Habits of Heart and Mind Rubric Reflection

Integrity is a very important habit of heart and mind. It can mean always doing the right thing, even when no one's watching, but lately I have understood it to mean doing the right thing and asking for nothing in return, but just doing it for the sake of being kind. My goal for integrity was to act appropriately with no violations of school norms. My honest opinion on the grade that I deserve based on how I fulfilled this goal is a meets. I think that I did pretty well in most parts of this goal because I followed school rules, and went without a processing sheet for the whole semester. Acting appropriately can also be a part of my respect goal. It can include things like focusing in class, not having side conversations, listening with eyes and ears, etc. The other parts of integrity I have shown have been in my projects, which I will be using as evidence for how I have shown integrity. My first piece of evidence as to how I have grown in integrity is my Chemical Theater exhibition and my argumentative research paper, or, ARP. In the Chemical Theater exhibition, lots of people were generating their scripts with AI. I’m willing to admit that I did as well. I didn’t think that I would write a script that was creative enough, informational enough, or just simply good enough for when we actually presented. I figured no one would notice, and that it was ok since everyone else was doing it. I was right when I said no one would know, however it was not ok and was a terrible representation of integrity. Later on in the year, when we wrote our argumentative research papers, again, many people were generating their essays with AI. I considered this, but later I decided to just do it myself, since it was important that I did the work myself, and it was a good representation of morals and integrity when lots of other people were doing it. This shows that I have grown immensely, from cheating without understanding what I did wrong, to recognizing when something is showing bad integrity and deciding to be honest. Another example of evidence is from math. We used to get a lot of homework in accelerated math. I looked up my answers on google or asked Alexa. This hurt no one but myself, because I wasn’t learning anything, Google was doing my work for me. As the year went on, I noticed that I was having more trouble on tests and was scoring lower. This also downgraded my demonstration of integrity, since I was blatantly lying to my teachers saying that I did the work myself. They never found out that I didn’t, and back then I wouldn’t care as long as my teachers didn’t know. Now I can recognize when I am doing something that is a poor representation of the habits of heart and mind, and I can stop myself without needing guidance from a teacher. My integrity is more than just schoolwork though, it represents impact. When you show integrity, you demonstrate positive impacts. If someone is constantly lying, they can create a negative impact on their reputation and relationships. Personally, I think many people can see my growth in integrity through my academic examples.

My definition of effort is always trying your best especially when things get hard. My goal for effort was to see my mistakes and challenges as opportunities for growth. Immediately when reflecting on this goal I knew I had not accomplished it whatsoever. I struggle very much with my confidence and self-esteem in extracurricular activities and academics. I’m what my mother likes to call a perfectionist. I have lots of negative self-talk during sports, recitals, report cards, and presentations. It’s even worse when I do something wrong or make even one tiny mistake. I know if I had to give myself a grade it would be an approaching. I am currently working on this goal by working out problems that I have and using tactics to get rid of negative thoughts. I hope by next year I can safely say that I have grown very much towards this goal. There are other parts of effort that don’t include seeing my failures and challenges as an opportunity for growth though. For example, my anchor charts. Every anchor chart I did during our science units got me an exceeds. This was because I put in a ton of effort and creativity. I had detailed reflections and summaries, relevant and creative imagery, and legible and neat handwriting. These entries would normally take me 45 minutes to an hour each. I often hated doing this, but I was willing to in order to improve my grade and develop my understanding of these topics further. In the end, we were able to use our anchor charts as “cheat sheets” on our quizzes. Because of the effort put into these entries, I was able to easily pass these quizzes with flying colors. It also helped me on the final quiz, where we weren’t allowed to actively use our anchor charts, but because I had spent so much time on them and had studied our science topics a lot, I had a lot of knowledge about what was on the test. This proves that the amount of effort you put into something will determine whether the outcome is positive or negative. My last piece of evidence is extracurricular. In soccer, you need to be practicing at home consistently when you are at the level that most middle schoolers are at. By the end of the first semester, I had not practiced at home once, and it reflected on the field. When I started practicing at home a couple months ago, my playing improved drastically. At one of my  past tournaments, I played the best game of the season, all because I took a little extra time to dribble, juggle, and shoot. This proves that if you can make even the smallest changes in your effort and improve incredibly, think about the possibilities if you put in the effort every day. That is what I plan to do. Not just in soccer, but in homework, testing, exhibition, projects, research papers, POLs and TPOLs, recitals, etc. I want to be the best version of myself that I can be, but to do that, I have to have the best demonstration of effort that I have ever shown.

My final habit of heart and mind is refinement. Refinement is the process in which you go over your work, and make corrections so that it can be the best version that it needs to be. My goal was to actively participate in class discussions and activities. I believe that I met and exceeded this goal. Things like seminars are clearly obvious as to how I participated in the class discussions, yet even with things like silent reading, answering questions, taking notes, sharing answers for warm ups, and discussing with my table can demonstrate how I have fulfilled this goal. Refinement will always be a part of our lives, whether we’re revising a middle school essay, or completing a group project for a business you might work with in 20 years. In accelerated math, Ms. Isaak would actively give us the opportunity to refine our work and tests. We would always have test corrections that could help you get up to a meets no matter what grade you originally had. Another example of refinement was my mock trial written aspect. During the mock trial, I was a prosecution attorney.  This meant that I was using witnesses to prove Kit Carson’s guilt. In my written aspect, my witness and I had to constantly refine and go over our direct examination. We had to make it short and long enough, detailed enough, and foolproof enough. This meant constantly going back to refine our work, practice, and make changes. I also had to do this with my closing speech and cross examination. My attorney partner and I refined our cross examination very well, to the point where we ended up not only getting an exceeds on the assignment, but  also proving Kit Carson guilty of mass murder. This allowed me to actively show refinement through a project that I cared about and wanted to get a good grade on. Outside of school, things like piano also require lots of refinement. Normally, we learn about 2-3 pieces each semester. You can learn these pieces, but to be able to play them well, you have to refine them, take suggestions and criticism, practice very much, and work on small technical techniques as well. This can include practicing for an hour every day, sight reading, practicing scales, chords, arpeggios and things like that, and even listening to classical or piano music. I didn’t participate in the recital this year, yet some of the pieces I worked on were Someone Like You by Adele, the classical piece Half Asleep, and lately I have been working on a French piece called La Foule by Edith Piaf.