Hello world, it’s me Randy Yang, your favorite blogger in PLP. As you know, school is almost over and it’s time for more reflection and transitioning. To be bluntly honest with you all, grade 11 felt so fast, almost like it was yesterday when we first started the school year.
As always, lets start off by doing the POL deceleration:
“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.”
“Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”
This school year has been my most memorable year so far in high school. I thought I was going to be overwhelmed by my timetable with all my academic courses, but I actually held on pretty well. I exceeded my own expectations and outperformed myself in previous years.
Here are some comparaisons:
Winter Exhibition 2021 Vs. Winter Exhibition 2022
For the winter exhibitions in grade 10, we were divided into groups and built our own memorials based on different topics. Our group was memorializing the Chinese Canadian that came to Canada to build railways, and we design this memorial called “cutout”. Although it turn out to be amazing, but I could’ve demonstrated more thinking.
Since Amy was in my group, I just focused on making the actual product instead of doing research. I relied a bit too much on my group, and didn’t divide the tasks evenly. It felt like a fine arts project instead of a humanities project, and my grades reflected that.
This year, there is essentially no group projects, and it really pushes me outside of my comfort zone to do everything independently. Take the Macbeth project for example, we were told that we’re going to perform live in front of a bunch of strangers on the first day pretty much. As the main character of my own play, I HAVE to make it good. No fancy props, or teammates to rely on; just me playing Macbeth and my crew saying what I’ve scripted. I was fully in charge of my project, and I was credited with the effort I put in.
Political Party Video Vs. The Story of Hope
Both of these projects were presented in a form of videography. One is a campaign video of our political party, and the other one tells stories of hope.
Again, having more people in the group mostly means less work for everyone. Putting teenagers together and expecting amazing result is not the greatest strategy in my opinion. I feel more responsible to my own learning when working independently. Not just because all the credits goes to me, but because I can work with my creativity without caring about other’s opinons. I know this might sound a bit selfish, but I not the biggest team worker. Check out my DI challenges if you want to know more.
If you compare my political campaign video with my MLK video, you would realize that one of them is much better than the other. The edit feels much more cinematic and the content/narration is much more meaningful and inspiring. Instead of puzzling a bunch of stock footage together, I went out of my way to “Recruit” actors for my video.
Instead of this:
we now have this:
Moving on
I’m sure you’re tired of me whining about my grade 10 projects and bragging about my grade 11 projects, but this is just an example of how I grew as a learner. Without my grade 10 experiences, I would never demonstrate the same level of performance now. Each grade level is like a stepping stone, we all start from somewhere.
In PLP, I’ve truly committed time and thinking into every projects we’ve done. Though not all of them turned out to be excellent, but at least I tried my best. I’ve opened up to the PLP teachers, and motivated myself to be a more engaged student. My rule of thumb for this year is “Caring what I do, and loving what I do.”
As my peers have already noticed, I have made a change in my learning style this year. Perhaps reformed my lifestyle a little bit as well. Here is how these 4 changes influenced my academic life as well as my social life:
1) Open Communications With My peers and Teachers
I have started to communicate more with my peers for feedback and suggestions, and it’s been doing great for me. I’m starting to enjoy listening to other’s opinions and taking their perspectives into consideration. I noticed this when I was discussing about the purpose of schools with my mother, I respected her views and tried my best to understand people with different backgrounds.
Thanks to all the exhibitions I’ve done in the past, I feel a lot more comfortable with speaking to strangers. The last couple of pitches at the spring exhibition could not be smoother, I had a steady pace and an amazing flow.
I would also like to shout out to my winter exhibition, performing live in front of bunch of people was a fresh yet exciting new experience for me.
One amazing tip that has helped me a lot is pitching my projects to my non-PLP friends. Since they don’t know what the driving question is, nor what my project is about, I’ll have to explain to them little by little. This allows me to have real guests at my station without embarrassing myself at the actual exhibition.
When we’re stuck or running out of ideas, me and James message each other and brainstorm ideas. We then pitch our ideas to each other and critique with kind, helpful, and specific feedbacks. He’s been working on his Social Justice fair and BCFP 12 exhibition, and this method has been very useful.
2) Time Scheduling Daily
As much as I want to use “Things” to help me get organized, I just can’t figure out a way to implement it into my real life. So I’ve developed a much simpler way of managing my time and resources. Every now and then when I’m not busy, for example when I’m in the shower or walking home, I would just say to myself about the tasks I should finish by the end of the day. I’ve came to realization that my short term memorization is extraordinary. As long as I know what I should work on at the start of the day, I would finish them in time by the end of the day.
I know what you’re gonna say, “But Randy, you can’t just rely on your brain!” I know that this can’t always work out, but for now it’s been great. It’ close to the end of the year, and everything is going quickly. In the last two weeks, I’ve had two tests and one final exam; As well as an exhibition and club events. It seem like it’s an overload, but my brain is still hanging on, so don’t worry 😉.
3) Restraining Myself From Playing Video Games On a Daily Basis
I hate to say this, but video games are pretty addictive. They give you this adrenaline rush by just sitting in front of your computer, it if wasn’t because it’s too time consuming, heck I would be playing everyday. I developed this habit semi-voluntarily during my last summer school. For a month straight, I stopped playing video games and committed my all to Pre-Calc 12. I felt fulfilled with my school work studying from 8:30 to late at night. I guess you could say that math is a health alternative for video games. In all honesty video games is like a rabbit hole, it ropes you in easily, but once you get out you don’t really miss it.
I continued with this habit through the first and second semester, as all my courses require me to stay focused to be on track. Online learning is a huge challenge for time management, and PLP requires a lot of extra curricular time for us to work on our projects. Chemistry, Physics, and Bio are relatively easier but one day of missing class could shift the whole situation around.
Overall, I feel like without video games I’m able to have more control over my time and inspire me to find more passionate things around me.
4) Noting With Craft
The phycological behavior of humans is weird, essentially when you are told not to do something you would be more likely to do that. Back in grade 10 when the PLP teachers were spoon feeding us about how to use Craft, none of us were engaged or proactively using it. Now in grade 11, everyone uses it for every assignment. Even out side of PLP, I still choose to use craft to take notes, because it keeps my stuff nice and organized.
Here are some examples:
General-Major Based Learning
I have a dream modernized script
BCFP 12 lesson plan
Bio (levels of organizations)
I find it especially useful for concept based courses, like Bio and Humanities courses. When it comes to math or physics, there would just be too much equations involved, so it’s not very applicable.
My plans for grade 12:
I’ve mentioned before that working in a large group doesn’t work very well in a school project, based on my personal experiences in DI. However, collaboration is still an essential skill to have in life. I could avoid this in school, but it doesn’t mean I can avoid it forever.
My main target for next year is to motivate others to work together with me (AKA moving on to the synergies phase). Not all students have school as their priority in life, and I understand that. My recent project about making more engaged and informed citizens, I’ve concluded that in order to make student engaged in school is by making their learning more meaningful. “Having high grades will guide you to a good university” is not a good enough reason to many teenagers. Therefore we need to find a better alternative method.
I do not have a clear vision of how I execute my plan next year, but that’s the general direction I’m heading towards. Please comment down below if you have suggestions for me.