My journey to success

My whole life, school has been relatively easy for me, follow the criteria, add a little extra pizzazz, and boom I had myself an an extending. When I stepped into my first PLP class 7 months ago I quickly realized that was not going to be the case. PLP has forced me to fully adapt the way I learn, and I fully believe I have grown as a student because of it. 

Statement of Learning

“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.”

Things I Struggled With This Term

Perfectionism 

My whole school career I have required everything I do to be perfect, my projects have to be perfect, my art has to be perfect, my grades have to be perfect. There is a lot of ways PLP has tested my perfectionism.

 First of all, none of the work we do is like elementary, rather than filling in blanks and answering specific questions on a worksheet, we do projects that force us to create our own questions.  This has really challenged my perfectionism because I no longer receive a “yes this is correct” instead I get “do you feel like this is correct?” There is no perfect answer!

 PLP has told me that nothing is perfect, because there is always room for improvement and revision. 

Also, I have found that we are often thrown projects last minute, this has been a very big struggle because now I don’t even have a choice to go as above and beyond as possible because i simply do not have enough time. 

From the very beginning of this year, this has been my main struggle. It is hard to go from easy work, perfect grades, and praise from my teachers to struggling to do the bare minimum. 

At the beginning of the year when I wrote my learning guide, I set a goal to put aside my perfectionism and focus on getting the job done. I do not believe I have met this goal yet,

In my most recent project, Mind Over Matter I really struggled with my perfectionism. We were assigned with creating a video game on scratch that demonstrated our knowlage of an atom. During the most of this project the only thing I was focusing on was the visuals of my game, as well as how many levels there were. I spent so much time on making the game perfect, that when It came down to the last few days I hardly had enough time to add the science into it. 

If I were to do this project again, I would create the game and the science first and then once I am done, if I have time, go in and add the final touches.

Teamwork

Another thing PLP has really tested, is my teamwork abilities. Teamwork is something I have always struggled with, I have a hard time trusting other people and often end up doing all of the work. This worked for me in elementary, but coming into high school, the workload is just way to much to do everything.

 

The teamwork in my first project in PLP, the It’s The End of The World project went horrible. We didn’t communicate well, there was hardly any work ethic, I was trying to make it perfect and the whole thing ended up falling into my hands.

 

After that, I made a goal on my learning guide to put more trust in my peers, know that I don’t have to do all of the work in group projects, and to not be the leader/director in every project. As I moved through the year I have done more and more group projects It has been my biggest ambition to improve. 

My most recent group project I have done is Destination Imagination I have worked so so hard to have successful and even group work and I do believe I have improved. 

It is obviously not even close to being perfect, at the beginning of the project we have struggled with people not doing their work and doing to much, and I still feel like I am the leader/director.

However, after noticing these struggles we decided to have a team meeting about our teamwork. We started to give each other jobs, set strict rules and deadlines, and play off of each others strengths, and this help our group work immensely.

Going forwards in the year, my goal is to go beyond my comfort level and trust my my peers, and continue communicate when I have a problem.

A Project I Didn’t Enjoy

A project I didn’t enjoy this term was Power Play And How it Started. This project was a long process full of many assignments that lead up to the final project of turing myself into medieval art that displayed the medieval worldview. I am not a big fan of learning about this kind of history and I think that was a big part in why I didn’t enjoy this project. Also, we learned a lot of our information through The Book of The Lion, which I really didn’t like because it was very hard to follow.

Despite not liking this project, it taught me a lot about who I am as a learner. I learned that the way in which I learn information has to be something I enjoy in order for me to be engaged and learn somthing.

A Project I Enjoyed 

My favourite project I have done so far is the Bon Voyage project. This project was full of all my favourite things, writing, indigenous history, and storytelling. For this assignment we were assigned with creating a story about the cause and consequence of European exploration and put it into an app called AR Makr all following the driving question, How can we use storytelling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact?

Through this project I learned new tech skills, critical thinking, and a lot about European exploration and the causes and consequences of it. I learned new tech skills while using AR Makr. I used critical thinking when I had to solve problems and learn the app. Also,  I learned so much about exploration, why it happened, and what it lead to. 

Goals

My goals for the rest of the year is to go through a group project and not do everything and control everyone. I am going to do this by going beyond my comfort level and trusting my peers and communicating my issues when I have a problem. Also, I want to start putting aside  my perfectionism, I am going to do this by focusing on completing the task at hand first, and then (if I have time) going in after and making it better.