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.

Hey everyone, it’s me again.

Guess who’s back, back again.

No it’s not me, thanks for the thought though

It’s that season again, it’s MPoL time.

This MPoL, I’m going to start with a quote, and that’s what I’m going to do with every PoL from now till grade 12.

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future”

-Plutarch

Now, why am I using a quote?

Quotes are very powerful forms of media, which capture the most powerful sayings, metaphors, and moments of history, where only the memorable and well-known survive.

Quotes in examples such as a certain midyear presentation of learning *ahem ahem* work really well as an interesting and different talking point.

Now that we’ve talked about why quotes, let’s talk about the much more important part of why this quote.

To simplify Plutarch’s quote, he’s saying that you don’t improve by not making mistakes, you improve by first, being brave enough to make a mistake, and then getting back up, and learning, and think about what you did right and wrong, and then fixing it. To me, that’s PLP’s entire learning philosophy.

To put it into my own words (sports),

“You play to win, not to not lose”

-some coach somewhere

Okay, that’s great, but how does that apply to me, and my year in grade 9 so far?

Grade 9 is a nothing year, to put it bluntly. Your grades don’t matter, and you already know everything you need to about highschool systems. So what happens in grade 9? Mistakes. Mistakes are the only things that happen in grade 9 that effect the rest of your highschool career. So if mistakes are the only things that happen, how do they affect you? Well that depends on how you take mistakes. This is where Plutarch’s quote comes into play on how it applies to my year, where my goal for the rest of grade 9 is to take mistakes more on the chin. I say this because I’ve tried to set up many habits and routines, and stick to them for a week or two, miss the routine for one night, then completely drop it, only for the cycle to repeat.

This also applies to PLP, where I’d set aside time to do work, then stick with consistently doing my PLP work, and looking ahead in the learning plan, only to miss it one day for one reason or another, and I haven’t gone back to setting aside time since.

So in summary, my focus for the rest of this school year is to not only work on myself in ways that make me better, but also to have the ability to take mistakes and deal with them effectively and efficiently.

….

Okay,

I may have lied.

There’s something else that carries over, not just into grade 10, 11, and 12, but for the rest of your life.

Memories.

Specifically the good ones.

Wow that was a roundabout way of introducing things I’m proud of this year, but hey, isn’t life a roundabout way of doing things?

Let’s start in chronological order, with the Alberta field trip, and Rocky Mountain High, where I had a lot of fun with photography (if you want to check out said photography, please look in this post here). Taking photos in the rockies really had me amazed. Besides the obvious point of “ooo pretty” taking photos in the rockies really led to me doing as the project stated, and find stories in the rockies by expressing my creativity in ways and spaces I haven’t really ever been able to. Alongside being able to express my creativity, photos are something I’m proud to show others, and are both beautiful and mystifying in ways anyone can understand.

(here’s a cheeky one anyways)

Next, is science, with ChemHISTORY. This project was one of my most favourite projects not just this year, but all time (yes that’s only two years but shush up). This was one of my most favourite projects for one very big reason. To me, a large part of my personality is being smart, especially in the classroom, and I feel like I always need to be academically advanced, which usually leads to me feeling disappointed with how I do in the classroom. In this case, my partner in crime, Finn, and I were quite ahead of the curve, which fulfilled my academic superiority complex for a good month and a half, which was a really positive and uplifting experience.

Last but not least, we have maker, with Thrill Us. This project was super fun, because we got to pick our own groups, so I got to go with my film nerd friends, Matteo, Finn, and Caelum, whose blogs are linked to their names. So first of all, film friends, we all know our way around films, and are good editors, which lead to a final product I was and am super happy with, which, as I mentioned earlier, feeds my academic superiority complex, which I’m realizing might not just be academic. Second of all, nerd friends, my group-mates and I for this project had ideas that we all agreed were good, and really fun to pursue, which again lead to that good final product. Third, friends, again because we got to pick groups, I, of course, went with friends. This led, as one might think, to us having a lot of fun, not just with each other, but doing something we all collectively enjoyed.

Alright, now we have good and bad, it’s time for the final reflection. Dun dun dunnn. On a serious note, I’m going to talk about what my next steps will look like reflecting upon what I did well, and what I didn’t do well.

The “big next step” being deadlines. I’ve had some problems this year with consistently meeting deadlines with work I’m proud of. This stems from a few reasons, the biggest being me procrastinating and not setting aside time to do work. Even though I’m using tools like trello, it doesn’t really help when I don’t set aside consistent time to work. So all that being said, one of my goals this year will be to spend time after getting home from school to review and do homework.

An important part of me consistently achieving this “next big step” is to involve my family. I have discussed how we should best achieve a system where I feel supported and my family both holds me accountable and doesn’t feel like they are nagging me to do work. We plan on doing this by either a parent or I asking questions about my work during the period when I get home, such as “what are you working on?” from a parent, or “can you help me with this?” from me. It would be somewhat akin to small talk, where I would talk in depth, and create a conversation about what has to be done or worked on. Another thing we plan on doing is an end of week reflection on what worked well, and what didn’t. This would take place on Fridays, probably during dinner.

Thanks for reading! Have a good rest of your day.

-Parker