“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.”

It’s time for everybody’s favourite* thing to do in PLP, mPOLS! mPOL stands for Midterm-Presentation-of-Learning. So here’s the 411- I’m gonna speak about my first 13,920 hours at the Performance Learning Program at Seycove Secondary School.

This year has been rocky. Theres been ups, and there have definitely been downs. 

I’ve learnt tons, and had even more fun. But lets not dilly-dally, shall we?

We’ll begin by talking about Loon Lake.

To end November, the PLP 9s were sent to boot camp- Loon Lake Lodge and Resort! The goal of this trip was to bring us together as learners. The school year started bumpy, and some unfortunate incidents occurred, most infamously at the Alberta trip, so this trip was to smack some sense into us- positively. And I’m glad to say, it worked swimmingly! But one incident during the trip that really stuck with me. 

To build trust with each other and ourselves, we practiced trust falls. Before we got into big trust falls, we did some smaller ones. Here’s what we did; 5-6 people stood in a tight circle, whilst one person stood in the middle. The fellow in the middle stood with their arms at their side, legs together. When ready, the person in the middle would go limp, and begin falling in various directions, like a spaghetti noodle. The circular fellas jobs were just to keep the middle fellow up, with gentle little pushes to other people in the circle. Simple. For the life of me, I couldn’t fall or push. 

When falling, I found myself not being able to trust my- very trustworthy- peers. When I would attempt to fall, I found myself instinctively constantly planting my foot down, to stop myself from falling. 

Being a pusher wasn’t much better. I couldn’t trust myself to catch my peers, and that mixed in with my lack of, uhhh, muscular definition, led to struggles. When someone would fall my way, I would plant a foot back, to balance myself, which resulted in me backing up, allowing more time for the faller to actually think they’re falling.

After the activity, I was really embarrassed. I felt bad for my peers, who were forced to deal with my struggles. I’ve thought about this incident tons since. I realized that I had negatively impacted the activity for my peers, which was definitely something I didn’t wanna do. I know realize that it’s equally as important to trust yourself, as it is to trust others.

And know we will creatively segue into the  ✨winter exhibition ✨.

The winter exhibition focused around the idea of revolutions and the different phases of them. We were split into groups, each focusing on a different revolution throughout history. I had the honour of representing the US OF A BABY 🇺🇸🇺🇸🍔🌭🦅🦅🏈🏈‼️‼️.

To kickstart this project, we were to create a few infographics, with the use of Canva. I am a fein for Canva. As per usual with my POLS, I have attached below the designs I made for the project, along with one I made on my own time, including the photo at the top of this post. I’ve spent hours and hours on Canva, which really helped, me not only succeed in this project, but also enjoy it. 

The final product of this project was a “Metaphor Machine”. A Rube Goldberg machine full of metaphors from our chosen revolution. I had some struggles during the building process. My group was an absolute dream team, and I’m ever so grateful for them- Nate, Alex C, Claire, Jack, Lucas A, Julio- all fantastic. 

Ok so back to building. 

Alex C and Nate took leadership roles in our group, and selflessly, worked day-in and day-out on our machine. But a pickle arose as result of Alex and Nates determination- I didn’t know what to do. 

I’m not good at working with my hands, so I was afraid to help with the actual building of the machine. The technical aspects of the project- filming, editing, etc. – were already being worked on by other group members. This left me jobless. I would ask them what they would want me to do, but doing that felt like I was disturbing their work, and would usually get a deservingly annoyed answer. I should’ve done a better job of finding ways to make myself useful own my own, relying less on other peers.

When the day of the exhibition arrived, my group erected I design a whiteboard- on the wall the same place as our station- themed as the American revolution. I was really excited for the opportunity to prove myself to my teammates. I grabbed the whiteboard pen, and got to work. I wanted this whiteboard to be EPIC. I was waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy too ambitious. I had about 3 hours to make it, and I used all 180 minutes of it. I wasn’t happy with it. 

My group kept telling me it looked great, but I just kept noticing all the little mistakes. I wasn’t happy with it, and my group wasn’t happy with me constantly going back and tweaking it. I was trying too hard to make it perfect, which definitely wasn’t the right thing to do. I think it’s important to try your best at things, but not to beat yourself up over small mistakes. 

Although my year may have sounded truculent and negative through this post, I’ve appreciated every single mistake I’ve made. Every mistake makes you a better person, and I will apply what I’ve leant moving forward.

Thank you for reading/listening my mPOL. I believe I have given an honest reflection on my learning. For the rest of my time in PLP, I want to insure I produce quality work while improving my organization. I’m wildly excited for future PLP projects, and I’m optimistic for the future.