HR Project 2 Reflection _ Grace Herman

March 7th, 2020,

This week has been all about training ourselves to communicate with our mentors and to respond/meet the needs of stakeholders. I was able to communicate with my mentor, Ms. Amy, and learn what she needs help with. We discussed how my project can fit into her curriculum. I’m so excited about it! First off, I love working and talking with Ms. Amy Snodgrass. Her classes are so smart and it is really amazing to get the opportunity to work with her from the other side. And to be able to create a strategic and smart class. From my meeting with her, I learned that her students are reading the book Walk Two Moons, learning about authorial choices, and writing a research paper. I found it really interesting to look back on the 6th-grade curriculum and see and appreciate how it leads up to what I’m doing in IB now. That inspired my new idea. We were talking about how the topic for the research paper they will write will come from the book. We were talking about how they could take that topic and write about it in a literary way. And then compare the two and analyze the different authorial choices they made while writing a non-literary text and then writing a literary text. Then I realized that was like the oral we have to do for English and Spanish in IB. That’s when I got really excited. After they compare they could orally record or share their analysis. A mini oral! But about their own writing! Currently, I’m very excited about this idea and project. I’m especially happy because it feels meaningful and curriculum enriching, which is the ultimate goal.

To do this I will need to engage in on the job training and cognitive training. On the job in the sense that I will need to participate in Ms. Amy’s classes and learn about the culture of her classroom. And cognitive training in the sense that to complete this project I need to train my brain to time manage, remember all this content, pay careful attention, and solve problems if/when they are presented during my activity.

One thing that makes this project hard is being alone all the time. I want to be able to quickly run my ideas by my friends and my teachers. But now it is so much more effort to do that and I have had to “save” and group my questions to make the most of the time we have. This is a good skill to have, my Dad has always tried to teach me to do. But I love asking questions and I miss it. I miss being able to externally process. It is a weird side of loneliness that this situation has created and it is challenging. I have to think deeper and work through my questions and try to answer them on my own first. This has always been something I need to improve and now I have the opportunity, but I don’t necessarily like it.

Other than loneliness people have been experiencing a lack of motivation. It causes my class to explode and a little bit this week so I’m guessing the 6th graders are feeling the same. From that, I created my soft skills activity for the 6th graders and will focus on trying to motivate them throughout this project. But this week was interesting for me because I felt pretty motivated. I had days last week where I felt like I couldn’t do it, but this week, so far, has been pretty productive. It’s been interesting how it has come in waves.

This project isn’t something I would usually think of and/or push myself to do. It has challenged me to be a risk-taker and trust my intuition. Mostly because there’s no one in the room for me to ask for feedback on my ideas. But it has allowed me no other choice but to trust myself, pushing myself to be more confident in my ideas. It also has pushed my brain to think deeper and harder. I have had to take the content and immediately apply it and in a strategic way for a personal project.

Overall, I think that this week has been successful for me. I’ve managed to manage my time and stay pretty motivated. I’m super excited about the direction my project is going and I’m understanding the content in a cool new way and I really enjoy reflecting on it in this way.

Thanks for reading,

Grace

*Identify strengths and areas for growth, Challenges were undertaken showing that new skills are learned, Show perseverance and commitment to your project, Work collaboratively with others.