Good afternoon Mr. Hughes and Ms. Willemese and my mom and dad Jason and Cherie Devisser.

This year gave me a lot of challenge as a learner specifically in math. I don’t think I work hard enough to understand math and need to take more time to listen to the instructions and ask for help when I need it. Humanities, science and maker always seem more interesting to me and so I’m more engaged and willing to get the work done. It seems I work the hardest and set priorities I am doing the things I like to do the best. I need to realize that is not always the way life is. There will be many things I need to do in life that I probably won’t like very much but will still be important to finish.

This year we have a number of occasions of working together in teams. In destination imagination, we were part of a group. It was hard to find a convenient times to meet up so we also had to work independently. This increased our individual responsibilities a lot and also caused frustration. I think my highest quality of work was on the blue sky and destination imagination projects. Both showed a lot of interest and engagement from others and pushed my creativity.

So why am I ready to advance in grade 10?. Each year I take PLP it helps ready me for learning new and more complex skills. Each year the projects get more challenging and push my creativity and outputs which I think will be important for me in the future.

As much as I like PLP, there are parts I enjoy a lot less than others. The ones I like the least are more academically-based. This is largely because I thrive in an environment where I can be a hands on in building things. A good example is that I think I am strong in field studies because I get to apply skills first hand and not as strong in work that requires me to do a lot of written output. Often the work that I have to complete that wasn’t hands on was done by rushing and I should have spent more time in making an accurate and more complete. I think I need to handle both equally to be truly successful.

I am most proud of my blue sky project. I was inspired by my love for mountain biking realizing that I often need to have my bike transported on vehicles to do my mountain biking but thought about combining biking with my love for motorcycles. Why not put them together. I got a lot of different perspectives on improvement which further challenged me to improve on my idea. Completing a project like this could easily translate into working on a project in the workplace and receiving feedback then. The part I found the most challenging about the blue sky project was that I really needed help from my dad. This was not something my mom could help me with and it made it hard because my dad is often away for work but it was only he who could help me with much of the building process.

So looking back on the past year what is one of the most valuable things I learned. Missing the class trip to Florida certainly made it harder to work on the projects assigned to everyone when everyone got home. Actually experiencing the trip was for sure more inspiring than researching things on the Internet to complete a project. It is not likely that I would give up an opportunity in the future to join my class on another school adventure.

Looking back on grade 9 I realize that not listening to instructions on work for different classes made it more difficult to finish the homework but also I found this year I put a lot of things off and procrastinated too much. This made it harder in the end. It often made me feel overwhelmed and left my mom constantly harping at me. It made it difficult to imagine I could ever catch up and I don’t think I did.

So what do I plan to do for grade 10? . I plan to take more time to follow, record and understand instructions and to put more effort into spending the time it takes to stay on top of my assignments to get them all done by the time they are due.

These last three years of school are going to be important for my future and it is time I put more effort into doing better. My dad and stepdad have challenged me to see how many scholarships I could get in grade 12. There is a lot of money on the table to encourage me and it would be nice to prove what I can due.