What is an apology, and why are they important? This in an important question, and one that we had to ask ourselves during our latest project, Ology of Apology. This project focused on the past wrongdoings of Canada, and what we can do today to try and remember those affected. Come with me as we explore the mistakes of the past and the apologies that followed, emphasizing the journey towards reconciliation.

Our project had two sections: One, a book about the effects that internment had on Japanese Canadians, as well as how it continued to affect them after the war. This book is called Obasan, by Joy Kobawa. This book contains some mature themes, so be advised. Second, we created memorials for wrongdoings of the Canadian government. We would then present our memorials, and the meaning behind them, to our classmates, to help them gain a greater understanding of the tragedies of the past. Click the link below to read the book.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9723.Obasan

After reading Obasan, I was curious about exactly what the government did about all the suffering it had caused. Here’s what I learned: The apology towards Japanese Canadians for their internment during World War II is a significant acknowledgment of past injustices committed by the Canadian government. During the war, approximately 22,000 Japanese Canadians were forcibly relocated and detained in internment camps, facing discrimination and loss of property. The Canadian government’s formal apology, delivered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017, recognized the pain and suffering caused by these actions, which were rooted in racism. The apology showed regret for the violation of rights of Japanese Canadians; however, it could not take back the damage caused by the Canadian government. Doing research on this topic, as well as reading the book Obasan, was a very eye-opening experience. Learning about injustice is always valuable and teaches us to not make the same mistakes in the future.

Next, of course, was the actual memorial. My group was assigned the Komagata Maru. For those who don’t know, this was a ship carrying almost 400 south Asian immigrants to Burrard Inlet. The passengers were denied entry, as well as food and water. After two months, they were forced to return to India. This was justified by racist laws meant to keep immigrants from Asia out of Canada. We tried our best to honour the passengers, as well as the shore committee, a group of immigrants who already lived in Canada and raised money as well as other resources for the passengers.

Our memorial idea was a tiled wall shaped like the hull of a ship. This wall would have the same number of tiles as passengers, and would feature a hand reaching for resources right in front of it, but just out of reach. This memorial is quite self-explanatory and visually bold, and is meant to make people think about the real experiences that went on right here in Vancouver, years ago. The real memorial would have a waterfall feature over the tiled wall, which would represent how the majority of people in Vancouver didn’t care about what happened to the passengers. The water would obscure the ship, showing how little Canadians cared about it’s passengers.

Overall, this project has provided me with a new perspective. I learned a lot about the history of Vancouver, and why it’s important to create proper apologies. Reading the book Obasan was an uncomfortable but important experience. Looking at history from a new perspective is essential when forming an apology. The reflective memorial created for the Komagata Maru serves to honor the passengers and raise awareness about the injustices that occurred, putting emphasis on the importance of remembering past mistakes to find reconciliation and prevent history from repeating itself. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

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.”

This is the pledge that we are required to state at the beginning of our presentation. It serves as an introduction to what we will be presenting during our MPOL. These conferences are specifically designed to allow us to reflect on our learning, while also providing our parents and teachers with an update on our progress. Over the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a PLP learner, but also as a person. This is a program that lets us take responsibility of our own learning, really allows us to thrive. I’ve learned a lot about myself and others, as well as gained a bunch of new skills that I can apply not just to school, but to the rest of my life. In this presentation, I will show what exactly I’ve been learning in PLP, and that I’m ready foor whatever gets thrown at me next. Lets get into it!

First, I want to talk about the very first project that we did after summer break:  The World Needs more Canada. This project was, essentially, just meant to make me and my classmates explain in essay format just how amazing Canada really is. The second I heard about this project, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was honestly excited to write my essay, because I thought that I had such a wonderful idea. I got straight to writing.

My plan for my essay was to talk about my personal experience, as an American, with the voting systems in America versus Canada. I was so sure of myself, especially because it was something I had so much experience. For years when I lived in the states, I would keep myself updated on politics, and the status of the candidates. I was very sure that I k ew what I was talking about. Sadly, when I went to check on my essay in showbie, I noticed that I had a mountain climber. I was devastated.

The feedback on my essay was that it was too personal. I was a little bit mad, and I hated that I got a mountain climber. I put so much time and effort into the essay, looked up statistics, did so much research, only to not even get a grade. Looking back on it, this was very valuable. Even though I was sad about getting a mountain climber, it just drove me to not get another one. I thought about what I wrote on my VMV, and I stepped it up. I haven’t gotten another since.

Second, I want to talk about a project called “Save Juno Beach.” Basically, Juno beach is a site where a very significant battle took place during World War Two. Many Canadian soldiers lost their lives, and there is a centre on the beach to memorialize the heroes. Our task was simple: complete an act of service for the community, and get somebody to sponsor us 20 dollars. Then, the whole class would put the money together, and send it to the Juno Beach Centre so that they could buy a flag to fly.

This project was incredibly rewarding for two reasons: one, I like learning about Canadian history, and filling in the gaps. It’s important to stay educated, so tragedies like war never repeats itself. And second, it feels really good to give back to the community, especially when they’re veterans who helped to defend our country, and are the reason that we are able to live the comfortable lives that we have. In Humanities, we learn about all kinds of sad and horrific events. For example, we are learning about Japanese internment at the moment. When learning about such appalling things, it often feels like there’s nothing a high schooler can do. In most cases, that’s correct. However, in this case, it’s not.

For my act of service, me and my friend Melissa volunteered at the West Vancouver Legion and handed out poppies, as well as collected donations. We raised over 70 dollars, and were sponsored the money we needed out of that. Even though we had never done something like this, we learned quickly. The second part of this project was also an essay. To be honest, the hardest part was getting MLA formatting down. The rest was the easy part.

Lastly, I would like to talk about Destination Imagination. You probably already know what DI is. A big fancy competition with performances and challenges to face. However, this event has an incredible amount of unseen effort and time was spent producing our final product. My group was focused on engineering, and we were tasked with building a machine that could propel itself up a rope, and encorporating it into a story. Because DI stretched beyond the time we had in class, we ended up spending a lot of our free time on the project. Because of some communication errors, we struggled with parts of our first DI competition.

When brainstorming ideas, my group decided to leave most of the design aspects to one of my group members, because he had a 3D printer, and had a ton of knowledge on engineering. Our first team choice element was a dance. We decided to choreograph a dance to the song Circus by Britney Spears, because it felt very on point. The dance, as well as the weights for our transporter, were our biggest downfalls.

For one, we learned part of the dance the day of DI. Our group’s communication was very lacking, so we had trouble all being at the same place at the same time. And secondly, when it came time to do our dance, we realized we forgot to bring the speaker we had brought into the room with us, so we had to do the dance without music. It was humiliating, and we definitely will not be making that mistake again.

With the weights, one of my team members, who was in charge of this portion, didn’t read the requirements properly. Instead of eight weights, each 250 grams, we had two weights that were 1000 grams each. This was a problem, as the weights didn’t fit the requirements. In the 45 minutes before our performance, we had to scramble to find and tape together random objects to be our weights. Essentially, that part of DI was a disaster. However, everything else went according to plan.

It’s very easy to learn from DI, because all of the takeaways are very obvious. For one, the speaker wasn’t there. And secondly, we need more weights. And last, my team needs to figure out how to respond to their messages. However, these are all fixable, and even though it was a scramble at the competition, we learned a lot about teamwork and taking accountability for next time.

To wrap up, I would like to talk about my overall  growth this year. Grade ten has been full of new experiences, and projects. Like any school year (even though we’re only part way through), it had its ups and downs, but I feel like I’m changed to when I started grade ten. It’s scary to me to believe that in half a year, I will be re entering this school as a grade eleven. I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of new experiences to gain. Thank you for listening, and have a wonderful day!

What is destination imagination? That’s a complicated question, with a complicated answer. Destination imagination is a tournament in which different teams of students compete against each other in different categories. However, it feels like there’s a million regulations and tiny details to focus on. Working in groups can also be difficult, so this experience had lots of ups and downs. Come with me as I dive into the process of our regionals destination tournament, and the steps it took to get there.

Destination imagination, also known as DI, is a competition meant to let students think creatively to solve challanges. There are a number of different challenges, each with their own rules. The groups are randomly created, and even though you are allowed to make requests, nothing is garunteed. My group was assigned the engineering challenge, called High Wire Act. In this challenge, we had to create a transporter that would carry different weights up a rope. We had to encorporate this machine into a story that included a contemporary circus. To learn more about DI, click here.

When brainstorming ideas, my group decided to leave most of the design aspects to one of my group members, because he had a 3D printer, and had a ton of knowledge on engineering. Our first team choice element was a dance. We decided to choreograph a dance to the sone Circus by Britney Spears, because it felt very on point. More on that later. We also had something called a “daring display.” This was basically meant to be sort of a mock version of an act from a real contemporary circus. For this, we decided that two of our group members would lift a third into the air, and he would jump through a hoop. This took a TON of practice and trial and error, and was one of the more difficult parts of our performance to figure out. However, it was very successful in the end.

Our other main component was, of course, our story. We decided to do a circus full of older performers who weren’t sure whether they could continue to perform. I played the ringmaster, and I was trying to convince the rest of the circus that it was worth it to stay. We incorporated the machine into our show by saying “we should build a machine to do the work for us.” At the end of our story, we decided to keep the show on. Read the script here.

We had a few different challenges with our performance during regionals. The main two were our dance and our weights. Basically, for the engineering part of the challenge, we were supposed to have up to 6 weights, each up to 250 grams in weight. However, the person in my team in charge of that portion didn’t realize this, and instead brought two 1000 gram weights. This meant that in the 45 minutes before our performance, we had to create makeshift weights out of random items. This was incredibly tedious and difficult, but nothing brings a team together like being super stressed while doing something at the last minute.

Our second big challenge was the dance. Even though we spent the whole morning before the competition practicing our choreography, we didn’t connect the song to the speaker like we had planned. This meant that we had to do our dance, one of our main team choice elements, without any music. Even though it was a little bit embarrassing, I think this will help us remember to prep everything beforehand. A huge part of this going wrong was the fact that in the weeks leading up to DI, certain team members would decide to go MIA for a few days. This made it very difficult for everyone to be in the same place at the same time, which made it impossible to learn the dance, as it was a multiple person choreography.This sort of communication mishap is common, and is somewhat unavoidable in the competition.

To summarize, Destination Imagination this year was a challenge, in more than one way. My group’s communication errors and planning problems caused some issues. These issues were mainly caused by certain group members suddenly deciding to go MIA for a few days. However, we were able to pull ourselves together in time, and managed to get second place, mainly due to our machine’s performance. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

There’s no question that kids get asked more than “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Most kids would say something like a doctor, or a policeman. However, as we grow up, so does our view on our future job. For example, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet. I had no interest in the actual job, I just though that animals were cute. The same is true for many kids, and even teenagers. That’s why, in our latest project “Mentor for a Day, Lessons for Life,” we took a deep dive into what those professions we might be interested in really look like beneath the surface. Come with me as I explore a career that I’m interested in: Accounting.

First of all, what is accounting? Well, accounting is a job requires adapting to changing financial regulations, managing complicated financial systems, and analyzing data to make decisions acrosss various industries. Basically, they work with numbers, and money, to help keep companies afloat. Everyone has a different purpose for finding a job. For me, I’m motivated by money. I love the idea of being able to have a flexible job, while making enough money to live comfortably.

The main component of this project was that we found an adult who currently works in a profession that we are interested in, and shadow them for a day. This ended up being a little bit difficult for some of the student in my class that were interested in more specific careers, but there happen to be a fair number of of accountants in Vancouver. I ended up deciding that I would shadow Wendy Kennedy, who has decades of experience in the field. 

Before our job shadow day, we were tasked with creating a smart brevity note with details about the career we were shadowing. This included income, some good ways to get into that field, and general background information. For those who don’t know, smart brevity is a form of writing that aims to shorten the content, and make it quick and easy to read. This process was very helpful for me, as I’m currently trying to perfect smart brevity. I still find it difficult to fit an entire paragraph into about ten words total, but being forced to practice is one of the best ways to succeed in something. Click here if you want to check out what the document looks like.

The final portion of this project was an audio reflection. In it, we were to interview the person we were shadowing, provide insight on what we learned about the profession we were interested in, and have some kind of cool background music. All of these were things that we had done before, but I definitely faced certain challenges in this part of the process. First, I had been very sick for much of the time that we were supposed to spend recording for our reflection. This made it hard for me to get any recording done, as my voice was barely recognizable. Secondly, I’ll admit that I’m not too great at using garage band. Still, like I said, the best way to learn is through trial and error. After many technical issues, and a lot of editing and adjustments, I was finally finished my reflection. What a journey! Here’s my audio reflection:

To conclude, this project aimed to give us real world experience into what a day in the life of someone in the professional world looks like. Many people would find accounting boring, but hearing my mentor talk about her experiences actually made me even more interested in the job. I hope that you’ve been able to understand what accounting looks like through my eyes. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

I’m sure you’re familiar with the classic story of Romeo and Juliet. Two star crossed lovers meet their demise due to their family feud, which has raged for decades. Despite being over five hundred years old, the Shakespeare play is still incredibly relevant to modern media. Come with me in this blog post as we dive into the messages and true meanings behind Rome and Juliet.

In our project, we had to recreate the classic story with a twist: it’s set in modern day North Vancouver. We started off by trying to figure out the true meanings behind the story, so that we could better adapt it for our production. We started to read the full play, by comparing it to the translated version. This was incredibly helpful, as I don’t know anyone who speaks Shakespearean English. We started by reading the first act, which is all about how Romeo and Juliet meet. As such, we were introduced to the diverse cast of characters. A huge part of this project was about understanding what roles the characters played within the play, so we could accurately portray what they would be like in a modern adaptation. I found myself struggling to understand the characters at first, because I was so unfamiliar with the kind of character dynamics presented. However, after doing some research, and rereading the play many times, I found a lot of deeper meanings hidden within the charscter’s actions.

After getting about halfway through the play, we watched two film adaptations: the more traditional adaptation, featuring Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, and a more modern version, with Leonardo Dicaprio. The two films were very different from one another, especially considering they were created in different decades. Despite the obvious differences, such as Romeo’s friends driving a car, or Mercutio being a drag queen, the more recent film had many key character differences that made it more clear what was going on for a modern audience. Everyone in the class took clear notice of this difference, and we tried our best to incorporate this change into our own play.

After we had watched the movies, we moved onto the rest of the play. After a few interesting plot twists, we finished it, and got onto our adaptation. We were split into five different groups, each in charge of one act. This made continuity difficult, as communication between groups ended up being more difficult then we thought it would be. My group was assigned act three, in which Romeo and Mercutio have their big showdown with Tybalt. Having this act was difficult for a few reasons: one, sword fights aren’t really a big thing in Vancouver. Two, how often do teenagers violently kill one another in deep cove? We had to come up with some creative fixes to this issue, such as Mercutio falling down a flight of stairs. We also found some issues with the promise rings, as we found out the day of the play that another group had decided to write part of our script into their act, because it “made more sense.” We found a way around this problem, but the play still caused everyone involved a ton of stress. Click here Click here to view our final script.

Despite being a bit last minute, and perhaps a little brainrotted, we ended up with what was a decently funny performance. I thought that everyone’s script was funny, and I enjoyed putting on the play. I had to play both the Nurse, and Benvolio, so the costume changes were a little bit hectic. All in all, I’m proud of what we were able to present. I learned a lot about taking charge -I was my groups DRI- and putting in the work, but it was a small price to pay to have a completed act. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

I’ve always had to ask myself the question of “who am I?” Almost every single project that I’ve ever done has involved some aspect of personalization, and allowed me to infuse my work with something that I love. In our latest project, marketing me, we got to take a look at the skills we have, and learned how we can transfer them into the real world. In this post, I’m going to take a deep dive into what it means to “market yourself.”

During this project, we planned to do sort of a version of what it’s like to apply for a job. To start, we had a successful businessman, Curt Sheewe, come into one of our classes to give us a talk about how to build a business. He explained things like digital footprints, online presence, and how to make real connections with other people. This was a valuable experience for our class, and I personally learned some new skills in empathy, and compassion. 

The end product of our project was our presentation at the winter PLP exhibition, during which different groups would present, and each group represented a different kind of job. For example, the people in my group were interested in very professional jobs. The people at my table all were interested in doing something related to engineering/architecture. The plan for our booths was that we would have a business card and resume to present to parents. 

We started by creating our business cards. These cards went through a lot of revisions. They were meant to show what kind of person we are, and what career we’re interested in. In the slideshow below, you can see all of the different iterations that my business cards went through. 

The resumes were a bit different than our usual PLP project. We got the chance to create something that could be used in the real world. Our resumes were very similar to real resumes, but were much more personalized. My resume included themes, colours, and formats that I feel represent me. I’m not sure that I would be able to use this resume in the real world, I gained valuable skills that can help me build a resume in the future. 

Finally, we got the chance to present everything that we made during the winter exhibition. This exhibition felt truly unique from the others, as we got the chance to put a little bit of our personalities into our booths. We had cornhole, other interactive challenges, and food for our guests. All in all, this project was a huge success! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

What does it mean to be Canadian, and who were the courageous souls who shaped our country? In our latest project, Save Juno Beach, we asked ourselves all sorts of questions about what we can do to give back to our community, and our veterans. Join me as I take a deep dive into our project!

Our entire project was centered around informing ourselves about World War Two. We watched real phootage, read articles, and did created notes on every piece of the project. This allowed us to look back and review our notes whenever we needed to, and was very helpful. This helped me work on my organization skills, as well as learning how to take notes quickly and efficiently. 

We had two main parts of our project: an essay, and an act of service towards our community. The essay could be any topic that we were interested in that was relevant to Canada’s role in World War Two. I chose to focus on Canada’s shift in trade from Britain to the United States after the war. Even though I have written a number of essays, I’ve never done one in MLA format. This formatting was definitely new to me, so me as well as the rest of my class had to go through a ton of revisions. However, in the end, I was able to create work that I was really proud of. Learning how to format my essays and how to source my work properly will help me with real world experiences, and is a skill that I can use for the rest of my life.

The second part of our project was our act of service. Our plan was to have everyone in our class commit an act of service towards our community, and get a patron to sponsor them ten dollars. We’d use the money from the project to buy a flag that would fly at the Juno Beach Centre. Me and my friend Melissa got a spot volunteering at the North Vancouver legion collecting donations and giving our poppies for Remembrance Day. We spent two hours at park royal mall, and collected around seventy dollars in donations. We got Ron Beesley, who runs the North Vancouver Legion, to sponsor us the ten dollars we needed out of the money that we raised. I felt really good about volunteering, and it helped me feel even closer to my community than every before. 

In conclusion, the country that we live in had been shaped by everyone who had a role in World War Two. Me and my classmates learned about the atrocities of war, and how so many people sacrificed themselves to give us the freedom we have today. I’m ever grateful, and I think that if there’s anything that I can do in the future to help remember those who died, I will do so. This project taught me all sorts of new English skills, but I think the most valuable was compassion. Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

What’s the easiest way to make big changes? Is it a change of schedule, a new diet, or a different attitude? Well, according to James Clear, the tiniest changes can have the biggest results. In this blog post, I’m going to break down exactly how this system works, and why it’s changed the way I view habits. 

What makes a habit a habit? This is question I found myself asking during our most recent project, Atomic Habits. In this project, we read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. A habit can be defined as an action that you repeat over and over, day after day. A habit can become part of a routine, which makes breaking a bad one such a struggle. This same philosophy also means that starting a new good habit can be just as difficult. When something is part of a roultine, it’s done automatically. It’s hard to randomly start doing something new in a whim. 

To solve the before mentioned issues with creating good habits, James Clear created a method for making a new habit easier. First, you need to make a new habit obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. This might not make sense at first, but I’ll break it down. 

OBVIOUS: Making a good habit obvious can be as simple as leaving your gym bag with your work stuff at the door, so you don’t forget it.

ATTRACTIVE: Making a habit attractive could be having a weight goal to think about while you work out.

EASY: To make a habit easy, you could do something like planning out a workout routine ahead of time. 

SATISFYING: By making a habit satisfying, by doing something like rewarding yourself with an hour of Netflix after a workout, you can create a good association with the habit, which will drive you to complete it in the future. 

James Clear also has four steps to quit a bad habit. They are to make it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying. They are the inverse of the four laws. For example, to quit a bad habit like smoking, you could make it invisible by throwing out all your cigarettes. Then, to make it unattractive, you could remind yourself about the dangers of smoking. To make it difficult, anytime you buy a new pack of cigarettes, you have to go for an hour long jog. Finally, to make it unsatisfying, maybe you’d have to eat something gross afterwards. He also implements this graphic, which refers to Cue, Craving, Response, and Reward. I suggest you read the book to learn more. These are just examples, but I found this incredibly useful to implement in my daily life. 

For this project, we had to create an “artifact” that showcased our knowledge of the James Clear method, and how we planned to implement it into our daily lives. My plan was to do a sort of visual representation of the thought process of how I try to improve my shooting form in basketball.

Another product of this project was something called a “pop art.”  For this assignment, we had to create a piece of art that showed our learning intentions for the year. To read all about what mine means, click here.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you’ve learned a little bit about how I think, and how the smallest changed have the biggest affects! Have a great day!

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve probably heard about the American election. All the new outlets have covered it, and it’s all everyone has been talking about. In contrast, the Canadian election is a very hush hush topic. I had to watch the news to even know it was happening. In this blog post, I will explain my experience with both systems of government, and how the rest of the world could use a little more Canada. 

In our latest project, titled “The World Needs More Canada,” everyone in the class chose a different topic that reflects how Canada should be a role model for other countries. We started the project by picking a current event topic to present to the class. I was born and raised in America, so when I saw the story about the attempted trump assasination, I knew it would make sense to present it. By the time I got to present my topic, I had created a document that explained the event in detail. If you want to check it out, you can click here.

The final product of the project was one episode of a class podcast, which proved difficult in a number of different ways. The topic that I chose was the difference between the multiparty system in Canada versus the two party system in America. I wanted to focus on this because I have personal experience with both, and the two elections are coming up soon. This meant I had to do a ton of research into the political state of both countries, and I learned a lot more about parts of both governments I never would have known otherwise. 

The first step towards the podcast script was to write an essay explaining the topic, and how the rest of the world could use a bit more Canada. The script was a loose adaptation of the essay, but it had to be converted to a more conversational format. We had to write the essay with this in mind, which made it a bit difficult to bring my thoughts together in a way that makes sense. I have a lot of very strong political views, so I had to make sure that they didn’t leak too much into my writing. After many revisions and different versions of my essay, it was finally finished. If you would like to read it, CLICK HERE.

After the script was finished, we started adapting the essays into a podcast script. This was fairly easy, considering that we wrote the essays knowing that they had to become a script at some point. The scripts had minimal changes from the essay, and the main goal was to make them more interesting for someone who was listening to a podcast. If you want to read my podcast script, CLICK HERE.

After the script was done, we started experimenting with garage band. This was incredibly challenging for me, because I had never created any kind of music before. I had to learn how to use the software while trying to balance all of my other work. There were a lot of little difficulties with GarageBand for me, because I wasn’t sure how to export audio properly. Still, I managed to make a transition and outro clip that fit the tune of my podcast. As a class, we voted on which intro music we thought was the best. There was a lot of discourse over which one was the best, and whose should have won. We also voted on cover art for our podcasts, and even thought the one I liked didn’t win, I’m still pretty happy with the one we picked. 

The process of recording the podcast was tedious, and time consuming. I had to record multiple different audio clips of each segment, and I spent hours recording and editing the whole thing. Every step of the way was challenging, but I’m glad I put in the effort to make something I could be proud of. If you would like to listen to my finished podcast, CLICK HERE (this link will be updated soon). 

In conclusion, the if the US was just a litttle more like Canada, the country could succeed in having the faith of it’s citizens. I hope you enjoyed my podcast! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!

“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.”

This is the pledge that we are required to state at the beginning of our presentation. It serves as an introduction to what we will be presenting during our TPOL. These conferences are specifically designed to allow us to reflect on our learning, while also providing our parents and teachers with an update on our progress. Over the past year, I’ve grown a lot as a PLP learner, but also as a person. This is a program that lets us take responsibility of our own learning, and really allows us to thrive. I’ve learned a lot about myself and others, as well as gained a bunch of new skills that I can apply not just to school, but to the rest of my life. In this presentation, I will show what exactly I’ve been learning in PLP, and that I’m ready for whatever gets thrown at me next. Lets get into it!

Resilience

Throughout this past year, we’ve worked on a number of different projects that bore new skills and chances to collaborate with classmates. One example of this was “Rise of the Frankenstuffies.” In this project, we created fictional characters that were quite unique in origin. This project took a lot of resilience and time management to achieve, as it was a multi tiered feat. We began by physically constructing our stuffy, and giving it a history and personality. I’d never sewn a stuffed animal before, so this was an opportunity to gain new skills. Next, we wrote a short story, which would be turned into a video later. Mine was about about a failed lab experiment who works with a group of activists to save his friend from the evil scientists. 

The construction of the video for this project was difficult not only in the amount of time it took, but also because the animation tools we had access to were janky and tedious. Despite all of this, I feel like my resilience is the reason I was able to complete this project. I definitely learned a lot through this process, mostly that you can’t leave everything last minute and expect it to work out.

Citizenship 

The second project that I’d like to touch on was our unit on World War One. This was our most recent project, and easily my favourite one of this semester. Throughout this project we learned all about the events of the First World War, as well as how it’s shaped our country and it’s citizens. Because of this, I feel that it relates most to the citizenship competency. By learning about the history of our country, we learn more about ourselves. One of the main motivations for soldiers is a feeling of Connection to their country, also known as nationalism. We did an entire project on this topic, which you can find on my blog.

The actual creation of the comic was difficult not because of a lack of ideas, but because of a lack of time. We were essentially given a week to create all of the art for and construct our final comic before our exhibition. We had already created our storyboards at this point, but with a twenty panel minimum, we were really rushed for time. I had to spend essentially all of my free time working on this, and although I was able to create a truly spectacular result, I believe that this was a time management issue that was not a fault of mine. I learned from this project that even if you manage your time properly, you still have to make sacrifices to combat unforeseen conditions that are out of your control. Still, I believe that my dedication to this project gave me a sense of citizenship due to my relation to my peers’ struggles. I feel like this shared experience helped to bring us closer together as a class.

Outside of school time management

Lastly, I would like to talk about Destination Imaginaiton, and how time management was our key to success. You probably already know what DI is. A big fancy competition with performances and challenges to face. However, this event has an incredible amount of unseen effort and time was spent producing our final product. My group was focused on engineering, and we were tasked with building a catapult, and encorporating it into a story. Because DI stretched beyond the time we had in class, we ended up spending a lot of our free time on the project. Because we hadn’t managed our time properly, we struggled with our first DI competition. 

After the disaster that was our first attempt in learning, or FAIL, we decided to regroup and recreate our project. We were more organized our second time around, and the pressure to do well was greater. I took initiative in bringing our group together outside of school time. It was a bit like herding cats, but I believe that we were able to achieve a stronger result after putting more time into our work.

To wrap up, I would like to talk about my overall  growth this year. Grade nine was full of all kinds of new experiences, people, and projects. Like any year, it had it’s ups and downs, but I feel like I’ve come out of it a changed person. It’s scary to me to believe that in a few short months I will be re entering this school as a grade ten, but so is the way of the world. I believe that I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of new experiences to gain. Thank you for listening, and have a wonderful day!