The latest school term has been one of the most intriguing in all my life. The switch to online school was challenging and interesting in the changing dynamics of reality. It has been hard to learn in most classes but I must say how well my PLP class has done through this time. We have continued through this tough time and put together a great project. Online school has forced me to think differently. One of the things that PLP challenges you to be personally accountable for your work and during quarantine it has reaffirmed those skills. I am responsible for my own learning and I was only going get as much out as I put into the learning.
Hide Your Fires
In the making of our movie, we ran into a number of different problems. As I worked as the script editor I put a ton of work to build an effective script. I would like to give props to Jessie for her work writing the script because she took on the majority of the responsibility and work. writing the script proved very challenging especially when trying to incorporate the 1950’s themes. Writing a script for my first time is very challenging as is but including foreign language made it even more challenging. This challenge lead me to learn something about the English language itself.
I was cast as the actor for Duncan, who was one of the main characters for the movie. I never have been very good at acting and like editing the script it was the first time doing it. Doing it for the first time made it far more challenging, but yielding far more learning. I did learn about acting but by playing the character I understood the intricacies of my character better than I had when I was writing it. I could better determine the differences between our character of Duncan and the one Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth.
We Shall Overcome
One of the overarching themes of PLP 11 is the understanding of how to pair your claims with evidence. In the Macbeth and We Shall Overcome, the skills have been paramount to my learning. In Macbeth, we worked with evidence in our quests to build claims around quotes given to us. This is a challenge that I found hard at first but as I learned how to systematically deconstruct a quote for it’s deeper meaning I found it easier and easier to use it as supporting evidence.
As we finished up the unit we moved on to We Shall Overcome in which I participated in a number of Socratic seminars. The goal of the seminars was to promote peer to peer discussion through the lens of claims backed up by evidence. Our discussions were based around a piece of media such as Mississippi Burning, Selma, and Klansville U.S.A. These pieces of media laid to the groundwork for our discussions but my class’ inquisitive and complementary nature made the conversations ever more powerful. Through our opportunities to build our arguments, I learned some key steps on how to frame my claims so that they were supported by the evidence.
The final leg of our We Shall Overcome project is upcoming and it will be my final assessment of how I formulate claims, and how I support them with evidence. I think I have learned a lot about the creative ways to frame my claims while backing them with the cold hard fist of facts. In writing, my 3rd think and create post, I looked into the modern connections of racism. The product I created is powerful because it shows my understanding of how to back arguments with evidence.
Atomic Habits
The PGP curriculum has been guided by the book’s atomic habits. To start the year we read the book and the challenges that have followed are all related to the book in some fashion. The latest 2 milestones were both completed during the quarantine and I molded the assignments to be more appealing to my quarantine activities. Less school means I have been golfing far more often. In the spirit of that activity, I made a strong connection from the book the things I was doing. In our study of a James Clear article of our choice, I connected an article he wrote to my case study of Tiger Woods. I have long spoken of the importance of finding passion in my work and during the quarantine, I have found my passions and tapped into them effectively.
Likewise in the final project, I again tapped into my passions to create a product that I was devoted to creating. I showed my ability to apply many of the skills I learned in places other than school. I have always spoken of the importance of application and I was happy to create a product that showed how to apply the skills found in atomic habits. I have been working for years to build things that I am passionate about and during the quarantine, I was successful in that pursuit.
It has been a challenging time for everyone but given enough effort, you can build yourself productive learning. I believe I have given the effort and thinking needed to learn. I still need to work on a number of skills but I look forward to the opportunity to return to a sense of normalcy in the next school year and build upon my skills. I am committed to my work ethic no matter where I learn next year.
