Communicating

I don’t think my communication skills are very good, because I rarely raise my hand, rarely speak at all in class. For example, in class, whenever the teacher asks a question, I sometimes know the answer, but I don’t raise my hand. I just say the answer really quietly in hopes that either the teacher would hear, or someone else will hear and raise their hand instead, so that I don’t have to speak in front of the class. When I say that I rarely speak in class, that’s mainly when I don’t have any friends in that class. Like in science this year. I just stayed at my desk, sitting quietly because I didn’t have any friends in that class. The only person I talked to was the person who shared my desk with me, but sometimes she would go talk to her friends. In martial arts, that’s probably the only place where I feel safe to talk and shout, because we were told to. Whenever we enter the gym, we must greet the instructors with a “hello m’am”, or “hello sir”, and we have to shout. At martial arts, I feel like no on would judge me for talking loudly, or shouting, because that’s what we’re supposed to do. It also helps me more with my communication skills, especially since I’ve joined leadership to become a junior instructor.

Positive Personal and Cultural Identity

I think I have a positive personal and cultural identity because I have been learning my parent’s language, Tagalog, making me become more aware of my culture. I also joined tournament this year in martial arts because I felt like I had enough experience and skill to at least make the podium, and I did. I am somewhat good at coaching baseball to my brother’s team, even though I only had one year in junior league baseball. I’ve been helping my dad, the assistant coach with giving him ideas for drills, and warmups. I’ve also realized that I’m good at volleyball in PE, probably because I took a camp two years ago, but I’m still impressed with how I’m still able to play with more skill after two years. I also found that my effort in keeping my grades up worked, for I got all extending last semester, and two during midterms this semester. I found that I’m getting better at writing compositions in English class because I got a 6/6 in my last composition, raising my hopes up for the rest of the semester in English. I also memorized all my lines for our English play, Midsummer night’s dream by Shakespeare. I found out how good I was at memorizing lines, probably because of my past days as a theatre kid, where I had to play multiple roles and memorizing multiple lines. I had to play the second lead, for one of the musical numbers, and had to memorize the whole thing, so that might have contributed to memorizing all of my lines for midsummer nights dream. To wrap everything I said in this paragraph in one sentence, I found out I have many strengths this year.

Social Responsibility

Believe I presented some examples for social responsibility, some examples of volunteering and helping communities being joining leadership in martial arts, starting my journey towards becoming an instructor, becoming an apprentice coach to my brother’s baseball team, helping my father, the assistant coach with running drills and helping the kids on the team improve. I help the community in martial arts by joining leadership, because although I haven’t started instructing classes yet, I start with my first class on Friday, that way I can help children learn one of my favourite sports. You get to learn how to defend yourself, and it helps vent your stress. I help the community in baseball, because I get to watch the 6th graders in my brother’s team with improving, and I’ve already seen a big improvement in some of the kids. I gave all the drills I did last year to my dad, who then made the team run them. I also cheer them on during their games, to help them hustle more. Some examples of making relationships this year are making new friends, meeting new teachers, and meeting new people in my extracurriculars. I made a few new friends this year, like during the first semester, I became friends with serene; a softball player who made amazing creations in ceramics, and other people, who are mainly friends of some of my friends. In the second semester, I became friends with Anthony; a really funny piano player, Brayden; Anthony’s older brother, Sarang; a very smart soccer player in English, Sofie; another soccer player with whom I’m able to talk about my favourite show, Bungou stray dogs, and the dancers in my Communications class. This year, I also met many teachers, such as Mr. Yoo, a really nice ceramics teacher, Mr. Lange, my science teacher who has the coolest labs, Mr. Hughes, our band teacher who helped me improve my flute skills, Mme Bruneau, my favourite sciences humaines teacher of all time, Mme Manton, my Français langue teacher who was pretty nice sometimes, M. Major, who’s probably one of the funniest PE teachers I’ve ever had, Ms Lee, my math teacher who lets us eat lunch in her classroom, Mme Ajagbe, my communications teacher who takes teaching very seriously, and Mr. Ipe, who’s probably one of my favourite English teachers I’ve ever had, and the funniest one too. Basically, I met lots of new people this year, and now my life is filling with so many people.