MPoL 24

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.

Note: Though competencies and success behaviours aren’t explicitly mentioned, they are inferred at points of this PoL.

How do I actually work with myself?

Over the year so far I have both excelled and struggled within this program. And today, I will be discussing some of the challenges I have faced and how I have overcome them. Along with some successes and how I can learn from them.

Starting off, one of the most significant challenges I have and still sometimes face is fully overthinking how I actually start to work, as for me at least, starting to work is the hard part, then as soon as you start it becomes radically easier to continue.

Source: 8 Powerful Quotes From Yoda, the OG Wellness Guru. Published in Thrive Global on Medium.com

I know this because before beginning to write my first draft of this MPoL on Monday January 15th at 21:47 (9:47 PM) 2024, I was procrastinating on writing it. Since I wanted it to be perfect, which is another thing I can struggle with (perfectionism). I wanted it to appear as perfect, but I remembered, I’m here because I’m not perfect, because I want to show my progress on how I’ve become better, or maybe even worse, but not perfect; never perfect.

Since I feel like perfection is an unobtainable goal, and it often leads to unnecessary stress and anxiety. Instead, I strive for progress and improvement. I thought and still think, if I can improve this MPoL in anyway, like my delivery of it, that’s enough. Which was difficult for me to accept, since with this new MPoL system. This will be my last MPoL.

Note: My following statement may not be very valid/necessary as I have little knowledge about the newer Gr 10 – 12 Video Conference format as I’m not in grade 10. Although I still encourage teachers to consider my following statement for the future grade 10s – 12s.

It’s unfortunate that at this moment MPoLs won’t be returning for us next year, since to be honest, I heavily prefer this to the mainstream version which is Parent Teacher Interviews. Especially when it comes to PLP, since I feel like these conferences/presentations being student led allows for us to speak to ourselves and whats going on in our heads, rather than relying on our parents or teachers to interpret our thoughts and feelings. 

It also gives us agency in our own learning and allows us to take control of our own learning and growth (a literal selling point of PLP as a learning program). Which is important for everybody, not just 8s and 9s. But here we are, this is happening, wether we like it or not, and that’s okay. 

Now to answer “How do I actually work with myself?” 

Source: https://tenor.com/en-CA/view/shrug-gif-5905854439703930680 Published on Tenor.com by chrisortiz23

I don’t know, and I never will.  Because, wether we like it or not; we are constantly changing. So the way we work with ourselves must change as we do. So the best way to answer that question I can give at the moment is to just remember the goal, why I need to get this done, then I need to just do it. 

Throughout my self reflection on how I learn, I have also realized I care too much about what my peers & teachers think about me. Along with it even been impacting my ability to further develop and improve my work since I didn’t want my peers and teachers to think I wasn’t smart or something.

Which I now realize is very stupid because I still today wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as smart. I would describe myself as someone who tends to make the right decisions such as doing work instead of watching a video on a walkthrough of Tideman, or listening to the teacher instead of playing Crossy Road during class when I can do both of those things at a different time.

These realizations have led me to be able to say that I have actively been caring less about how people perceive me, therefore allowing me to get more feedback from peers regarding my school work. An example of this being when I asked Mr Harris for this thought on the ending of my video including a link to my Padlet in Rise of the Frankenstuffies.

Before asking him I literally thought as I have with many different thing’s: “What if it’s a bad idea?”But I pushed past that fear and got feedback anyway, and it turned out to be a good idea. Another example of this being in ChemHISTORY, where whilst we were learning about Ionic Compounds, I couldn’t get my head around it at first, so I didn’t initially ask for help due to this fear, but then when I asked James to clarify something for me he just did and it was really helpful and I thought “See me? He doesn’t care!”.

Another area for me to improve in would be the way I think and interpret, for example. I’ve been wanting to to transition into having more of a growth then a fixed mindset, like spoken about in my DI Regionals post. As when we initially began our work on Destination Imagination, instead of thinking “DI will suck.” As I mentioned, I thought “DI will probably suck, but what if it doesn’t?” Which did actually allow me to approach DI with more openness and optimism, which definitely led to me actually enjoying DI a fair bit.

Along with developing my growth mindset, that I also want to try and become more positive, focusing on the opportunities and possibilities rather than dwelling on the negatives. As that can lead to me enjoying more of what we are learning, since I love learning. Especially now more then ever, if I don’t enjoy my work. I try to find out why, and see what I can do differently. Since If I’m going to spend 5 years in high school, obviously I want to enjoy it.

Now, to reflect on my Learning Plan. Which in my opinion, isn’t great.

Why do I think that? Because I didn’t have a plan. Whilst I was working on my Learning Plan, I was facing issues I’ve been working to prevent. Such as “How can I make this perfect?”, and procrastination (due to me not wanting to do it). Which led me to create something that doesn’t properly reflect my plan for my learning this year.

Which is why, I am presenting, my revised learning plan. Which after genuine thought, planning, and revising, I am proud to say is something I’ve created which can be referenced for the rest of this year. [It will now be viewable on Showbie after this PoL]

Now to end this off, although I’ve only been in PLP for a bit over 2 and a half years, I confidently say that I have learned infinitely more about myself and subjects compared to if I sticked with mainstream learning. Thank you for listening and I am always willing to have an open conversation about my learning.