Year 10

Year 10 is a brand new clean start; new projects and assignments amd a new atmosphere. Year 10 is the year that begins to determine everyone's future, passion and career paths. For me, the commencement of year 10 was overwhelming. I felt as if time went by so quickly, and now I'm here about to start my personal project journey officially. Every morning we have 10 minutes of morning advisory; usually, we review what's important and urgent on the student bulletin and answer interactive padlet questions. How I feel about the morning advisory varies depending on how I am that day. It is, however, an excellent way to socialize with my homeroom class. Friendships during HBL and offline school are different; the main difference is that it is difficult for us to interact directly during HBL. I have learned that reaching out to people I haven't worked with is an excellent way of building a connection as this allows me to develop a relationship with people I haven't gotten a chance to talk to. The interactive padlets provided in advisory/extended advisory provide an opportunity for us to share ideas and possibly find someone else with the same common interest. The teachers are very patient and down-to-earth; they show support by always being available during OH sessions to clarify instructions, for those who need further explanation. They also ask whether we understand the topic explained to ensure that everyone gets the correct information. Visual Arts is currently the subject I'm most enthusiastic about. I'm a very artistically inclined person, so the visual arts class is delightful for me. This year I got to choose a topic I'm eager about and have been given the opportunity to dive deeper into art pieces embodying the very issue I decided on. Eventually, everyone in the class can make our own pieces that define the topic we chose. Not only am I able to pick an issue I'm passionate about, but I can also connect this visual arts project with my personal project.

Personal Project is the big project of the year; every year 10 student gets to showcase their interest through imaginative approaches. Everyone has been briefed regarding PP since the last academic year in year 9. So far, all students have received their PP supervisor and are asked to start contacting them. I personally already wrote various entries in my personal project journal ever since year 9; I gathered all the notes that I took from all the myp core meetings. I also began to brainstorm more about connecting my PP and SA and creating a finalized project name and a logo throughout the summer.

The start of Year 10 went pretty smoothly; teachers were welcoming and informative with class expectations. Throughout the week, I slowly received different amounts of tasks and assignments from my teachers. It wasn’t all compact at once, the deadlines were spread out, the work wasn't too challenging either.

My advisory teacher, Pak Tommie, would ask us interesting questions every morning for us to answer. I always look forward to that because I love looking at my classmate's responses and how enthusiastic Pak Tommie gets by reading them.

The first few days of school, Ibu Poppy provided a Whatsapp group chat where it contains only Year 10 students. In there, we can reach out for help from students and classmates if you don’t feel comfortable asking an adult. I reached out for help from three students and that's how I made friends. I can also build friendships among my classmates through group work.

My teachers recently did a check up meeting with new students. They asked us how the school year has been going for us, if we are struggling with anything, and is there anything they can improve on. I think it is important for us, students, to speak up so it’ll be easier for the teacher to provide the help that we need. For instance, I filled out this weekly check up google form where we basically put how we feel throughout the week, after that, we get an option if we need help. I knew that I was feeling anxious about the Personal Project since I am very much new to IB School therefore I asked for help. It can be terrifying sometimes but the teachers are very comforting and just know you can always talk to them about anything.

I am currently enjoying all the lessons in my classes. In art class, we are trying to reinterpret artists' work of art in which we are just getting started, for that reason, we haven't really created anything yet.

In all honesty, I have mostly been brainstorming. I haven’t really started creating my product yet because I want to be sure that I have a secure plan of how it's going to turn out. Right now I am working on my PP journal since I need to be documenting every move and idea that pops up in my head.

Being in an IB school, I learned to have time management because of how much work I’ll be receiving and I need to set my priorities correctly. I would say my strength is working collaboratively with my classmates and in group work. I love interacting with people and sharing ideas with them, it makes me see different perspectives of people’s knowledge. I mentioned before how you need to have time management, that is very much true and important. I struggle a lot with procrastination; I would always try to finish my work on the same day it is due, therefore, doing my work straight away is probably my weakness. I am currently improving on having a better routine by disciplining myself, slowly and surely I’ll end up having a good habit.

At the start of year 10, I felt a mix of anxiousness and excitement as usual every first day of school. I didn’t spend much time during the holidays to refine my PP idea so I was still quite nervous of the concept. It was sort of reassuring to have basically the same class as last year so we are all already familiar with each other.

I really enjoy the emphasis on social participation during advisory. We are always asked to speak about ourselves to our peers with everyone having a fair chance to speak about their interests

I think the only way you can build a strong friendship among classmates is to utilize all the opportunities you get to meet others in tasks to also use it as a way to speak and share interests with others. Then from there you can contact each other on other forms of social media for easier access.

I think the teachers can support us by understanding when and how much work we are willing to do in class as often when a teacher puts in too much time or too little meeting time, we often find ourselves not focusing on our lessons.

The lessons I enjoy most are ones where the teacher provides a friendly and supportive environment while still teaching the lessons effectively. Students are more inclined to listen to teachers they enjoy, so having a nice environment helps greatly with productivity. This can be done by letting students interact with each other or the teacher more often, allowing us to speak about our interests and also get to know other students and the teacher more.

For my PP, I've been a bit behind sometimes on the process of journal work since I don’t really enjoy writing a lot most of the time, and I am not the biggest fan of documentation so I sometimes do the process journal in big batches instead of one at a time. but I’ve been working on my product of learning concept art quite often. I am quite passionate about my topic so I’ve been working on it not only to learn but as a hobby to spend my time on.

(My process journal & an example of my concept art)

I think the things I need to work on are probably my social and collaborative skills. I’ve always had issues by having an individualistic mindset, it’s made it difficult for me to get to know others and express myself more outwardly to more people. I need to change how I think about myself so that I can be a more open and sociable person. I think that my strengths are my thinking and planning skills as well as my public speaking skills. I’m usually not afraid to present and speak up when I feel like what I say is of value to others. I also appreciate honesty and criticism since it helps me to understand what I need to improve on as a person.

My experience starting Year 10 was a mix of excitement and fear because I was going to a school where I don’t know anyone. But it was fine because the teachers and students are very friendly.

An interesting thing about morning advisory is that I can meet with my advisory teachers and classmates. We listen to announcements and build friendships by being nice to each other and talking about shared interests. So far I have found that my teachers are very easy to contact even though we are doing online lessons.

My favorite lesson is film class. It's very interesting because I have a personal interest in movies.

For PP, I am making the success criteria right now. After that, I record everything I have done inside my personal journal. I don’t have a picture yet

My strengths are that I can socialize with people easily, I can follow class and it’s been fun. My weaknesses are that I can’t focus easily, I get distracted a lot. I need to improve on my focus.