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Critical and Reflective Thinking

Leadership Qualities and Skills

One leadership quality I possess is collaboration. I am able to demonstrate this quality throughout many of my actions in leadership. I demonstrate this when I am working with the other members of my group “Cent Helping Youth” to plan events. In order to create successful events we have to collaborate and work together. We have weekly meetings and utilize this time to discuss information related to our project and brainstorm ideas, which we hope will help us to create a meaningful project. I am also able to collaborate with my peers in leadership when volunteering for various events run within the school. I am able to work with others to ensure the event goes smoothly by making sure everyone has a role.

One leadership skill that I posses is communication. I believe I posses this quality because I constantly make an effort to communicate with those around me in leadership. I communicate largely with the members in my leadership group. Communicating in this setting is extremely important, especially in a larger group, so we are all able to have our ideas heard. I make sure to be an active listener and offer support to those around me. I also communicate with other members of leadership when running events as I try to offer support to the younger grades if they are unsure of what to do.

Areas to Improve

One leadership quality I would like to develop by the end of this course is creativity. I would like to develop this quality for a number of different reasons. The first reason is that it is important skill when you are holding fundraisers in hopes of raising money for a cause. Being creative is crucial as there are many other groups also trying to fundraise, so it is important to be able to think outside of the box so you can create something exciting and engaging for the school community. It is also important when solving problems. Often when I hit a road block I get frustrated and struggle when I am not able to find a solution. Being able to be creative in this scenario would be extremely helpful as I could think of ideas outside of the box to get around my issue. I am going to work on developing this skill by communicating with those around me and making sure to spend time brainstorming ideas.

One leadership skill I would like to develop is my decision making skills. I would like to develop this because I have a hard time making decisions and sticking to the decisions I have made. Being able to make decisions is extremely important in a group setting as we come across many issues that we have to make decisions on. I would like to get better at looking at the choices provided and thinking about the conditions to decide which would be best.

Core Competency Reflection

Through my work in leadership, I am able to demonstrate the statement “I can work with others to achieve a goal.” I am able to demonstrate this when I am working with my fellow group members. I am able to work with them and contribute equally to help us work towards being successful. I am able to communicate with them and brainstorm to come up with new ideas for fundraisers or events to hold.

1. Reflect on how these songs contribute to making the community or natural world a better place and identify how the lyrics actions call others to action and can work to make positive change.

Both of these songs help to make the community or natural world a better place because they help to spread awareness on important issues. They both speak on issues faced by Indigenous people in the past and present. They show how unfair the conditions and treatment of Indigenous people are and how important it is to work towards changing this.

2. How do these songs represent that something is unfair? What is that “something”? Explain.

These songs represent how the treatment of Indigenous peoples is extremely unfair. These songs represent this unfairness through the meaningful lyrics found throughout the songs. Both songs show how it is unfair how not much is being done to change how Indigenous people are treated and how these issues are being swept under the rug.

3. What emotions do these songs generate for you? Compare your emotions between each song. Which one is more compelling? And why?

While listening to both of these songs, I felt many different emotions. The main two emotions that I felt were sadness and anger. I felt sad hearing about all that Indigenous people have to deal with and how even after many years, they still aren’t getting treated as they should. I also felt angry listening to the difference in the way the people in the songs were treated. The song “Wreck beach/Totem Park” was written from a white settlers perspective, so they were able to do things, such as publicly protest without facing many consequences. Whereas in the song “Caribou Ghosts & Untold Stories”, it is shown that the artist has to fight the issues they are facing, privately or they will face severe consequences. I think the song “Caribou Ghosts & Untold Stories” was more compelling. I believe this because the song is written from the perspective of an Indigenous woman, who has first hand experienced these situations. This made the song even more raw and devastating.

4. What is important to each of the singers? What is the message they are trying to convey?

It is important to both singers to shed light on the many issues faced by Indigenous citizens in the past and even currently in our present day. The song by the Zola’s, is written from a white settlers perspective on these issues and shows them discovering secrets that they hadn’t noticed previously. In the song by Simpson, it shows the perspective of someone who has dealt with these experiences her whole life. It also shows that the Zola’s are able to ignore the issues as they aren’t directly affected by them but Simpson doesn’t have that privilege. The message they are trying to convey is the importance of recognizing the issues faced by Indigenous people and how we need to take action to create change.

5. Using one of your similarities and differences (not the example one given), discuss in a short paragraph (6-10 sentences) how music can convey different perspectives on the same cause?

There are many lyrics from both songs that can be used to demonstrate powerful similarities and differences in the songs. The lyrics that I am choosing are “But we drove around the edge of them and went on with our lives.” and “Catharsis is still elusive, we’ll save that for another day.” Both of these quotes show how people may want to avoid issues such as the treatment of Indigenous people, as they believe that finding a solution for the unjust treatment would prove to be too challenging. They decide to move on as they feel like no change can be made. But they also demonstrate the difference that one group is able to completely move on from the issue, but the other group is only able to do this temporarily. The Zola’s are able to forget about what they learned as the issue isn’t something that they are actively faced with. In the song written by Simpson, she shows how she is only able to ignore the problem for the day as it is something that is impossible for her to ignore, as it constantly surrounds her. This shows different perspectives as one artist hasn’t experienced any of these things, but the other artist has.

For my ceramics character, I decided to create Eeyore from movie “Winnie the Pooh”, and I placed him in a forest scene. I decided to create this character because “Winnie the Pooh” was one of my favourite movies growing up. Through this project I demonstrated the core competency of personal awareness and responsibility. I demonstrated this, because when I am sad, angry or frustrated, listening to music helps me be more productive or calm. While working on my project, I listened to music throughout the whole process as it helped me to really focus on what I had to get done. Through this project, I also demonstrated the core competency of communication. I demonstrated this when I was coming up with ideas for my project. My strategies for collecting relevant information for specific tasks include researching on websites like google and brainstorming with my peers.

Critical Thinking

For my first project in textiles, I decided to make a pleated skirt. Since this was my first time using a sewing machine, I had to rely heavily on my critical thinking skills to help me complete the project. While I was working on this project, I was faced with a number of challenges because I was learning many new skills. When I was faced with an issue, I used my critical thinking skills to look back at prior knowledge from lessons to help decide what step to take. If after looking back at resources, I still wasn’t able to solve the problem on my own, then I would ask my peers or my teacher for help. When asking for support, I made sure to ask open ended questions that would help me to solve the problem and gain more knowledge if I faced a similar issue in the future. An example of this was when I was trying to put a zipper into the back of my skirt. I was unsure of what to do, so I looked at the resources in class before asking my teacher for some help. This skill helped me to gain more knowledge on various skills in textiles and helped me to complete a project that I was extremely proud of.

My inquiry question is “what impact can youth have on people in our community who are in need?” This is my inquiry question because I am a part of a leadership group that focuses on helping homeless youth in our community, and I am curious as to what impact we can have. My inquiry has shifted since the beginning of IDS. In the beginning, my inquiry question was about what affect learning to play an instrument would have on my mental health. I made this shift in my inquiry because I wanted to see if dedicating more time into my leadership project would help it be more successful.

My time management for my IDS project has gone pretty well thus far. I use Cent time weekly to meet with my group and work on our project. I also work on the project at least once a week outside of cent time during flex. I have found that working on it, not only during cent time but also during flex has definitely helped me to be more successful.

The most useful resources for my project have been my mentor teacher and my leadership teacher. My leadership teacher has been a lot of help throughout my project as she has previous experience working with the Covenant House, who we are planning to donate the money we raise to.

A challenge that I am currently facing with my inquiry is trying to find ways to advertise my groups project and message.

Throughout my inquiry project, I think I have had growth in the communication core competency. I have had to use this core competency heavily throughout my whole IDS project. Whether that be by communicating with various teachers or with my group to find creative ways to engage members of our school to get involved in the cause we are promoting.

I am on track to complete my project by May, as we will be donating all the money we have raised throughout the year to the Covenant House at this time. I am planning to continue working on this project for my capstone next year as it is something that I am very passionate about.

For our first project, we were tasked with creating a rose and designing a creative vase to hold the rose. For the vase, we had to use creative thinking to create our own unique design, then use material found around the shop to make it. Since this was my first project in the class, I got to learn how to use many new tools and machines. When creating the rose, I cut out the petals and leaves out of a piece of sheet metal, then used a soldering iron to attach them onto a thin metal rod. For the vase, I came up with the idea of creating an elephant using nuts and bolts, that was able to hold the rose using its trunk. When making the vase, I was able to use the MIG welder and jewelry torch to attach all of my pieces together. I really enjoyed using the MIG welder, but since it was my first time, some of my welds didn’t turn out great. For this project, I was successful in achieving my goal because I was able to carry out the idea that I had originally thought of for my vase. If I was to do this project again, I would have tried to make my welds smaller. I would do this because I think it would make the whole project look better if they were less noticeable. Overall, I am really proud of how my project turned out especially since it was my first time creating something using only metal.