5 months and 14 days ago I moved 1,608 miles across the country. ( or 1,646 miles if you take interstate 20 East) I was leaving Atlanta, my home. I had been born and raised there, my friends were there, my family was there, and I’m not gonna lie, I wasn’t too happy with my parents. Fast forward a little while and the time had come when I was to pick a high school to start the next four years of my life.It took me much longer than expected to make my decision. My brain was telling me DHS. I was going through such a big change already, and it would’ve been much harder to change the style of learning I was already adapted to. Regardless of what my brain was saying, my heart was telling me Animas. After long contemplation between my brain and my heart, I made my choice. I was going to Animas. Little did I know that this decision would be so influential to the next several months in my life.
A huge value here at Animas is for the students to be able to reflect on themselves and on their projects, because our teachers know how important it is for us students to have this skill in the long run. A reflection I have made on this past semester is my strength in refinement. Something we learned on the first day at Animas was how important beautiful work is. This concept of beautiful work is something I don’t think is possible without refinement. To show this I thought I would share my first Problem of the week in math for this semester. The first draft is very sloppy and not anything I would be proud of turning in. The final refined draft is a piece of work I was proud of turning in and got positive feedback for. Another example of refinement is my Socialization and Identity essay. I can not count the number of times I refined this essay. After getting critique from my peers and from Sara I went back and added things, changed sentence structures, and took sections out completely. In doing all of this, I turned in an essay that I was very proud of and in turn, receiving a grade that I was more than happy with.
While it can be easy to reflect on the positives or strengths during this semester, I think it is important to also focus on the areas for growth to work on next semester. One area I think I could grow in for next semester is perseverance. An example of a time I did not show perseverance was in physics for my rube goldberg machine analysis. I got very frustrated and stressed because I was doing majority of the work in my group on the analysis. This led me to give up and turn in a analysis that did not have the required pictures, or the required number of steps we had to analyze. Another example of a time I failed to persevere in was in the photoshop tutorial project in digital art. As you can see, The one on the right is an example of the final product for a successful photoshop tutorial. The one on the left is mine. When my photoshop picture did not look anything like the successful one, I got frustrated and gave up. Dropping this tutorial completely caused me to not feel proud of the number of photoshop tutorials I completed by the end of the project.
Perseverance was something I have struggled with this semester but also in my past years of school. To make a change when it comes to perseverance, I am going to make a plan for when I get too stressed or feel like I am going to give up. I am going to give myself time and space to step back from whatever assignment I am doing to either work on something else or do another activity to take my mind off of it. I believe that in doing this, I will be able to come back to the assignment I am completing with fresh eyes and mind.
The opportunities that the teachers give to the students to reflect I think, is one of the most important things about the culture here at animas. In doing this reflecting we are able to learn things about ourselves and our projects that we never would’ve thought of earlier. Through reflection, I feel the topic that I feel I have grown the most in, personally is my confidence in math class. In middle school, classes were set up so that kids that got higher test scores would be in higher classes. That set up is not as harmful, but when I got judged by my test scores alone, it became extremely harmful to my self confidence. This caused me to hate going to math class. When I came to Animas all of that changed. On the first day of Lauren’s class, we were tasked with writing down what we were excited for, and what we were scared about in math this year. I wrote about my confidence in math and how low it was. Over the past semester, not only have my grades in math been higher than ever in past schooling, but my self confidence has grown tremendously. I strongly believe this is due to the teaching style at Animas and by Lauren. Instead of being judged by low test scores and test scores alone, we are supported by teachers and peers when we get a low test score, or are struggling to understand a concept. For example, when one of my peers was struggling this semester, Lauren helped them understand the concept and once they re-took the quiz, got a much higher grade that they were confident and proud of. I am so glad this is the case, because now I love coming to math everyday and feeling this newfound confidence.
This semester has definitely been long and at some points challenging, but now we’re here - at the end. It’s the last day of my first semester at Animas high school. So what have I learned? Well I learned some function transformations in math, some energy efficiency formulas in physics, and even some stuff about society and the world around me in humanities. But what have I really learned? I think the simplest answer I could give is that I have learned who I am, right now in this moment. The string of events that have played out in the last 6 months have been some of the most impactful events in my entire life. Moving was a new start for me- a clean slate. Animas has given me the opportunity to become the person I really am and strive for becoming the person I want to be. I am so blessed that I came into a school environment that felt safe and welcoming, and not one where I felt like I needed to be someone other than who I am. If you get anything out of this POL, know how thankful I am to the entire community of Animas. To my peers and teachers, thank you for making this the best first semester I could’ve imagined. I am so glad I went with my gut on this one and chose Animas, because it has turned out to be the best transition into this new phase in my life that I could’ve ever asked for.
A huge value here at Animas is for the students to be able to reflect on themselves and on their projects, because our teachers know how important it is for us students to have this skill in the long run. A reflection I have made on this past semester is my strength in refinement. Something we learned on the first day at Animas was how important beautiful work is. This concept of beautiful work is something I don’t think is possible without refinement. To show this I thought I would share my first Problem of the week in math for this semester. The first draft is very sloppy and not anything I would be proud of turning in. The final refined draft is a piece of work I was proud of turning in and got positive feedback for. Another example of refinement is my Socialization and Identity essay. I can not count the number of times I refined this essay. After getting critique from my peers and from Sara I went back and added things, changed sentence structures, and took sections out completely. In doing all of this, I turned in an essay that I was very proud of and in turn, receiving a grade that I was more than happy with.
While it can be easy to reflect on the positives or strengths during this semester, I think it is important to also focus on the areas for growth to work on next semester. One area I think I could grow in for next semester is perseverance. An example of a time I did not show perseverance was in physics for my rube goldberg machine analysis. I got very frustrated and stressed because I was doing majority of the work in my group on the analysis. This led me to give up and turn in a analysis that did not have the required pictures, or the required number of steps we had to analyze. Another example of a time I failed to persevere in was in the photoshop tutorial project in digital art. As you can see, The one on the right is an example of the final product for a successful photoshop tutorial. The one on the left is mine. When my photoshop picture did not look anything like the successful one, I got frustrated and gave up. Dropping this tutorial completely caused me to not feel proud of the number of photoshop tutorials I completed by the end of the project.
Perseverance was something I have struggled with this semester but also in my past years of school. To make a change when it comes to perseverance, I am going to make a plan for when I get too stressed or feel like I am going to give up. I am going to give myself time and space to step back from whatever assignment I am doing to either work on something else or do another activity to take my mind off of it. I believe that in doing this, I will be able to come back to the assignment I am completing with fresh eyes and mind.
The opportunities that the teachers give to the students to reflect I think, is one of the most important things about the culture here at animas. In doing this reflecting we are able to learn things about ourselves and our projects that we never would’ve thought of earlier. Through reflection, I feel the topic that I feel I have grown the most in, personally is my confidence in math class. In middle school, classes were set up so that kids that got higher test scores would be in higher classes. That set up is not as harmful, but when I got judged by my test scores alone, it became extremely harmful to my self confidence. This caused me to hate going to math class. When I came to Animas all of that changed. On the first day of Lauren’s class, we were tasked with writing down what we were excited for, and what we were scared about in math this year. I wrote about my confidence in math and how low it was. Over the past semester, not only have my grades in math been higher than ever in past schooling, but my self confidence has grown tremendously. I strongly believe this is due to the teaching style at Animas and by Lauren. Instead of being judged by low test scores and test scores alone, we are supported by teachers and peers when we get a low test score, or are struggling to understand a concept. For example, when one of my peers was struggling this semester, Lauren helped them understand the concept and once they re-took the quiz, got a much higher grade that they were confident and proud of. I am so glad this is the case, because now I love coming to math everyday and feeling this newfound confidence.
This semester has definitely been long and at some points challenging, but now we’re here - at the end. It’s the last day of my first semester at Animas high school. So what have I learned? Well I learned some function transformations in math, some energy efficiency formulas in physics, and even some stuff about society and the world around me in humanities. But what have I really learned? I think the simplest answer I could give is that I have learned who I am, right now in this moment. The string of events that have played out in the last 6 months have been some of the most impactful events in my entire life. Moving was a new start for me- a clean slate. Animas has given me the opportunity to become the person I really am and strive for becoming the person I want to be. I am so blessed that I came into a school environment that felt safe and welcoming, and not one where I felt like I needed to be someone other than who I am. If you get anything out of this POL, know how thankful I am to the entire community of Animas. To my peers and teachers, thank you for making this the best first semester I could’ve imagined. I am so glad I went with my gut on this one and chose Animas, because it has turned out to be the best transition into this new phase in my life that I could’ve ever asked for.