Managing Effectively

My Understanding

To me, Managing Effectively means managing your time, effort, and work to complete a goal. You take a large assignment or project and break it up into smaller, easier-to-manage steps. For each step you make, you could also add a deadline for it to make sure that you are not falling behind. 

Managing Effectively also means having a neat workspace. If your workspace is messy, it will be difficult to find anything, such as some paper or a pencil. A neat workspace will also be able to help your mind focus, leading you to complete your assignment faster. The feeling of being overwhelmed is something that can stress your learning and output, so reducing the chance of that stress can be the difference between a rushed assignment and a quality product. 

One of the most important parts of Managing Effectively is feedback. When planning out a project and separating time for each phase, you must always reserve some time for feedback. Feedback is important because it helps make your work better and with much higher quality. Feedback should be kind, specific, and helpful. 

What Managing Effectively doesn’t look like is when someone procrastinates and puts off everything until the last minute. They have a messy workspace, low-quality work, and don’t manage their time well, which can lead to not being able to complete the work in the first place. To me, it’s a balance that you have to obtain to get the highest quality outcome. 

My Growth

In 6th grade, I understood Managing Effectively pretty well. I understood how to break down problems and/or assignments into more efficient steps, had a neat workspace (more or less), and met most of the deadlines I set for myself. The only part that I was confused about was the feedback because I don't think that my elementary school used feedback; we just turned in assignments as they were. 

Throughout this school year, I feel that I have not shown a huge growth in Managing Effectively, but every time I complete an assignment or break a problem into chunks, I improve in this skill. I have begun to recognize moments of Managing Effectively, and I have asked for feedback on my work many, many times, in other classes as well as EQS. I ask for feedback whenever I am about to pass a step or phase in my project. For example, in art, I ask for feedback when I finish my designing, sketching, and painting phases. 

In the future, I can use this skill to live an organized, focused, and not so stressed life. My workspace will be organized so my mind is clear and concentrated, and if I have a large task that can be overwhelming, I can just break it down into smaller, softer steps. This will help me to not be as intimidated by big assignments where a lot of the time, I slack off (and talk with friends) instead of doing the actual assignment, leading me to turn in poor-quality work (a counter example of Managing Effectively). This is a big part where I can continue to grow in this skill. I can also use feedback to improve my work in high school, college, and any future job I may have. 

Exemplary Project

The project I am going to reflect on is my 7th-grade EQS Food Gardens. I was in the EQS Aina and People, with Ms. Rita and Mr. Josh. My EQS explored the Essential Question: “How can we connect to Aina and how can we Malama?” 

The main thing we did in EQS Aina and People is grow gardens. I was in the Food Group, where we grew food plants. We had multiple garden beds, full of plants we could eat and distribute among our community. We grew beans, beets, kale, basil, green onions, tomatoes, arugula, potatoes, different types of lettuce, and parsley, amongst others. 

We maintain the gardens by watering, trimming, weeding, transplanting, and harvesting the plants. We also pulled out dead plants and sprayed all of our plants with neem oil, which is a natural organic pesticide. Caring for the garden is what we do in our time outside, besides Kilo. 

Every Monday and Friday, before caring for the gardens, we kilo for about 5-10 minutes. Kilo is where we use the art of observation and our five senses to observe the area we are in with more depth. Kiloing is important because when we do this, we get to observe things, and when we observe, we get to notice little things we may not have noticed before. When kiloing, we noticed how some of the leaves that were being eaten by bugs had fewer holes in them because of the neem oil we used. 

For the first part of the project, we mainly worked on brainstorming and didn’t really go outside and garden. Whenever we did go outside, we would usually only water and weed; we would not trim plants, pull out dead ones, or transplant them because we did not really know what to do. So we created a Project Proposal, which explains our project goal, what plants we are growing, the problems, the solutions, and more. We put everything that relates or connects to our project, like our Driving Questions and our Essential Question, in the slideshow. Below are some photos of our “Extra Plant Info” slides. 

In Quarter 4, over halfway through the project, we did a lot more research. One of the first things we did when we were inside was learning about credible sources. We had to fill out a document with three credible sources with information relating to our project. A credible source is “written by authors respected in their fields of study,” and the author needs to be “an expert in their field.”Each person in our group had to find around 3 credible sources with information on how to grow a sustainable garden. Below is a photo of my first credible source and the information I got from it.  

Towards the end of the school year, we had exhibitions. We all decided to make pasta with some ingredients from our garden! I was in the food group, where we gave out some of the pasta. The type of pasta we wanted to make was a Creamy Garlic one. Some of the ingredients, such as the basil, came from our gardens. We managed to make the pasta in one EQS period, which is twice as fast as the last time we made it. It was nice and garlicky, and we gave it out to the SEEQS community on Exhibitions in these small cups with a couple bitefulls of our pasta. I had a script, and every now and then I changed it up a bit, but it was basically: 

The pasta was a BIG hit. Lots of people came, and towards the end of the exhibition, we ran out. We ended up using two whole bags of pasta! 

Connnection to Managing Effectively 

My EQS Food Gardens represent Managing Effectively because we only had a couple of months to grow a whole garden that can feed a community. We had to Manage Effectively to make sure that we had some plants to “show off” for exhibitions. To do this, we would make a plan for what we wanted to do for a specific day. We could plant some seeds one day and weed and water for another. When we completed everything we wanted to do, we successfully Managed Effectively. 

One day our plan was to weed and water the plants. However, we also wanted to put some neem oil on the plants to protect them because the leaves of our plants were being eaten by bugs. We were planning on spraying all the plants with the pesticide in one day, but it actually took around 3 days before we finished. This is a counter-example of Managing Effectively. 

Another time I did not Manage Effectively is when I was painting a sign for EQS Exhibitions with my friends, Priscilla (7th grade) and Eve (6th grade). The sign was for our food gardens, and it just said those two words (food gardens), with some decorative vegetables on one side. The painting should only have taken three days or so, but it actually took over a week to complete. In the future, I could keep my workspace a little more neat, and do my best to make sure that I have no late cards (the ssr/assignment was actually two days late, so I had to work harder, starting now). 

For the pasta, we had to Manage Effectively because we had a little amount of time to cook the food. We had one EQS period, but we successfully Managed Effectively when we finished making it on time. When we did a trial run a couple weeks before exhibitions, we did not really Manage Effectively that well, because we were super slow and it took two class periods to complete making the pasta. We also asked for lots of feedback while we were cooking the pasta and finishing. Each person in our group would taste it, along with a couple teachers, and they would each give their opinion. We would change the pasta if enough people agreed on something. 

  Because I felt that I Managed Effectively pretty well that semester (turning in assignments on time, making the pasta, etc.), my self reflection was a Succeeding.