Ah, the TPoL (Transitional Presentation of Learning). A time that marks the closing of another year in high school. It’s been quite a ride of learning this year and to help me prove it, I’m going to talk about some of the many things I have done throughout the second half of the school year that show my growth as a learner, my work ethics, and some other skills I’ve been working on throughout the year as well. If any of this sounds new to you, I would suggest checking out my post for our TPoLs last year as I went more in-depth about what a TPoL is.
For any PLP veterans, you know the drill, so I’ll just get right into it!
MATH/SCIENCE:
As I mentioned in my MPoL this year, I’ve been struggling with understanding and remembering concepts in math and science this year. This has been very frustrating for me as I’ve never really had trouble with either subject. To overcome that, I’ve been practicing and doing my own worksheets/lessons at home to help myself improve. It’s been an uphill battle, and I actually HAVE improved. Just not fast enough… Knowing this, I’ve been focusing on finding out what my weaknesses are and figuring out how to utilize my skills to counter those weaknesses. The best example of this has been in my Energy Transformation Project with Calum, Mimi, and Simon. We all had VERY different skills and weaknesses so I made sure to find out what they were and I assigned roles based on skills. In the end, we came up with a fairly solid project that took all of our skills and turned them into one video.
MAKER:
I think Blue Sky has always presented us with new learning opportunities as every exhibition seems to differ in specifications and requirements. This year was no different and happened to be the most challenging Blue Sky I’ve done. The reason it was so challenging for me is that this year’s exhibition made a point of adding creative constraints.
Although our groups picked their topics based on the UN Sustainable Goals site, we really had to focus on making meaningful projects that helped achieve one of the goals mentioned on the site. I struggled a lot with this as I generally take guidelines with a grain of salt and tend to do what I think would work the best for the project. This has worked for me in the past but it was getting me nowhere. I kept on pitching ideas that dealt with my subject but in a very interpretational way. I ended up narrowing down one of my project ideas by really focusing on the “why” of the goals. I kept on asking “why” until I was able to boil down a problem, and although I didn’t come up with a project as big as the ones I had been planning before, it proved to be a much more realistic project that ended up making real changes in the world!
HUMANITIES:
It’s been a staple for me in these conferences to talk about my fear and struggles with public speaking. Although I feel like there’s always more work I can do to make me feel more comfortable with being in front of an audience (such as DI), I definitely think I’ve reached a point where I can confidently speak to a crowd. My focus for this TPoL is actually to further improve my ability to communicate my ideas and being able to think on the spot while talking to a person or group. Our podcast with the HTH students we met during our California trip was a great chance for me to test those skills. Although I had already prepared questions prior to the recording, I pushed myself to expand upon the things we were talking about at the vey moment. I focused a lot on trying to make the students we were talking with to forget that they were being recorded and to feel like they could be as open with us as they wanted to. On the “work” side of things, I also sifted through lots of audio, listening to the many conversations we had and highlighting the best ones. I then organized all of the audio and named each conversation to see if anything fit together nicely. I eventually put together several audio clips which I believed to be the most relevant and interesting to one another in order to come up with an interesting podcast. I am the most proud of this podcast and I would say it definitely highlights the growth I’ve had with trying to communicate my many ideas into concise, interesting, and strong points. This is one of the skills I absolutely want to keep improving upon as it really helps to be a strong communicator and it applies to any aspect of my life.
To end off my TPoL, we are left with a final question.
“Why do I feel ready to move on to the next grade?”
I think I am ready to move on to grade eleven because I am willing. I am willing to put the time and effort into making all of my work as high quality as I possibly can. I am willing to get pushed down and fail because I want to learn from my mistakes. I am willing to take on obstacles head-on and to take risks.
In my MPoL earlier this year, I talked about how improvement comes with time and patience and how the only cap to how great someone can be depends on how much work they’re willing to put into themselves. I would not have said those things if I didn’t believe it and I think that I’ve demonstrated that I’m willing to challenge myself in order to continue growing as a person. I’m very grateful that we’ve been pushed to always try and be our best selves and that we need to recognize our weaknesses in order to grow. Without that mindset which we all adopted in PLP, I don’t think I would be close to the person I am today and I think everyone else can say the same. Change is scary for lots of people but I think the most fun kind of change is the change that makes you a better person, right?
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