learned a lot more about parts of both governments I never would have known otherwise. 

The first step towards the podcast script was to write an essay explaining the topic, and how the rest of the world could use a bit more Canada. The script was a loose adaptation of the essay, but it had to be converted to a more conversational format. We had to write the essay with this in mind, which made it a bit difficult to bring my thoughts together in a way that makes sense. I have a lot of very strong political views, so I had to make sure that they didn’t leak too much into my writing. After many revisions and different versions of my essay, it was finally finished. If you would like to read it, CLICK HERE.

After the script was finished, we started adapting the essays into a podcast script. This was fairly easy, considering that we wrote the essays knowing that they had to become a script at some point. The scripts had minimal changes from the essay, and the main goal was to make them more interesting for someone who was listening to a podcast. If you want to read my podcast script, CLICK HERE.

After the script was done, we started experimenting with garage band. This was incredibly challenging for me, because I had never created any kind of music before. I had to learn how to use the software while trying to balance all of my other work. There were a lot of little difficulties with GarageBand for me, because I wasn’t sure how to export audio properly. Still, I managed to make a transition and outro clip that fit the tune of my podcast. As a class, we voted on which intro music we thought was the best. There was a lot of discourse over which one was the best, and whose should have won. We also voted on cover art for our podcasts, and even thought the one I liked didn’t win, I’m still pretty happy with the one we picked. 

The process of recording the podcast was tedious, and time consuming. I had to record multiple different audio clips of each segment, and I spent hours recording and editing the whole thing. Every step of the way was challenging, but I’m glad I put in the effort to make something I could be proud of. If you would like to listen to my finished podcast, CLICK HERE (this link will be updated soon). 

In conclusion, the if the US was just a litttle more like Canada, the country could succeed in having the faith of it’s citizens. I hope you enjoyed my podcast! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

“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.”

This is the pledge that we are required to state at the beginning of our presentation. It serves as an introduction to what we will be presenting during our TPOL. These conferences are specifically designed to allow us to reflect on our learning, while also providing our parents and teachers with an update on our progress. Over the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a PLP learner, but also as a person. This is a program that lets us take responsibility of our own learning, and really allows us to thrive. I’ve learned a lot about myself and others, as well as gained a bunch of new skills that I can apply not just to school, but to the rest of my life. In this presentation, I will show what exactly I’ve been learning in PLP, and that I’m ready for whatever gets thrown at me next. Lets get into it!

Resilience

Throughout this past year, we’ve worked on a number of different projects that bore new skills and chances to collaborate with classmates. One example of this was “Rise of the Frankenstuffies.” In this project, we created fictional characters that were quite unique in origin. This project took a lot of resilience and time management to achieve, as it was a multi tiered feat. We began by physically constructing our stuffy, and giving it a history and personality. I’d never sewn a stuffed animal before, so this was an opportunity to gain new skills. Next, we wrote a short story, which would be turned into a video later. Mine was about about a failed lab experiment who works with a group of activists to save his friend from the evil scientists. 

The construction of the video for this project was difficult not only in the amount of time it took, but also because the animation tools we had access to were janky and tedious. Despite all of this, I feel like my resilience is the reason I was able to complete this project. I definitely learned a lot through this process, mostly that you can’t leave everything last minute and expect it to work out.

Citizenship 

The second project that I’d like to touch on was our unit on World War One. This was our most recent project, and easily my favourite one of this semester. Throughout this project we learned all about the events of the First World War, as well as how it’s shaped our country and it’s citizens. Because of this, I feel that it relates most to the citizenship competency. By learning about the history of our country, we learn more about ourselves. One of the main motivations for soldiers is a feeling of Connection to their country, also known as nationalism. We did an entire project on this topic, which you can find on my blog.

The actual creation of the comic was difficult not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of time. We were essentially given a week to create all of the art for and construct our final comic before our exhibition. We had already created our storyboards at this point, but with a twenty panel minimum, we were really rushed for time. I had to spend essentially all of my free time working on this, and although I was able to create a truly spectacular result, I believe that this was a time management issue that was not a fault of mine. I learned from this project that even if you manage your time properly, you still have to make sacrifices to combat unforeseen conditions that are out of your control. Still, I believe that my dedication to this project gave me a sense of citizenship due to my relation to my peers’ struggles. I feel like this shared experience helped to bring us closer together as a class.

Outside of school time management

Lastly, I would like to talk about Destination Imaginaiton, and how time management was our key to success. You probably already know what DI is. A big fancy competition with performances and challenges to face. However, this event has an incredible amount of unseen effort and time was spent producing our final product. My group was focused on engineering, and we were tasked with building a catapult, and encorporating it into a story. Because DI stretched beyond the time we had in class, we ended up spending a lot of our free time on the project. Because we hadn’t managed our time properly, we struggled with our first DI competition. 

After the disaster that was our first attempt in learning, or FAIL, we decided to regroup and recreate our project. We were more organized our second time around, and the pressure to do well was greater. I took initiative in bringing our group together outside of school time. It was a bit like herding cats, but I believe that we were able to achieve a stronger result after putting more time into our work.

To wrap up, I would like to talk about my overall  growth this year. Grade nine was full of all kinds of new experiences, people, and projects. Like any year, it had it’s ups and downs, but I feel like I’ve come out of it a changed person. It’s scary to me to believe that in a few short months I will be re entering this school as a grade ten, but so is the way of the world. I believe that I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of new experiences to gain. Thank you for listening, and have a wonderful day!

“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.”

This is the pledge that we are required to state at the beginning of our presentation. It serves as an introduction to what we will be presenting during our MPOL. These conferences are specifically designed to allow us to reflect on our learning, while also providing our parents and teachers with an update on our progress. Over the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a PLP learner, but also as a person. This is a program that lets us take responsibility of our own learning, really allows us to thrive. I’ve learned a lot about myself and others, as well as gained a bunch of new skills that I can apply not just to school, but to the rest of my life. In this presentation, I will show what exactly I’ve been learning in PLP, and that I’m ready foor whatever gets thrown at me next. Lets get into it!

Throughout the course of the year, we’ve done numerous projects that have all been designed to give us new skills and opportunities to collaborate with others. A great example of this is a project called metaphor machines. This project, like many others, was a huge challenge of our group’s resources and mental capacity, and really made us use our critical thinking skills to come up with new ideas and strategies to get our machine to work. 

This project revolved around giving a new form to the idea of a revolution. We used a number of different mediums to understand our revolution, the final product being a Rube Goldberg Machine. Creating it took weeks of planning, testing, adjusting, and decorating. Our first keystone was an infographic of our revolution. Our group was assigned the Meiji Revolution from Japan, which was full of awesome battles and technological advances. It took place during the 1800s, and was focused on bettering the economy and governmental system. Preparing for the final product was difficult, as there were so many moving parts, but we spent a ton of extra time outside of school making sure that everything would work. I don’t think that I’ve never worked with a group that dedicated on a PLP project, and it showed in our final result. This gave us an opportunity to create and present an amazing machine that I’m still proud of to this day, despite the hardship and numerous trials it took to get there. 

A second influential project that we did this year was Let’s Get Riel. This was a Humanities project in which we learned all about the influential Canadian figure Louis Riel. Riel was a Métis leader, as well as a scholar and a resolute. His story is an important yet tragic example of someone being sacrificed for the greater good. 

I think that through this project we learned how history is written by the winners, and how it’s important to look at other sides of a story. This is important to understand not just in school, but also in life. He was the founder of Manitoba, and was a man who wasn’t afraid to stand up for his people. However, in the eyes of the settlers, he was seen as a dangerous rebel who needed to be taken down. 

We learned a valuable lesson from this project about how differently something or someone can be seen depending on who’s doing the person perceiving them. This lesson is applicable in other projects, as well as for other aspects of life. 

Finally, the most difficult endeavor of PLP in the past semester by far, Destination Imagination. This wasn’t a project so much as a competition. I wanted to include DI because I have learned the most by far from this than any project this semester. I was thrust into a mismatched group of people that I didn’t get to choose, and had to make it work and create a catapult, as well as a story and performance to go with it. This all had to be done according to a long list of rules with a ton of regulations. Although we managed to get through it and finish out performance with few mistakes, it really was a challenge.

This was by far the most challenging thing I had done all year due to the difficult nature of working in groups. However, I learned so much about storytelling, engineering, and learning to take responsibility for your own actions, as well as the actions of others. There was no one in a leadership role specifically, which made it very difficult, so at the end I kind of stepped up to fill that. 

We had about four months to work on this, which gave us a disadvantage to other schools who had started sooner. However, we were determined to do our best, and worked relentlessly. Our story was about a man named Dan and his dog Cuddles, who got hired to NASA even though they weren’t qualified. The final script was difficult to make, but was something that I can say I’m proud of in the end.

 To summarize, PLP is pretty difficult. It’s full of challenging group projects, tedious assignments, and new challenges. But, like I always like to say, where there’s a will, there’s a way. I went into this program with high expectations, and I feel like they’ve been exceeded. It’s now been a year and an half since I first joined PLP, but I still remember my first day. Even though there will always be new challenges to take on when it comes to high school, I feel more ready to face them now that I have experience with this program.

As I was writing this, I noticed how much I’ve improved in this post as opposed to the one I did last year. I feel like this program has allowed me to grow as a learner, but also as a person. This is important to me because I always strive to do my best, and I feel like with this PLP, I can do that now, and in the future.

Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

Have you ever wondered how the Province of Manitoba came to be? I sure have! In our latest project, we learned all about Louis Riel, a crucial figure in Canadian history. Riel was a leader, a resolute, and a scholar, but also a real person whose life was lost for the betterment of Canada. 

Our most recent project, titled “Let’s Get Riel,” was all about the Métis leader, Louis Riel, and how he’s been portrayed throughout history. The Métis are a group of people with mixed ancestry that still reside in Canada today. Sadly, they were not very well liked by the local indigenous or the settlers, which led to feuds that would eventually become bigger problems. The relationship between the Métis and the settlers has been complex and difficult due to the lack of respect that the colonizers had for the balance that existed before they started to get too greedy. This seems to be a similar issue that the indigenous people had with the Métis, as they saw them as colonizers trying to take their land and resources. 

The goal of this project was to deepen our understanding of Canadian history, as well as improve our writing skills. We did this by examining statues and texts of Riel that have been created throughout history. You can read about these examples in my Multi Paragraph Response, which is all about Riel’s portrayals. This final project was all about using different mediums and sources to explain our thoughts, and the thoughts of others. I am proud to say that I learned so much about my own writing, as well as as how others write and think. 

I learned a lot from this project, even if it was a bit shorter than our previous ones. While I believe that taking a typical standpoint on Canadian history is important to understanding it, taking new perspectives can often lead to a more sophisticated end result. This is a skill that I know I can apply to other projects and writing in the future, which has made this project a valuable stepping stone for me. If you want to read my response to the driving question, the Multi Paragraph Response, you can click the accordion below. To view the Heritage Minute mentioned in my response, click the link below. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

https://youtu.be/0fLnJp-Rjow?si=Z2fhkFC-PctBvG7Z

Have you ever braved the battlefield? Fought for the future and your rights, and to forever change the nation you live in? In our latest project, we were immersed in the concept and realities of revolutions, and how the actions that were taken in the past still affect us today. 

We were first introduced to the concept of revolutions by our first project, which was based around the book “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. We read this book as a class, and had multiple discussions about the author’s intent and the hidden meaning behind the events in the book. The story itself is actually a metaphor for the Russian revolution, and revolves around a farm on which the animals stage a rebellion and and take new leadership. Unfortunately, the pigs begin to abuse their power, and eventually lead the farm to downfall. This represents how after a revolution, affairs often return to the way they were before, with slight changes. 

While reading the book “Animal Farm”, we were asked to apply a theory called the “Crane Brinton” theory, which breaks a revolution into four stages: Incubation, Moderate, Crisis, and Recovery. You can find a detailed list explanation of what these stages mean on my infographic. The importance of learning this extended not just through this project, but also to examining any historical event. The format that we used for the book chats really allowed us to connect animal farm to all of our revolutions. 

After the book chats, we began our work on our infographics. I was assigned the Meiji revolution, which took place in Japan in 1868. In this project, we took our knowledge of the Crane Brinton theory and applied it to our revolution, while also incorporating some fun facts and bits about the culture of Japan! We became experts on our revolutions, and our groups started to consider how we could tell the story of our revolution at the exhibition. If you want to view my infographic, click this button:

The final project that we worked on for the exhibition was called “Metaphor Machines,” and we were tasked with creating Rube Goldberg machines which represented a revolution. This was a daunting challenge, as we had to bring most of the materials, organize our group, and make sure that it would make sense to the audience. Our final setup was very heavily inspired by Japanese culture, and it took weeks to create!

To go along with the machine, we also created a documentary that showed the process of creating our machine, as well as us explaining the meaning behind our connections. Despite the many bumps in the road, my group members made it easy! My group was Sydnee, Melissa, Alex, Bobby, Sebastian, and me (to visit their blog posts you can click their names).

Be sure to check out the documentary below. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

This is a picture of our finished product.

What is a thriller? How are they made? Why are they so enjoyable to watch? These are all questions that we answered through our latest project, Thrill Us.

In this project, we viewed many different types of thrillers in an attempt to better understand the vision of their creators. A thriller is a film style that builds suspense and anxiety for the viewer, and often has a climactic and mysterious ending. We used this medium of film to better understand how we can bring our own creative ideas to life through videography and storytelling.

We started off by practicing our photography skills through a number of activities, and worked on creating clear storyboards. Our first assignment was to create a storyboard for the short thriller Run! We were also asked to examine the shot styles, acting, and sound construction of the film.

Next we were put into groups and told to recreate the film Run! and try to match it shot for shot. This took a long time to do, as it was a lot of hands on work. If you want to learn all about this, you can visit my blog post on the subject:

Run: A remake

We spent the first portion of the project learning how to create a film, and our final task was just that! We got to pick a group to work with to write, direct, and act in our own short thrillers! My group’s film was called “the basketball,” and was a thriller with very little dialogue. It was meant to leave the viewer a little confused and disoriented while still being enjoyable. I created the storyboard, and did a large amount of editing on the final video. There was a lot of trial and error, and I learned a lot about using editing software, as well as working together to create something amazing! Here’s a link to my video:

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I stepped out of the car onto the Loon Lake grounds… I didn’t know what I’d learn, who I’d meet, or that I’d leave a completely different person than I was before. 

I’m not completely sure how to describe the trip. I don’t remember everything, but I can recall the eye opening moments that impacted me and my class. Let me begin by explaining the purpose of our retreat. It was meant to give us a new perspective on the people around us, as well as ourselves. We were meant to gain leadership skills and bond as a class, and understand that our actions have impacts. We know that these are all important skills to have within school, but we were also asked to think about how we can apply these skills to our everyday lives. 

The one directing our activities was a man named Jono, who had years of experience teaching those of all ages to have a different perspective on many aspects of life. Jono himself was a very interesting guy with a lot of stories. Even though some of the activities may have made me very uncomfortable, Jono liked to say “get comfortable with the uncomfortable,” which is a controversial but important notion. After all, our trip was all about growth, which sometimes takes a leap of faith to accomplish. 

I believe that the activity that I grew the most with was the trust fall. We had been practicing trusting our classmates for the entire retreat, and it was finally time to put this trust to the test. For this activity, we had to climb on top of a chair that was on top of a table, close our eyes, and fall.

 I’ll admit that I even surprised myself when I confidently climbed up onto the chair. In that moment, I pushed my fear aside, which sparked something new inside me. However, by the time I was on top of the chair, I was genuinely shaking with fear. I just closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and fell. In the moment before my classmates caught me, I felt like I was never going to stop falling, and I screamed “oh my god!” I let my form go and hit someone into the face (sorry Neko), and felt terrible immediately after. She was okay (thank goodness), and I had gained a new experience. In the end, the ordeal was a good thing?

We did a lot of different exercises to build trust, and although I’m not going to to go super into depth about all of them, I will give a brief explanation of the activities we did. There was a rock climbing wall, on which we all cheered each other on. We did a low ropes course on which we had to work as a team to solve challenges, and we all bonded from it. The high ropes course was fun, and the milk crate stacking challenge took strategy and teamwork to achieve. The orienteering challenge took brainpower and stamina, and my teammates made it really fun. The fort building took teamwork and logic, as well as determination. Finally, all of Johno’s sessions took mental preparation and strength to accomplish. I believe that all of these activities have shaped me and my classmates for the better. 

In the end, this trip was a lot of fun because I got to experience it with my friends. The teachers and staff were very supportive, as well as all of our classmates. We got to wrap up our trip with an awesome dance party, where we could let all of our troubles go. I also feel like I have to include this, or the PLP teachers will be mad: The food was amazing. 

As I got back into the car and headed home, I reflected on my Loon Lake experience, and just how much I’d learned about my classmates and myself. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day!

Have you ever wondered what adults do all day? I know I have! That’s why we have take your kid to work day!

During this day, I visited Seaspan, where my Aunt, Carmen, works. I learned all about the ships that they are currently building at seaspan, what goes into building a ship, and how all 2,000 workers have an important role to fulfill within the company. 

I think that this might be a potential career opportunity for me one day, as the experience was a lot of fun! You can learn all about what we did in my video below! Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Have you ever been walking through the woods alone, and you think you hear something? You turn back, but see nothing. What do you do? Stay on the path? Look for another runner? Try to find shelter in the woods?

In our latest project, we created a remake of a short horror film called Run! In it, we had to recreate the original as close as we could, with very limited time to plan and resources. This is the original video, created by @cookieimagination:

https://youtu.be/lcmzYZOjEdQ?feature=shared

We did our best to replicate this film in our first remake, which we found was too short compared to the original, and we were missing quite a few shots.

The quality of our first remake was rather lacking, but we took our mistakes and made our final edit to be as good as it could be.

I learned a lot from this project, as we hadn’t had a lot of experience with creating films, so the directing and acting skills that me and my group showed was impressive. We learned a lot about camera angles, as well as the technicalities of creating great film. This served as a useful introduction, and I think that the skills that I learned can be applied in many different projects. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!