Category: PLP

Stories of Hope and The Lessons We Learn From Them

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). In this post I’m going to be reflecting on our most recent PLP project. The goal for this project was to create a video answering our driving question through exploring examples of stories of hope. Through this project we needed to answer the driving question: What lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity? As I do with most blog post I will go into explaining our journey through this project and then answer the driving question. So without further ado, lets get started on this reflection.

For the first week and a half of this quick project we explored different stories of hope. We looked at many different stories from Bethany Hamilton, cancer survivors, 911 survivors, and many more. After learning about a few historical stories of hope we were tasked to write a blog post answering the driving question: What is a story of Hope? My answer to this question was “I think that a story of hope relies on the inclusion of someone or something recovering from facing adversity. With the story of the survivor tree (a story of hope) people see the tree as a sign of hope that if this tree can survive than we can. Stories of Hope can often be overlooked as they might be on the lower scale of an adversity faced. In conclusion a story of hope is one that we can learn from and be inspired by. Hope is something that can be shared.”

Near the end weeks of this project half of our class went on a feild study trip while half stayed back. Those who stayed back would present their project to their peers and get feedback on how to move forward in this project. After receiving feedback on my project I pivoted my main idea. Before, my idea focused on how near death experiences offer hope, then pivoted to how communities and spirituality are support systems of hope. My first thesis was: “Surviving a near death experience is an unimaginable feat, but these obstacles present the opportunity for individuals to emerge victorious and share their incredibly inspiring stories of hope.” However after changing my focus point my thesis is now: “It is not uncommon for individuals who have encountered near death experiences to undergo a shift in their beliefs. However, with the help of a supportive community and a newfound appreciation for life, many individuals are able to rediscover their spirituality. These obstacles present the opportunity for individuals to emerge victorious and share their incredibly inspiring stories of hope.” In my video I was going to have an interview with my mom, who is a labor and delivery nurse, to hear some of the stories of hope she has encountered, however due to confidentiality of patients I was unable to proceed with this interview. 

Now in my video I did state my answer to the driving question but to restate it my answer to “What lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity?” Is that ultimately, the stories of those who have faced tragedy and adversity remind us that we are capable of great things, even when the odds are stacked against us. By learning from their experiences, we can build a better future for ourselves and for those around us. It is not uncommon for individuals who have encountered near death experiences to undergo a shift in their beliefs. However, with the help of a supportive community and a newfound appreciation for life, many individuals are able to rediscover their spirituality. These obstacles present the opportunity for individuals to emerge victorious and share their incredibly inspiring stories of hope.

I believe that this project went well. I was unable to have origional footage like those who went on the trip and were able to visit places significant to their examples of hope. I think that for being one of the ones who stayed home I was able to develope a deeper meaning as to what hope is and how these stories can shape our perspective on overcoming adversity. I think that in future projects I would like to work better on my work ethic in getting an outline on timing of completion of assignments. Overall I really enjoyed this project and it left me with a deeper understanding of what hope, resilience, and adversity truly means. 

Stay tuned for my next post.

What is a Story of Hope?

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). This blog post is a little different as it is an ongoing reflection of our current project. This is not a project reflective post.

What is a story of hope? Over the past week and a half PLP 12 and 11 have been trying to find an answer to this question. We have been analyzing different stories in order to try and as a class come to an answer, however I believe answers vary on peoples’ experiences.

Personally I believe that a story of hope is like Bethany Hamilton’s story. Bethany Hamilton is a surfer who’s arm got bitten off by a shark and was able to overcome adversity with resilience, hope, and support from her family, friends, and community. Her story is truly inspiring of how despite losing an arm she was able to overcome challenges with the hope to overcome.

 

Hope is often mistaken as optimism and being over positive. Optimistic people often blind themselves to reality and deny while hope is something that comes with realizing the reality at hand and finding a way forward. Hope is a key to survival. In the show “Alone” the survivalists who have hope often are the ones who make it to the final 2 or 3.

What lessons and inspiration can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity? Hope, resilience, and survival are the three key lessons that we can pull from the stories we have analyzed so far.

Going back to our first question (What is a story of hope?) I think that a story of hope relies on the inclusion of someone or something recovering from facing adversity. With the story of the survivor tree (a story of hope) people see the tree as a sign of hope that if this tree can survive than we can. Stories of Hope can often be overlooked as they might be on the lower scale of an adversity faced. In conclusion a story of hope is one that we can learn from and be inspired by. Hope is something that can be shared.

We Didn’t Start The Fire

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). In this post I’m going to be reflecting on our most recent PLP project. The goal for this project was to create a website where each of us contributed by creating a lesson on a subject mentioned in the song ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ by Billy Joel. Through this project we needed to answer the driving question: How do we make choices about what is worth remembering? As I do with most blog post I will go into explaining our journey through this project and then answer the driving question. So without further ado, lets get started on this reflection.

Now to answer this driving question I want to reflect on two key things in this project. The first is the lesson plans we created and taught to our class and the second is what makes an event significant and why I thought the subject/event I chose was significant.

The event I chose to create a lesson plan for was the opening of Disneyland. When choosing an event I wanted to choose one that I had some sort of personal connection with. My personal connection with Disneyland is that I got the opportunity to dance with my dance studio in the Disneyland parade in both 2014 and 2019. When creating the lesson plan I wanted to focus my presentation on what went wrong with the opening day. A few of the things that went wrong were rids breaking down, no water fountains, selling out of food, and a gas leak in the park.

After creating our lesson plans we each had to use our lesson plan to teach our class about the event we chose. I have never taught a class other than a dance class and so teaching my fellow classmates was a new experience. I wanted to be able to keep them engaged so in my PowerPoint I had two video sources and an activity with prizes.

Our PLP class Website

Now as you may be wondering just like many others, why is Disneyland opening historically significant? Disneyland has been quoted as “the happiest place on earth”. This statement is very true as Disneyland was designed for not just kids but for adults too to enjoy their time there and forget about the world they left behind. Walt’s dream was to build a land for people to enjoy and dream again and he achieved this. Disneyland at the time of opening was nationally significant as a little under half of the US population tuned in to the live broadcast of opening day. Disneyland has now grown to globally significant over the years as there is now a Disneyland in Japan and France. In 2021 there was an estimate of 757 million visitors that year. Disneyland has largely impacted the world of entertainment with not only the creation of Disney studios but of Disneyland as well. Disney studios is continuing to grow and impact our world today.

Now that I have talked about the process of making our lesson plans and the significance it’s time to answer the driving question. How do we make choices about what is worth remembering? I believe that it is up to each individual as to what they want to remember and what they personally believe is worth remembering. Every individual has a different perspective on if certain events are classified as important or not. It is a historians’ job to dictate what is important to remember however not everyone will agree if said events hold or lack importance. Therefor it is difficult to make a choice about if an event hold historical significance and if it is worth remembering however the best way to decide if needed if an event is significant is to look at it’s impact on a scale from personal to global. Even if an event is globally significant there will always be at least one person who will say otherwise.

Overall I really enjoyed this project as I got to learn how to teach a class and that could be a possible career path for me. I can’t wait for the next project. Stay tuned for my next post.

The Final MPOL

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where “not all those who wander are lost” (J.R.R Tolkien). This is the final M-POL, hard to believe this is the last year of doing these Presentations of Learning. The Driving Questions for this year’s M-POL are: How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? And how can I sharpen my learning plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year?

With preparing for this M-POL I wanted to look back at my T-POL from last year to review the goals I set. They were to have outlines for all written assignments, ask for help, and build my current skill set for university. I now write detailed outlines for all my blog posts and short outlines for written assignments. I try to ask for help when needed instead of trying to figure things out on my own. I have also set a goal this to build my skill set for university. In order to creating my learning plan for the year I looked back on these goals and how I was doing so far. In my learning plan, my goal for this year was to expand on my work in the ways of not just working with my strengths on projects but also my weaknesses. Before I talk more about my learning plan and how I want alter it I want to talk a bit about some of our projects so far this year in PLP.

We have had a total of 4 PLP projects this year. Reflecting back on each of them I believe that I did well in these projects but there are two that I feel have shown my growth so far this year, our horror project and our PGP project. In my learning plan this year I talked about how I wanted to step outside my comfort zone by expanding my knowledge and working with my weaknesses. I believe that with our horror project this year I managed to take a few steps in that direction. I have never been one to enjoy horror movies and so I was quite nervous heading into this project. During this project we did a few things that were not within my usual comfort zone, we watched 4 horror movies, went to a horror exhibit at the MoPOP, and went to a haunted house at an old morgue. During this project I was able to get a better understanding of what the genre of horror really is. Before this project I had not been aware of the different aspects of horror and that there are so many sub genres of horror. In the end I ended up enjoying this project a lot and it taught me the great lesson that if I don’t step outside my comfort zone every once and a while I will miss out on great opportunities.

Our PGP project was to read a self-improvement book and create an artifact to exhibit to our fellow grade 12s. The book I read for this project was ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F*ck’ by Mark Manson. I personally feel that I could have done better at my final artifact for this project however I do feel that this was one of the projects where I learned the most. From the book I read I was exposed to so many honest points. Some of the quotes that really impacted me were:

“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”

“To simply blame others is only to hurt yourself.”

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.“

After reading this book I had so many quotes written down that I had found interesting and/or inspiring. My end artifact was a way to share the quotes I took note of to my fellow peers in a fun interactive way. At the beginning of this project I thought that with reading a self-improvement books they would be the stereotypical ones that I wouldn’t have gained any takeaways from, however, this book was different as it was not in anyways like the stereotypical self-improvement book. At the end of this project I have now reacessed my values in life and realized that I shouldn’t let the little things impact me so much. Imagine you have 86400 pieces of gold and someone took 10. Would you carry on with the remaining 86390 pieces or would you risk what you have to get those 10 pieces back? There are 86400 seconds in a day, would you let someone’s 10 seconds of negativity bring down the other 86390? After reading this book I have discovered less stress in my life as I don’t let the little things effect me. 

We’ve had some pretty cool projects so far this year in PLP and I believe that I truly needed these projects in order to prepare me for this M-POL. After getting back into this year and experiencing some PLP 12 projects I now know how I want to improve this year. How have I demonstrated growth as a learner so far this year? I feel that I have grown so far this year. I feel that I have demonstrated this by being capable of expanding my learning by trying to delve deeper and gain more knowledge. I see that there is still much room to grow before this year is up. And how can I sharpen my learning plan to ensure I will reach my learning targets by the end of this school year? At the beginning of this year I broadly knew that I wanted to work with my weaknesses but after some thinking and reflecting I am going to expand on that goal. Moving forward I hope to expand on my work by taking time out of my day to do extra research into a topic brought up in a project in order to expand my knowledge. So far in PLP I always strived for accomplished but now I want to set higher goals for myself as I know that if I work hard enough I am capable of reaching them. Another goal of mine moving forward is to be more vocal in class. I always shy away from speaking out as I worry that my answers are incorrect. But as PLP has taught me, FAILing is your First Attempt In Learning. In order to reach these goals I want to set up some sort of system where everyday or every second day I will be vocal in class at least once and make a literature note about a topic related to our project that I have researched. I hope by the end of this year I will have learned everything I can that PLP has to offer in order to prepare for the next big step of my life. University.

 

Thank you for spending the time to read through such a long post. Make sure to stay tuned for more to come.

Peace✌️

The Subtle Art of PGP

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). This is a PGP post in which I’m going to review our PGP Careers class and the project we did. Since it’s been so long since I’ve done a post about PGP let me re-explain it. PGP stands for Personal Growth Plan. At the beginning of this course we worked on things that would help us in our job/post secondary pathways like building up our resumes, looking at how to apply for scholarships, and creating transition plans. Now with any PLP class we always work through projects given that we are a Project Based Learning Program. Our project for this course was to read a self-improvement book and create an artifact to answer the driving question: What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship? Before I go into answering this driving question with my artifact I want to talk a bit about my post secondary plan I made at the beginning of this course and how I’m doing now.

Before the beginning of this school year I had a general understanding of what I wanted to do after high school then I decided what universities to apply to. I want to go down the theatre production path of costume, prop, and set design. When deciding on what Universities to apply to I not only looked at the program but also the campus and it’s location as I want to stay closer to home. My university application process was definitely not what I expected. When my brother went through his application process he just sent the application of his resume and answered questions in essay format, then he would just wait a few months to hear back. Whereas for my application process I applied and after a couple weeks hear back to send in my portfolio, resume, cover letter, and to schedule an interview. My brother and I are going down different career paths which explains the different application processes yet I didn’t expect it to be such a difference. I have now been accepted by 2 out of the 3 universities I’ve applied to.

Now back to the PGP project. The self-improvement book I chose to read was ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck’ by Mark Manson. This book is unlike any self-help book. The approach Mark takes in this book is out of the box and allows readers to take a different look at life and how to organize your life. The target audience is definitely young adults and adults who don’t enjoy the stereotype self-improvement book. The main thesis of this book is to seek meaning through what is important in life and take control over your values. In this book Mark talks about how if you feel you are not the one in control of your values they are not good values. He also talks a lot about seeking meaning in life and to care (give a F*ck) about what is truly important to you and your values and to not care (not give a F*ck) about the little things in life that pass you by and don’t matter in the long run. He is constantly encouraging readers to be honest with themselves, and to recognize the areas of their lives they can improve. Mark talks a lot about his personal experience in this book and connects it to his advice as he lives by his book. One main thing that stood out for me in this book was the Disappointment Panda. The Disappointment Panda is a Panda that goes around to peoples doors to tell them the brutal truth in order for them to accept reality, embrace the negative, and improve to being a better person. 

After reading our self-improvement books we were tasked with creating an artifact that both connects to our book and answers the driving question. While reading this book I took note of many quotes that I found inspirational, interesting, and honestly true. I wanted to be able to share what I learned from this book through my final project but couldn’t think of the how. “Do or do not, there is no how” is one of the quotes from the book so I did just that. I didn’t question the how I just did. I decided to combine my two favorite parts of the book, the Panda and the quotes, in order to share my knowledge. After my pitch of this idea was accepted I started planning out my artifact. My artifact was a disappointment panda with quotes from the book on it’s hat so that the visitors at our exhibition could take a quote and gain the knowledge I did.

The exhibition was open to any students but more specifically the rest of our grade 12 class as this project was for our careers course. I think the exhibition went really well and many visitors found my artifact interesting and the quotes inspiring. After creating my artifact and reading my book, my answer to the Driving Question: What do I need to know to move forward with lifelong learning and active citizenship? is I need to know where in life to place my values and where to find meaning. I need to know what my values are and if they are self controlled or need to be altered. I need to accept the negative more and search the positive less. In conclusion I did enjoy the resurrection of PGP as I felt it helped me to improve more than it had in the past. There are many things I learned that I want to improve on but I’ll talk more about that in my upcoming M-POLs post. 

OH THE HORROR!

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). In this post I’m going to be reflecting on our most recent project. The driving question for this project was Why is horror an effective way to reflect and comment on our society? In this project our goal was to make our own horror movie that reflected our current society. As we worked on our project we each individually posed our own question in relation to horror. We were tasked with answering the question with the knowledge we gained from this project and any previous horror knowledge we had. You can find that blog at this link. My first thoughts on this project was that I was scared. I personally do not cope well with horror movies or the genre in general. Now onto the post.

As a class we watched a total of 4 movies. Get Out, The Exorcist, Halloween, and Friday the 13th. I only watched 3 of them as I was too scared to watch Friday the 13th.


I most enjoyed Get Out of all the movies we watched. I enjoyed that it made you think not just during the movie but afterwards as well. There are so many little details in the movie that you have to really be paying attention to it. I feel that Get Out was also the movie that really looked to the meaning of our project of reflecting society. However my opinion could be seen as biased as I am growing up in the society in which this movie reflects. I was not alive when The Exorcist and Halloween were released so I cannot say that those movies weren’t a good reflection of society. With saying which of the movies I most enjoyed I feel I need to also comment on which one was not my most favorite. I would say that I enjoyed all of them as it was an interesting experience to watch these movies but personally Halloween was my least favorite. The movie was suspenseful and there were quite a few jump scares. I also did not enjoy the lasting effect this movie had. At the end of this movie many shots are shown as to where Michael Myers could be and this left me constantly looking over my should for a few weeks. This experience is why I tend to not watch scary movies however the one scary movie I had watched previously to this project was Coraline.

During this project we went on two field studies, one to Seattle and the other to Loon Lake. On the Seattle trip we went to the Seattle Art Museum, the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPop), and Georgetown Morgue Haunted House. The Haunted House was more terrifying than I could have imagined and I didn’t even walk through it. While waiting in the long line with my class there was a clown on stilts (named Georgie) and a zombie (which my class named Tommy) walking up and down the line scaring and interacting with people. The Art Museum was truly interesting. Many art pieces reflected our society as well. At the MoPop they had an exhibit about the genre of horror. there were many different sections in this exhibit from killers to vampires to zombies. There were many different artifacts from many different horror shows and movies. They also had little viewing pods set up with videos of different horror directors being interviewed about different horror movies. My biggest take away from this exhibit was what I read on one of the signs. “Horror movies offer more than just entertainment. They express the primal emotional of the human experience by tapping into the anxieties of contemporary culture and visualizing the unspeakable fears and forbidden desires that lie just beneath the polite face of society”. These two sentences perfectly summed up what horror is and how the genre of horror truly reflects us individually and us as a society.

After the Seattle trip we got started on our pre-production phase. After much talking back and forth and fighting different ideas we settled on a story that reflects Cancel Culture. Our horror movie is about a group of influencers that get an invite to a retreat, but when they get there it’s deep in the woods with no wifi and no cell reception. The influencers start to disappear one by one. The pre-production stage was quite quick as we had roughly 5 days to prep before we left for Loon Lake, our shooting location. Once onsite the filming began.

Filming a horror movie was nothing like I expected especially acting in one. I got the role of Fern, the Vegan Influencer. I am not the best of actors and to act like an annoying influencer was definitely a new experience. My acting was over pretty quickly though due to being the first one to die (oops spoiler alert). I found my death scene quite challenging as I had to scream. I had never screamed previously to shooting my death scene but the scary setting helped. For my death I was on a little pull-ferry in the pitch black. As for my post death scene I had to lie on the pull-ferry drenched in fake blood in the cold rain for half an hour. However when I was not drenched in blood I had the amazing opportunity to have the role of Production Designer. I was really excited for this as it is similar to what I want to do for a career.

Now back to the driving question Why is horror an effective way to reflect and comment on our society? Horror is able to bring to light the negatives in our society that we try to ignore. As a society we try to cover up and ignore the negative with the positives, horror is able to effectively tap into our emotions and fear to expose us to the true horrors in our lives.

In conclusion this has been a great project and I enjoyed it more that I expected. I had assumed last year that we would be doing this project in our final year as my brother had previously done. With not being one who enjoys horror I worried that it would limit my ability to work on this project however I found it did not. I had hoped this year to really use my strength of creativity on every project we do and I thought that with my theatre knowledge I was able to do well with my role as Production Designer. If I could hope for an improvement I would say personally I would really like to take more risks and work a little more outside my comfort zone and try new experiences. I was able to do that a bit with this project being about horror however I want to broaden my opportunities more.

Stay tuned for the next post as it is that magical time of year again. M-POLs.

The Extremity Of Horror

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). Can the level of extremity of horror differ depending on the medium (live action or animated)? After receiving this assignment I immediately knew I wanted to ask this question. Personally I don’t watch horror movies as I get scared too easily. The only horror movies I have seen are Coraline and Halloween. The assignment we received was to ask an essential question that we can answer through our knowledge on horror. With my knowledge of horror only being from the two movies I have  watched and our class visit to the horror exhibit at the MOPOP I wanted to ask a question that allows me to find a correlation between these movies. Before I answer this essential question I should dive into what makes these 2 movies scary.

Now when people think about “Coraline” they picture it as a kids movie yet it’s scary to both adult and kid audiences. The main way that this movie succeeds so much in conveying a terrifying story is through stop motion. With stop motion animation you can manipulate and distort to create an unusual perspective on people and places. Something that this movie plays on that is scary for not just this movie but any other horror movie is the origin of the story. The movie “Coraline” is based off of Neil Gaiman’s book “Coraline”. Neil Gaiman’s book was inspired by “The New Mother” by Lucy Clifford, “The New Mother” has been retold by Alvin Schwartz as “The Pear Drum”. All these adaptions of this story include one consistance. The other mother. The Other Mother in Neil Gaiman’s adaption lives in this Other World where she waits to lure unhappy children and steal their souls. In Lucy Clifford’s version the New Mother (Other Mother) arrives after the two main children of the story behave so badly they drive their mother away. This New Mother (Other Mother) has glass eyes that shine and a wooden tail. 

The Other Mother is connected strongly to what is known as the Beldam. Beldam is another word old woman or a witch. The Beldam is defined as a demonic shape shifting entity who lures children into another dimension to consume their flesh and take their souls. The Beldam’s true form resembles closely to a skeletal spider. “Coraline” also has some parallels to other horror movies. In the movie “Us” there are other versions of everyone and they want to replace the originals, similar to how the Other and New Mother wants to replace the old mother. Another parallel is between the Other Mother and Penewise. At the end of both “Coraline” and “It: Chapter Two” both antagonists end in a form that resembles a spider.

After breaking down the origin and it’s connections to other horror movies it’s even more scary than just watching it. But If I want to truly answer this essential question I need to break down a live action horror movie I’ve seen.

Halloween. “Halloween” was the first ever live action horror movie I’ve seen and I only just watched it this year. I only watched it to be able to better understand horror for our project, personally I wouldn’t watch it unless I had to. Earlier in this project I did do a bit of a deep dive into the behind the scenes of the movie. What I learned from my research was director John Carpenter’s visions and ways to instill fear within the audience and make the audience connect to the ‘final girl’ Laurie. Many aspects added in this movie that make it truly terrifying is the built up suspense. Throughout the movie we see Micheal Myers following Laurie throughout her day. Because of this we know there will some sort of conflict between the two. Another suspense building feature is the music. This movie has an eerie soundtrack that just builds to silence. Then at the silence we just wait for the expected to happen yet we still get scared. Even though this movie was low budget it was a major success in horror and has turned into one of the biggest horror franchises. 

Can the level of extremity of horror differ depending on the medium (live action or animated)? In a stop motion animation horror such as coraline characters and other aspects can be manipulated to appear unnatural and/or odd. In live action films they rely on the technology they have access to to morph things or people. In movies like Halloween with such a low budget and little technological advancements in film at the time they weren’t able to rely on technology but on the actually physical artistry. I believe that live action horror films have a higher level of horror than animation horror films. Live action movies are more relatable on the physical aspect that these horrific events are happening to real live action people whereas animated movies may be horrific but given that they are animated or stop motion animated they aren’t as scary as we can’t physically relate to the characters as much as a live action film.

A Crazy One?

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Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). Our most recent project was our last project of the year. Spring exhibition. This was our first inside spring exhibition in 2 years. It just makes me realize how big of an impact covid has made on our lives. Speaking of impact, our final project this year was focused around impact makers. The driving question for this project was: What makes someone a community impact maker? My first thought to this question was, what makes an impact maker and how will this form to be an exhibition project? Before I go into answering the driving question I’m going to catch you up on our project path.

We first started off with defining what a “crazy one” is. There is an apple ad that shows many impact makers who people thought were crazy due to their impossible ideas. This ad featured people such as Gandhi, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Edison, and many more. This was able to answer my first question: what makes an impact maker? Next we watched 3 movies, hidden figures, Amadeus, and Gandhi. These movies really opened my eyes on the lives of these amazing people. If I had to pin a favourite out of the three I would say “Amadeus”. I love classical music and opera, so much so I even have opera glasses. This movie just made me have an even greater appreciation for Mozart’s genius.

Our next steps in this project were working towards our final product. Our first step was to identify someone who had a positive impact on one of the communities we’re apart of. I had a difficult time at first to identify someone. The reason I was struggling was because I thought we had to find someone who was considered a “crazy one”, turns out we didn’t. The person had to have made a positive impact and did not need to have been seen as crazy. So I chose Sonia Ellis. Sonia was one of the owners of my dance studio and she was one of my dance teachers growing up. She made Seymour dance the family community it is. Once we had figured out who our impact maker was we learned about the project. The project was to create a contemporary art piece that represents our impact maker. I did a simple water colour portrait of Sonia and then glued flowers on it to represent the “Waltz of the Flowers” dance from the “Nutcracker”. Sonia choreographed that dance for our studio’s adaption of it and I wanted to really show that with my art piece. I was not at exhibition this year due to having tickets to Hamilton that very same night but I was very proud of my work this project.

In conclusion I am very proud of how my project turned out and I think I was able to convey the story of my impact maker without being present at the exhibition. Now to answer the driving question. What makes someone a community impact maker? I think that a community impact maker is really defined by everyone differently. anyone can be a community impact maker as long as they have somehow made a positive impact on at least one person in this community. I really enjoyed this project and I’m curious as to what our first grade 12 project will be.

Peace ✌️

T-POLs | Another Year Gone

RhiannLeave a comment

Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where “not all those who wander are lost” (J.R.R Tolkien). This is an T-POL post, I haven’t done one in a while since we didn’t do them last year. The driving question for this years T-POLs is: why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

Before I go in to answering this question I want to reflect back to my M-POL and the goal I set at the end of it. The goal that I set was to plan and manage my time more effectively and to create outlines for written assignments before writing them. Looking at my progress I feel that I have done well working towards this goal. I have tweaked my planner so that it not only incorporates my schedule but also any todo’s, homework, and if any assignments are due. I have also made sure to create detailed outlines before any blog posts. I find that writing these planners and outlines on paper rather than on my iPad allows for my brain to understand better. I could try to stick more o my planners but sometimes life is unexpected and one thing can change my whole schedule. my current planner only focuses on school day and my goal moving forward is to have a planner for everyday. I also hope to not just outline my blog posts but all my other written assignments.

  • Old planner

Now back to T-POLs. To be able to answer this question I looked back on what I wanted to improve on this year. The main things I wanted to improve on were my creativity and writing skills. I feel that I improved a lot on my writing skills with our “Sounds of Poetry” project. With this project we worked on studying poetry and the concept behind some poems and song lyrics. I already have some poetry skills that I learned from the work I did at Sylvan. This project not only expanded my poetry knowledge but also my creative writing knowledge. The final product of this project was to choose 5 songs for a playlist that somehow represent us and then write about our connection to them. I was able to use my creative writing to tell the story of my connection to each song.

The projects where I felt showed my growth in creativity were our two exhibition projects. For both exhibitions this year we had to incorporate art, both contemporary and conceptual. With these projects I was able to expand my creativity in the form of art and gain further understanding of adding meaning and symbolizim to the pieces I create.

Now back to the driving question. Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade level? I feel that with all the projects we did this year I have learned everything grade 11 has to offer and I’m ready for the challenges of grade 12. I have figured out my career path and I am ready to gain the skills I need through grade 12 to work towards my chosen career. I have learned many lessons this year and not just through PLP but through my other courses too, and I’m ready to apply these lessons to my learning next year.

Thank you for spending the time to read through such a long post. Make sure to stay tuned for more to come.

Peace✌️

A Tale of Madness

RhiannLeave a comment

Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). In this post I will be focusing our latest project. This project was one of the most fun projects ever. The driving question was: “How might we craft a compelling vision of “Macbeth” set in the 1950s?” Our end goal for this project was to be able to create a film that combines the gruesome tale of Macbeth and the Cold War. The stages we went through to lead up to this final project were to analyze the story of Macbeth and different versions and to learn the history of the Cold War. At first I thought that we wouldn’t be able to acheive our end goal due to the teachers telling us tht no PLP class has been able to complete this project. However my thoughts were soon to be altered.

When we first started with the learning of Macbeth I found myself more enthusiastic than my fellow classmates. Back in elementary school, grade 7, I became so interested in Shakespeare and learning how to understand his work. I am always looking forward to when we incorporate Shakespeare into our projects. We started by getting a textbook copy of the play and started to read. As we read we would analyze and ask questions. We would also look a one or two different film adaptations to be able to get visual representation and see how different directors in vision this tragic tale of madness.

I found that we as a class were lacking on the knowledge of the Cold War and what happened during it. We only had two quick lectures and I think that we could have spent more time delving into it to then be able to have included it more into our final project. During this project we had to make a weekly literature note about something interesting we learned in class or something that sparked an idea in our head. One of the literature notes I was really proud of was the one I did after we analyzed the witches in Macbeth.

Once we had our knowledge on macbeth and the Cold War we then started into our final project. The first step was to assign roles, not casting but the roles like director or producer, even in my case, wardrobe manager. When we applied for a role we had to hand in a vision for the role and a resume tailored to that role. I applied for wardrobe manager and added in my experience of helping with the costumes at my dance studio into my resume.

The first thing I started to do was put together a Pinterest board of my vision. I collaborated a lot with Kaia, the director, on what her ideas and vision so I could stick to an idea. I had a rough idea of what Kaia had in mind for the story and used that to start planning costumes. Once we got the actual story and the class had collectively written it I formatted my final ideas. The next step was getting them. I went down with the rest of the wardrobe team (Natalie and Liam) to our school’s theatre to find some costumes. I was able to find quite a lot of costumes that would work with the time period of our film (the 50s) and any missing things would be brought in by the actors.

Now due to the timing of editing this film I will not have the film on my blog until a later date but once I do have the film available a link will be below.

Now as usual I will be not only evaluating how the project went but how I personally think I did and how I can improve. I think that we were able to achieve our goal in being able to create a vision of macbeth that was set in the 1950s. I did wish that we were able to learn more about the Cold War aspect of the 50s but due to our previous knowledge of the 50s I think we were able to execute this project well. Now before I began writing this post I asked myself some questions. What did I do? How well did I do? What should I do next? After answering these questions I collected one conclusion. This project was amazing. Not only did it go well but it allowed me to realize what my true academic aspirations are. This project helped me achieve a realization that I really want to become a costume designer for theatre or film. I think that this project was one of the best by far because it allowed me to use my creative and critical skills and helped me build on them. The best thing about this project was what I was able to take away from it and this is what is important in projects. I hope we get to do a project more based around my second career choice (creative writing) and that the next project will be able to help me focus on building my writing skills.

Stay tuned for the next post.

Peace ✌️