Near the end of 2022, students from Year 8 who were interested in learning through their interests were invited to participate in an induction for a new form of learning called Big Picture. At first, I didn’t want to do it, but my dad noticed that I wasn’t liking school as much as I used to and thought I should give it a try. So, I decided to go and see what it was about. We had to write a little bit about ourselves to get accepted into the induction day. When I got there, I knew I would see some of my friends, but also a lot of my friends didn’t want to try this approach to learning. We started off by sitting in a circle, introducing ourselves, and sharing an interest that we had. At the time, my interests were basketball and entrepreneurship. After that, we did mind mapping and learned how to make projects. We also looked at how some people who had been in Big Picture for a while thought of Big Picture. After that day, I really liked everything they were doing, so I told my dad I wanted to start doing Big Picture.

In Big Picture, I have had tons of amazing experiences and learning opportunities, including volunteering at the Australian Seabird and Turtle Rescue, completing a 6-week TAFE tester course, going on excursions, interviewing people, and creating projects. A few of the projects that stand out to me would be a project I did on the effects of heart rate, a project on being the healthiest version of myself, and tracking a turtle through its rehabilitation progress.

Not only have I changed since starting Big Picture, but so has the work that I continue to put in every term into creating good projects, learning plans, and, of course, exhibitions. At the start of my Big Picture journey, I was a bit annoyed that we had to do learning plans, project planning, and exhibitions, but now, looking back at it, I believe it was super important to learn how to set up our learning in multiple ways to hold ourselves accountable for the work we want to achieve. For example, my old learning plans were short and looked more like an interest mind map than a learning plan. Now, I kind of still do a mind map, but I connect the tools I will use, the people I want to speak to, and how I am going to make it happen.

I feel like I have had a substantial amount of growth in this short amount of time, from not pushing myself and just doing the minimum, to now challenging myself and working hard to keep improving my work and how I present it. I feel like if I could choose one thing that I have improved in Big Picture the most, it is probably talking to people and not being scared to call or email someone. I also feel like I am less distracting in the classroom.

Learning goals are a really important part of Big Picture and help you make your learning important and helpful. At the start of Big Picture, all of those skills were super underdeveloped and needed work, so how did I develop them? Developing communication skills was pretty hard for me, as when I first learned we had to call people to set up our internships, I really didn’t want to. I don’t know if it was because I was scared or I just didn’t see the point in it, but I didn’t want to do it. Eventually, I was forced to do it, and once I did, I found that it wasn’t that awkward and was just something you have to do in life. I think personal qualities kind of just develop with time, though I think it does help to be a bit more mindful and think about the person you want to become so that you can hold yourself a bit more accountable. For example, I used to not put much effort in, and now I continue to push myself every term. I also used to be lazy and overweight, and now I strive to be healthy and look after my body. For me, knowing how to learn was weird, as I knew what I wanted to do but didn’t know how to set it up. That’s where Nick and Beth came in, who helped me so much in setting out what to do and pushing me to achieve more than I thought I could. Now, I strive to have a better exhibition every term. Empirical reasoning is also something that was hard to learn, as when I first was in Big Picture, I didn’t think that I needed it, nor that it was important for me, but I was wrong. As it turns out, in some of my recent projects, like the project I did last term on heart rate, I was using empirical reasoning by creating an experiment and gathering some of my classmates to track their results. Quantitative reasoning is a bit like empirical reasoning as it uses math, tables, and sequences, but I won’t use the same example. I think something I do well to use quantitative reasoning is tracking my gym progress in charts and calculating my strength increases in those exercises. Social reasoning is something I am trying to work on, as the only project I used much of it on was almost a year ago now, and I really want to try and include it in more projects, as I think it would help the projects a lot.

These past few years of Big Picture, I think I have improved a lot as a person and as a student. At the start of my Big Picture journey, I had a huge insecurity, which was my weight/size, as I was really fat and lazy. I was just starting to go to the gym but didn’t know anything about it. Now, looking back on it, Big Picture gave me a chance to research and focus on my goal of losing weight. Now, I am down 33kg and feel so much healthier. I am also going to the gym 6 times a week and doing cardio. I think some of the things that I learned about myself are that I have gotten a lot more resilient throughout Big Picture and have focused on myself a lot more. It also helped me understand myself as a learner, like that I think I work better when there are a lot of people around and when the teachers are in class. Something that makes learning difficult for me is definitely getting distracted. Even though it’s super easy to fix, I still don’t try to, as I want to talk to my friends, but I know that it will benefit me a lot more if I move away.

I think I have developed a ton of employability skills from Big Picture, as it encourages you to communicate and listen to people and helps you work on your own. Some of the things that definitely helped with my employability skills would be communication, as we are always emailing, calling, or talking to other people. Next would be being able to work around certain circumstances, as some jobs require problem-solving skills. I think these skills will help greatly in the future if I am in need of work, as they show the employer that I can work well, communicate properly, and problem-solve if I need to.

I think throughout Big Picture, I have managed my out-learning pretty well, as I have managed to find an LTI that I have been with for almost a year now. I also think I hand in notes that I need to on time, and I am striving to get even more out-learning, like applying for TAFE courses, etc. One thing I think I could work on is giving more notice on whether I can come into my LTI or not, as it leaves them hanging and down a person if I tell them the day of.

One thing that helped me focus more when working on a specific task is listening to music. It helps me because I can’t hear anyone else talking and can just focus on the music and the work I am doing. While this does work sometimes, I get into conversations and just forget about listening to music and instead go into a pointless conversation that causes me to waste time that I could have used working on a project.

One of the most important things about Big Picture and being a student is finding the biggest areas to improve in, as it makes you a better person. Some of the things I would like to continue to work on would be how I communicate with others, as I usually don’t let them finish, and I am pretty loud sometimes, how I focus on/do my work, as I am usually distracted/distracting others, and how I set out my learning, as I don’t compare sources, and my sites usually look bland.

Over Big Picture, I actually haven’t changed my interests too many times. Not to say I didn’t, though, as I did trial some other things I thought I would be interested in, but ultimately, I have had the same two passions for most of Big Picture. When I first joined Big Picture, my passions were gym and entrepreneurship. My passion for gym, though, had just started, as I only began working out a few weeks beforehand. In Term 2, I kept the same passions and didn’t really change anything about them. For Term 3, my passion for gym was finally going strong, and I was trying out new workouts and exercises. I also started liking marine life. In Term 4, it was still fitness and marine life, but we were starting to look for an internship centered around marine life. In Term 1 of Year 10, I was into fitness and animal care, and we finally found an internship that I liked. In Term 2, I started liking stocks and money as well as fitness and animal care. In Term 3, I lost the interest in money and kept the same two: fitness and animal care. Finally, for Term 4 of Year 10, my passions are still fitness and animal care, with a small side hobby of skating.

In the future, I think I will keep the same interests, although I guess you never know what will happen. My plan is to study and get my Cert 3 and 4 in fitness at TAFE so I can pursue personal training as a job. I want to be a bit different, though, and change my target clients to teenagers struggling with weight loss, as I think I could be a good person to help someone with that issue.

Overall, these past few years of Big Picture have been way better than my first two years of high school, as I have been able to work around my passions and interests and discover new things about myself. I have gotten an internship at the Bruns Gym and the Australian Seabird and Turtle Rescue and have also been accepted into a Cert 3 at TAFE. I think that I have grown a ton as a person, as when I first joined Big Picture, I was 120 kg, unproductive, and lazy. Now I am 87 kg, healthier, and happier.