Hey guys, this is my MPOL (Mid-year Presentation Of Learning. In this I’m going to talk about my improvement from my learning plan that I completed at the start of the year, what work I’ve done that shows my progress as a learner, and where I think I’m still struggling and can improve my academic game to be the best possible student and produce the best possible work. Notice how I said best possible, and that is because I will always have flaws and things I struggle with but my goal is to keep that to the minimum.
This year we did three projects with PLP, I’ll be taking you guys through them all and go more in depth to show how is showed my learning and skills, but also things I can work on. To start off the year we did a project of the British Columbia gold rush, mid year we did a project called the ology of apology, which is where we looked back at past Canadian wrong and analyzed the apologies given for them. That project was connected to the exhibition, and so was the new avatar movie which we also looked at. We finished off the year with a little bit of Shakespeare, with the projects name being “Romeo, Romeo why do we still talk about Romeo and Juliet”
Back on the the learning plan side of things, I started out the year with my statement of learning intent which talks about my flaws, how I think I can fix them, and what I hope to accomplish this year. I said “This year during the PLP course I’m looking to improve my organization, time management, teamwork, and most of all my work quality itself. All of those points seems very broad and you might be thinking, yeah thats what your supposed to get better at at school, but with me personally I’ve struggled with most of those things because of some outside of school events. But thats why i put time management as one of the things i have to work on this year. I can do that by using things and my calendar app more often, and write down what time I’m busy and when my sports are, and make designated time to do my work and get all caught up. So by the end of the year i want to have as few late red circles or late paper clips as I possibly can in Showbie. Thats skill comes with being organized so its kinda a two in one. And all that is not because of my work being bad and rushed, the work I actually do is always quality and get pretty good marks on the assignments to back myself up, its just when i don’t have enough time I sometimes stop half way, forget about the assignment and leave half of a really good piece of work sitting in the depths of pages but not in the showbie slot. Thats what I’m trying to get rid of with the organizing skill”
And then picked out some profiles that best represent me and my learning in man my different categories
We also listed our strengths for both humanities and maker, what we think we can grow on for each of the subjects, and the support we need to make that growth happen.
Our first humanities project we had to write a story on a the gold rush event in early bc times, specifically the Cariboo gold rush, Fraser canyon gold rush, and the Chilcotan war. The main things I want to talk about from this project is that we put in lots of progress reports and did a lot of critique which I liked. I liked that because we got to make the final product as good as it can possibly be. During this project I was away is Las Vegas for a baseball tournament so it was almost a test to see if I can still do the work that everyone else is doing while remote. Everything went well except for the peer review where we had to share with a partner, but next time I can just send them a link and they can message me back with feedback. Or somethings along the lines of that. In summary of humanities I think it’s the subject where I can improve the most because my writing is definitely on the weaker side of my skills, and I often doze of when looking back at history because I find it really boring, but that’s what ill have to deal with for this class. So overall, I did good but not great, room for improvement. This is the final product I made that project.
A long time ago in a small Canadian town called Quebec, there was a household belonging to a lovely family known as the Barnards. There’s Stillman (the dad), Francis (his son aka the fortune seeker). 9:00am-February 25-1853: “Mornin Dad” says Francis, stillman responds “hows it going dude? Sleep well?” “Meh it was alright my head was spinning around with blistering thoughts about some unrealistic things I wish could happen” Stillman says “Better not be anything to with leaving this family business, you know it’s our pride and joy, we don’t care about money” “It’s not don’t worry dad(which is a lie)”
Through the next few nights all Francis could think about is if there’s anywhere or anything he he could do to fortune hunt, get a better job, or anything to escape his hometown, because of the lack of opportunities there. But the very next week he went to go see one of his friends at their house, when he walked in, his jaw dropped. He saw the most beautiful, pretty, straight up unreal girl. They locked eyes and they both knew it was love at first sight. Crazy how the theme of the story changed up that quick, but so did Francis’s life.
He said “Wow, what is ur name?” She responded with “Heyyy, my names Ellen. You?” He didn’t even answer her question hen just said *What is somebody like you doing in my smelly rat lookin friends house, no offence man” His friend was shocked
“Im here for one more month as a tenant trying out a new job I got the opportunity to do, but I’m moving back to my family in Toronto” Francis said “That amazing, hope we can talk again soon” As time went by they talked more and more and Francis eventually thought, what if I became part of this girls life, maybe I could find something beneficial in Toronto. Even more time went by and his friend still never forgave him for dissing him to impress a girl in his own house, but that’s besides the point. He popped the big question in the year of 1854, and moved to Toronto in 1855 with her, on the hunt for money.
Unsuccessful in Toronto he has second thoughts about him and his wife and leaves her to come to British Columbia. He was one of the first to emigrate to be with a load of Americans from the south following. When he arrived he thought everywhere in Canada was all about chopping trees, playing hockey and spending all day at Timmies.
So the first guy he meets there he says “I got a $5 piece of gold in my pocket, I’ll chop some lumber for you if I can make a few buckaroos, what do ya say eh?” The guy respond “Stop joking around bud, I got a spot you can work at for the next few months in the express and freight industry if that’s what you’d like” He accepted the offer immediately but was a little disappointed he could go get after the gold up in the cariboo, instead he’d be working for the people who did do so and struck rich.
His first day on the job he needs to help transport a load from the Cariboo to San Francisco, so he arrives to pick up the load and he sees what inside, and he was stunned. Bags upon bags filled to the top with shiny freshly surfaced gold nuggets. His jaw dropped like when he saw Ellen for the first time. His curiosity made his go talk to the person transporting the load and he said “Quite the week you’ve had up here I see, was it easy?” The gold dude responds ” I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s everywhere people are all over grabbing as much as possible, ad it’s crazy cause there’s still so much left” That last bit is all Francis heard and took away from that, and without second thought he ran away from the freight train sonic speed to go get some of that gold.
He ran into many problems like not knowing anybody, not knowing how to find the gold, not having any of the tools to find the gold, and nobody willing to help him cause they wanted all the gold possible for themselves. One guy even told him to piss off and go back to where he came from, because he was a local and all these immigrations were causing his own home to get overpopulated and robbed, yet he didn’t know Francis was at least a Canadian. Poor Francis was left with no option, he quit his job and has nothing to live off of. He was at rock bottom.
Once he got back to Victoria he worked for many other people to get the money to start up his new business, B.X. Express. There were so many upsides to it he eventually sent a train all the way to Toronto to pick up his wife kids and family to Victoria so they could live with him, help with his goals, and most important watch him succeed. Having rich people as your clients is a great thing because they pay you well for handling all their valuables with care, and that led to becoming rich himself.Â
One day he ran into the old freight company guy that hired him (who ended up going out of business because of Francis). The guy asked “Francis? Is that you? Where did you disappear to a while back while we were int the cariboo?” Of course Francis wasn’t gonna say he ran away to find gold, he wanted to make the guy feel horrible for gold blocking him, so he said “I was away becoming bigger, better, and more relavent than you, sorry not sorry man, Im big one now” Those two never spoke again. Francis ended up being financially stable and had a healthy happy family to go along with that. No matter how much the odds are against you, there’s always another way so never give up.
Second project we did was about racism is early Canadian years, and looked at the apologies for them. We learned how to tell a proper apology and made somethings for the winter exhibition out of that project. I had to take primary source sources and write up about them to pursue my work, and that took a lot of analyzing skills. More here: .Now I applied my skills was when we had to build the monument I could get into the technical and physical stuff I was hoping to do more of this year, and that was one of my best projects so far because of that aspect. I also worked on my presentation skills in front of people who I had never met before so I really had to be clear and explain our project well. I always mumble so it’s goos I got to work on that.
Belong post for that project and exhibition:
Last but not least Romeo and Juliet. Im a visual learner so when I see things I learn and remember them better than when I’m told or read it, so I applied my knowledge best in this project. It was because we watched 2 movies in class which was really fun, Purpose of this project is we made a movie applying all the knowledge we know. To have all that knowledge on record waned a theme book and had to connect scenes and lines from the movies we watched to the actual Romeo and Juliet script. We had to be very specific with it and list things such as the Scene the connected line was in, the specific act, and even the specific line, so it took a while. So I had to observe and write notes down while watching the movies quite a bit.
Movie link: https://youtu.be/uDHisWknHVw
That’s it for the first half of the plp year and I hope to continue using calendar and things to help stay on top of my work, because I have noticed it helps a lot. And one change I want to make is regularly look back at the learning plan to keep my goals fresh in my mid so I don’t slack off. Thats all, thanks for reading this record setting longest blog post ever.