Celebrations
Take Action Ecology Project
Through this semester one accomplishment I would like to celebrate is how I have grown as becoming a leader and being more organized. I feel this really shows in the Take Action Ecology project. For this project we were put into groups and we had to research a question that had to do with an ecosystem. My group chose to research the American Pika and how elevation affects the presences of the Pika. My group I was put in was not very motivated and did not really know what to do. I’m usually the person that sits back and does the work I need to do to help my group out. This project challenged me to be the leader because I hate telling people what they need to do, I feel like I was commanding them. I had to step up and tell people what they should do in order to complete the project, I made sure my group members were on task, and I lead the discussions on what we should do. I’m a very organized person so I planned everything out, what I wanted to be completed by that day and what each person should do to contribute to the project. I thought this project ended really well I am really proud of my end product.
Artifact #3
Another accomplishment I would like to celebrate is my perseverance in Humanities through this semester. When we had to write Artifact #3 I struggled with discovering a message I wanted to write about in my literary analysis. There were many messages throughout the story of Flight and I couldn’t chose which one I thought was the most intriguing. I finally decided to chose to write about transformation through Flight and how Zits changed from the beginning of the book to the end. Once I had found my message I wanted to write about it was fairly easy to write my literary analysis, but I still ran into challenges. I was unsure of what literary devices ran through the book. I felt there were many and I couldn’t just choose three. I got advice from my peers and was able to narrow it down. Over all, this artifact was somewhat challenging for me, but I was able to persevere through it and I am very proud of my final product.
Artifact #6
Last but not least, I would like to celebrate my open-mindedness to critiques I would receive on my writing pieces. For Artifact #6 we had to chose a writing style and write about a tension. I wrote about the tension between White Settlers and Native americans in the past and present through an analytical piece. This artifact was going into a book, so we had a lot of critiques. I was open to the critiques I got because I want my work to be the best it can be. By having critiques it allows me to see what I could change or add to make it outstanding and intriguing. Knowing it was going into the book I wanted it to be outstanding and flow really well because I wanted to represent our school and myself in a good way. Before this year I was always really nervous to show others my work because I thought it wasn’t good enough, so I would hate getting critiques. To me the critiques just showed that my writing wasn’t good. Now I see critiques are here to benefit me not cut me down.
Areas of Growth
A climate for change march
One area I would like to do differently is having things more planned out in Environmental Science class. For environmental class we have been working all as a class since there is only 10 of us. For one of our project we designed and planned a climate change march with the college. In the planning process I felt the college students were doing most of the work and I didn’t really contribute. We as the students didn’t really get to lead the project. I also felt we were really crammed on time. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do because I felt it was already planned out. In the last couple of weeks before the march we were told we still need to make posters and pledge cards. I got it done but it was really rushed and it definitely wasn’t my best work. When it came to march day I didn’t feel involved and didn’t feel it spread the awareness we wanted it to. I believe this project would have had a better outcome if we planned the whole thing on our own. Then went to the college and had them combine their event with ours, instead of us first going to them and planning it together. It also would have been better if we were more organized with what we wanted to accomplish.
Logarithmic Scale Project
Another area I would like to grow in is being able to go into more depth in Advanced Algebra. This past quarter I was given a mini project called the Logarithmic Scales project. For this project we were given a topic and we had to find the logarithmic scale. My group was given music frequency. When I went up to present, our presentation lacked content, therefore I presented for a very short amount of time. I had the basic information for it, but I didn’t know where to go from there.I could have gone further into the logarithm of music frequency, I just didn’t how. Looking back it I believe I could have gone further by spending more time on it and asking our teacher for advice. Also, having more prior knowledge of logarithms and the logarithmic scale.
Question
How can I motivate myself to gain a deeper level of learning?