tPOL 2024

Thank you for attending my presentation of learning. I am an expert on my own learning and I am responsible and accountable for that learning. You can expect me to give a fair and honest evaluation of my progress as a learner, where I will discuss strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for your attention and feedback, which I can use to grow as a learner.

Well, it’s time for tPOLs¹. Starting these is tricky, so let’s just do a double-triple-back-front-side-dive-flip into the deep murky pond that is the 2023-24 school year.

I can’t really believe the year is already over. In some ways, it feels like we should just be finishing the first semester, and in others, it feels like we should have been done a month ago. Regardless of any flaws in my perception of time, it has been 9 months since school began, so let’s look at what has happened in that time.

Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff, but regardless of the volume of the work, I’m here to convince you of the quality. So, how about we start with the first behavior:

Seeking Help:

Agency

This is an interesting one, as I feel like it could apply to my entire life². First, let me preface this by saying I’m not a huge fan of asking for help. Unless I’m mostly sure that there isn’t really any other way, I won’t ask for help, at least not for large things. I would much rather bunker down and try to figure things out myself than go up to a teacher and ask, “What exactly am I supposed to be doing here?”

Defining what classifies as “help” might be a bit tricky, but here are some examples.

Examples of Seeking Help

• Asking a teacher for feedback on my work.

• Asking for clarification on something.
• Asking my friends to look over my work.
• Asking teammates to help me with something.
• Asking for help getting my teammates to do stuff.
• Asking my parents to airdrop me at school early so I can go to tutorial.
• Asking for an extension.

Basically, I see asking for help as anything that requires some sort of request to another human, that will hopefully improve my learning experience.

There have been a few times this year where it would have helped a ton to ask for help, and a few times where it has. I’ve been asking my friends for feedback a lot more, and I’ve been trying to ask teachers too, and when I do, it helps.

It might seem like a small change, just asking for help a bit more, but I think it will make a great difference moving into grade 10 and beyond.

Communication and Collaboration with Peers

Teamwork

I talked about this in my mPOL, but teamwork was an essential part of this year, and despite some struggles, I think I’ve figured out how to best collaborate with people³. At the beginning of the year, we had done some teamwork, but nowhere near as much as we were about to do. Going into these first few projects, I was a little bit unsure as to how best to approach teamwork. Teamwork is a whole different kind of organizational pain. Alongside getting myself to do work, I also had to coordinate with my team. The first few projects of the year were a mix of highs and lows which, in hindsight, had a few things that generally predicted whether or not a project is “good”. One of the earlier projects that went well was the “Thriller” project which, in contrast to its predecessor Running a remake, felt good to work on. This was a project where I got to choose a group and I got to be with my friends, but I’m not going to say that’s why it was good⁴. Instead, I think this project showcased a few key …things…? for a good group project, with this list being informed by later projects as well:

1. Communication.

   I mean, it’s half the bloody competency. If you don’t communicate (or don’t listen to attempts at communication), the group is probably going to fall apart into shambles.

   If you want to get stuff done in a group, everyone needs to know what everyone else is going to be doing, and what they need to do. Otherwise, it’s just a headless chicken party.

2. Investment.

   People generally don’t want to do things they aren’t invested in. This can be tricky for schoolwork, but it makes such a difference. You can do this in a few ways. I know participation in the ideation process helps me want to see things through until the end, but I’m sure everyone has their own style for these things.

   Grades are some sort of investment, but sometimes the idea of “__ will carry us through this project” or “It doesn’t matter too much” can make it so people aren’t really motivated by that.

3. Secret Sauce.

   The third option is a bit of a wildcard. For a while, I thought it was motivation, but motivation and investment are sort of the same argument. Another option is something like equal contribution. I think this would apply to all parts of a project, but equal contribution is more of a goal. Planning was another option, but that sort of falls into communication. Basically, I’m not too sure what the third option is, maybe just some sort of secret sauce of what the project is and team chemistry.

Sadly, since I came up with these rules, we haven’t had a group project, so I am yet to be able to test them, but I think this is a good example of my growth. I identified a problem and used my experience to try and create a solution that can easily be communicated.

I was working on this idea throughout DI, and I really wish I had finished it in time, but the presence or absence of these seems to make or break a group project.

Some examples:

RUNning a remake:

Communication:

Minimal starting the project, basically consisted of: you do this, you do this. Failure to express how the video needed to be edited led to me having to edit it myself (alongside filming).

Investment:

Lack of communication led to me being the person tasked with planning. Nobody else seemed to want to, so they didn't really have any inherent goals for filming other than getting it done.

Secret Sauce🥘:

The other two weren’t really there, making it very hard for the secret sauce to do much, even if it was present. It was not. Two people ended up talking to each other most of the time, and another was inconsistent with attendance.

This is an extreme example, but I still think of it whenever I think of bad group projects.

DI:

I hate to bring up DI for the umpteenth time; however, it showcases one issue particularly well.

Communication:

Abysmal. I'll keep it short, but I basically ended up sending messages and not getting a response for days, if at all.

Investment:

Actually not bad. Everyone kinda had to contribute to ideation, so that wasn’t awful. However, it seemed like the general dissent for DI led to low… numbers.

Secret Sauce:

I can’t even tell. It was sort of in the middle. People worked fairly well, good spirits, and we had some sort of team chemistry that ABSOLUTELY carried us through DI.

Alberta:

Alberta could be thought of as a massive group project, of our whole half of the class.

However, that’s a stretch and there was a single group project that I'll dial down on instead. The Silent Film.

Communication:

Good. Most people attended class and we kept in touch throughout the planning. On the trip, we quickly assembled and were able to spitball ideas on location.

Investment:

Great. Everyone helped to plan our video, so everyone knew what needed to be done. We all had an idea of what was happening and we ended up having fun while doing it.

Secret Sauce 🥘:

This also went well. We all had fun doing the stuff, and we came up with ideas on the spot, discussed them, and generally had a good time.

This year, I’ve had to participate in quite a few group projects and I have now developed skills and strategies to try and make teamwork much smoother and less stressful in the following year.

Goals and Self-Assessing

Agency

Well, isn’t this fun, I get to talk about goals again! This was also a topic in my mPOL⁵ But I can hopefully provide some new insights.

Ironically, one of my major goals for this year was to set goals and be less hard on my work. There has been some decent progress towards that, so I reckon I’ll share it.

First off, I recently discovered the phrase “Done is better than perfect” and I think it really does sum up what I’ve been trying to achieve in terms of self-assessment. As an example, in my last project, I found myself zooming all the way into my drawings to correct mistakes so minuscule they would disappear completely when printing, so I had to remember that this is a school project, and that I’m working on a deadline and would not like to stay up till midnight trying to make things perfect. In my opinion, perfection isn’t really achievable⁶ so it’s kind of pointless to shoot for it.

"Done is better than perfect"

That isn’t to say I’ve been just saying “good enough”. After my mPOL, I started laying basic guidelines/goals for projects, to revisit on my own after the project as a sort of… reflection?

Either way, these semi-goals (definitely not SMART goals) helped to guide the feeling of “What next” I sometimes had, serving as metaphorical train stops for my work.

With the process of setting goals, and the “complete first, improve later” mindset, I’ve found it a lot easier to appreciate the work I put into these things, and actually be sorta kinda proud of what I create, both in PLP and in life. There is always the possibility that I’m just getting better at this stuff, but that probably ain’t it.

The Beginning of the End

This has been a long, twisting year. It’s crazy to think of everything we’ve done so far, with things like Alberta feeling like they happened in another century and the summer learning feeling like prehistory. Looking back, I honestly can’t believe everything I have done, and if me from a year ago could have known, I probably would have called myself a liar. Grade 10 is where things start to matter (or so I’ve been told) so these two years have been a good way to get myself ready. I am very nervous and scared at how quickly this year has gone by, but I’m sick of the extending, proficient, etc. grading system. So now I say adieu.

The End of the End.