It’s about time for the mid-year presentation of learning! For the first time since Covid decided it would ruin everyone’s plans. My learning plans though, are gonna stay rock solid through these next 6 or so months until this year’s tPOL comes around.

Firstly, the POL declaration.

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.

Now I want to mention in this post is the learning plans that I made back at the start of the school year.

These were the things that at the time of creation, were what I thought were my strengths and weaknesses as a learner. The growth goals that I had set for humanities had been well represented with progress during the winter exhibition. I have a detailed post which shows that learning here. I think that this specific event is a good example of the progress that I have made there because the exhibition made me go out of my comfort zone and push a pitch of sorts to the people who were at my station. I admit that there were a few holes in the plan I had set up for the exhibition which made progress in this goal a little slower but that’s what we use F.A.I.L. (First Attempt At Learning) for. The exhibition also explored the past wrongs of our own people here in Vancouver and provided more than sufficient reason as to why they shouldn’t be repeated. This event was also a great example of some teamwork (good and bad). The bad teamwork would be referring to lack of communication before the event itself, and the good being that we worked together efficiently enough we pulled through and had an overall successful exhibition.

The growth goals I had set in maker were also represented in the Ology of Apology project, which was the main focus of the grade 10 section at the Winter Exhibition. This is where we learned to see the issues such as the Komagata Maru incident from the perspective of one of the victims or a person being put in that kind of situation. I also think that something that hasn’t even happened yet, DI (Destination Imagination) will be a great opportunity for me to progress to a new height in my learning career.

Now to transition to a different part of my learning plan, the “How?” Section. This section is a part where we would look and think of ways to make our plans for each of our courses successful. In this section, I mention something called a Zettelkasten, which was an idea we were introduced to early in the year that I later found out did not really work for me. Although it maybe an efficient way of storing ideas, you need to be able not only get into the habit of knowing what to note down and what not to, you have to be able to think in a way that allows you to easily access your stored ideas and assimilate them into the work at hand. In my opinion, I think that the Zettelkasten can work amazingly for someone who can enjoy note taking while consuming media, however if you have the kind of thought process where the information you obtain from media just floats around the back of your head until it’s needed the Zettelkasten becomes something of diminishing returns. Hey this might even qualify as growth from the chart earlier!

In this section I also mention procrastination. I think that I started the year off on a great foot, but as the year progressed I slowly went back to my old “do it the night before it’s due” kind of work habit. I’ve thought about this and I’m fairly sure that this kind of mindset when it comes to work I need to get done at home, is because I have trouble getting work started at all when I’m at home. I believe this is because of how I perceive home as a relaxed and lazy kind of place without even realizing it. For example I find it easy to get work done at school, but it becomes much more difficult for me at home because of this unconscious decisions seem to have made.

These were the core competency profiles that I chose at the beginning of the year. When I look back at these, I don’t think I want to change anything. This is because when I reevaluate each of them and look to the rest of the options and descriptions, I still believe that this is what I am capable of and what I want to strive for for the next semester.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me thus far.

Later!