“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.”

Growth. A word that is used constantly throughout PLP. How do you know you are improving? How do you know you are being pushed to success? That is what I want to talk about today. When I first joined this program last September I didn’t know what to expect, but now that I am a couple years through I feel like I have a better handle on things, well for the most part. There are still challenges and barriers I have to work to overcome, but I feel that I have gotten a lot better at problem solving. 

As I do every T-POL I want to start by taking a look through my 2023/2024 learning plan, and the success behaviours. Reviewing this sheet, I wanted to be as honest as possible to myself. I found that a lot of these behaviours I do really well, and others not so much. That means there is always room for improvement and revision.  I felt that I could always work on my engagement in class by speaking up more and contributing to class discussions. This semester I discovered I had ADHD, for me this means many things. It means struggling with time management, organization, focus, and talking whenever. When I was diagnosed everything started to fall into place, habits I had started to make sense. One success behaviour from the competency agency I want to talk about is resilience. I believe that I have always been resilient, not just throughout my high school experience so far but just generally in life. There is this passion instilled within me whenever I set out to do something, so whenever there are barriers within projects I always find a way to overcome them (sometimes unknowingly). 

Another success behaviour I want to mention is preparation inside and outside of school. This is something I naturally struggle with in many ways. I felt that this didn’t used to be as much of a challenge for me, but this year something really changed. It is hard to describe, but keeping track of dates, hand in times, and my belongings is definitely something I need to work on. My ADHD definitely has a big part of my school and home life, but it is just something I will have to work at to get a better handle on. The last success behaviour I want to talk about is self regulation outside of school. I find that. PLP homework comes in big waves, when we are in the middle of a project the homework load is heavy, but when we aren’t there is isn’t much. I need to work on finding ways to cope with the stress that is added on through this process. I can do this by continuing to do the things I love and staying active.

     

   

Moving on, I want to talk about one of PLP 9s most recent project “In The Name Of Nationalism”. I really struggled with this project in many ways. When It was first launched I was really excited and enthusiastic about learning more about German nationalism and how it relates to my history. However, technology is not something I am good at using, specifically making videos. Finding information was easy but incorporating that information into a solid well made video was difficult. Creating different animations was quite time consuming so I ended up inserting a lot more photos and videos than I wanted too. I became sucked into this loop of procrastination where whenever I started to work on the video I couldn’t focus on the material or get anything done. Lining up the footage and my words was also very time consuming. I think overall, I kind of dug myself into this hole and it was hard to climb my way out.

           

In the end it was a good learning experience. It taught me about my different skills and what aspects of a project I need to be prioritizing.

This semester I learned a lot about myself and my work habits. My ADHD is not a weakness it is my superpower that I am still trying to figure out. I am trying my best to navigate my way through high school using its advantages to the best of my ability, and battling the disadvantages. I will continue to grow and learn more about myself. I am really looking forward to next year, and I hope to implement more steady work habits into my school and home life. Overall, I think that I have done pretty well this year. It definitely had its highlights and low lights, but then again without failure there would never be success. 

Thank you for listening to my 2024 presentation of learning, I hope you enjoyed!