PILOT PORTFOLIO

SEMESTER 2 NARRATIVE

The pilot program has been such an amazing experience and I am so grateful I was able to be in  it. After hating my classes for a year, I suddenly feel excited about school again. The community was so  welcoming and supportive from the very first seminar. While we are all so different, over the course of this year I have come to feel so connected to everyone in the room.  I come into the pilot room every morning and although sometimes I feel frustrated or overwhelmed  or entirely unmotivated  I never regret choosing independent learning. 

The first project I was able to complete  was my essay, “Archetypes in Fairy Tales”.  “I started by researching the twelve commonly known archetypes based on the work of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung (the Hero, the Lover, the Magician, the Sage, the Rebel, the Explorer, the Creator, the Ruler, the Innocent, the Everyman, the Caregiver and the Jester). After getting a sense of the characteristics, I searched a few books of fairy tales to identify the archetypes embodied by their characters. My essay looked at three well known fairy tales (Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, and The Little Mermaid) and how the archetypes representing the characters change over the course of the story.” - (Semester 1 narrative)  This project wasn’t specifically for any standards, but before I started I had just been reading some random fairy tales with no idea for a project, and it helped me actually start working. 

After this project I continued with fairytales but this time it was specifically for my global studies work. “I began with researching the Grimm brothers and their lives, for the historical aspect of the project,  but in my essay, ("The Grimm Brothers and their Fairy Tales”) I wanted to explore the effect of Disney’s film adaptations of their tales as well. In some ways The Grimm brothers and the movies based on their stories helped to preserve the folklore of Germany which might otherwise have been lost, but the fairy tales, and especially disney’s version of them reinforced sexist stereotypes, of weak and helpless heroines.” - (Semester 1 narrative) 

I had always planned on doing some creative writing in pilot, and this came in the form of a short story finished during the second semester. While I began writing during the first quarter, it took me a while to start making progress. “My original plan was to write in free verse, but contrary to my expectations, it actually constrained my writing, I was trying so hard to sound poetic, that I was avoiding the characters' thoughts and feelings, and sticking to lyrical descriptions. I did enjoy writing like that, but I didn’t feel that I could write a full story in that style. I got about 1000 words in before deciding to write in prose. I started by reformatting what I already had in free verse, but trying to translate it gave that whole section a jerky unnatural rhythm (This is something I will work on when editing.)  Normally I struggle with drafts. I try to perfect everything as I write, which burns out all my inspiration and energy. When this happens I generally end up giving up on my idea, bored and tired by the story. This time I feel that I have definitely improved. I am much more comfortable with writing a messy draft first and editing later, both in my short story and in my essays. I don’t reread my work or even fix typos now, I just write.” - (Semester 1 narrative)  

While I was writing this story, me and my friend/fellow pilot student Mayla were reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders. His book looks at seven Russian short stories, and in analyzing them, he discusses the art of writing. I learned a lot from this book, and I’ve tried to put as much of it as I can into my writing and editing as I work on my own short story. 

“Another opportunity I took this fall was working with VYCC (Vermont Youth Conservation Corps). Every Thursday I  worked with our two leaders, and a group of other students  for the first half of the school day (Full days were also an option and there were a few days that I participated in both the morning and and afternoon sessions). We started our time with trail work maintaining one of U32’s trails. After that, we helped with the Cross Vermont Trail, working on building a bridge, adding a retaining wall at the base of a railing, and hauling pipes to their locations on the trail. We also planted saplings with the  Winooski Natural Resources District and Friends of the Mad River. We planted several varieties of trees along rivers, to strengthen the riparian buffer which helps with erosion water quality and habitat. While my work with VYCC didn’t end up counting towards any of my science standards, as I had hoped it would, it was a really great experience, and I learned a lot about trail building and conservation, as well as getting to spend time outdoors!” - (Semester 1 narrative) I learned a lot from VYCC, both about conservation work and working on a crew, and this summer I am also participating in another of their programs, MYCC. 

These were the main projects I worked on during the first semester, however I also started some small projects that ended up losing momentum. “I began reading Silent Spring, by Raechel Carson, during the first quarter, to learn about the history of pesticide use in the United States. However I never finished the book, I got distracted by other projects and never made much progress with this one, but I do want to finish the book this next semester, as well as learn about pesticides today.” - (Semester 1 narrative) I never did complete the book or the project, although I do want to finish Silent Spring for the sake of reading it. The other project I started was a graphic novel inspired by the little mermaid. While it’s still one of my goals to illustrate a graphic novel, ultimately it would’ve taken a huge chunk of my time in pilot if I were to actually complete it. 

Independent learning was entirely new to me when I started in pilot, and many parts were hard and very stressful. But by the second semester I felt much more comfortable with personalized learning, and I fell into some good rhythms with my work. 

After reading Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Mayla and I were excited to discuss other books, and experience other opinions and advice on writing. Mayla suggested Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. We read several chapters per week, before meeting, discussing and taking notes. There are not as many opportunities for collaboration in pilot, and it has been amazing to work with Mayla this year. She has kept me accountable in my reading and shared insightful ideas. While I read Bird by Bird to improve my writing, I also wanted to read fiction. In 8th grade I read a graphic novel version of The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. This year I wanted to read the original novel. It was very intense, but also a really good book, and Margaret Atwood’s writing is captivating. I did not do a project on this book, but I answered a list of questions about the book. I also enjoy reading/listening to audiobooks on my own time and have a list of everything I’ve read this year. 

This year, I wanted to work on PE outside of school. In the fall I ran cross country at school, practicing 5 days a week and racing on Saturdays. It was very intense but it also made me feel really strong. After the season ended my PE work slowed down a bit. I did some cross country skiing in the woods around my house, but not as much as I had planned to. After the winter break, the musicals started and although I was just in the ensemble we had a lot of big dance numbers. After two hour rehearsals it was definitely a workout. I didn’t want to join highschool track this spring. After cross country I wasn’t ready for another intense season, but I did want to keep running. I an=m not great at motivating myself to run by myself, it’s easy for me to just walk when I get tired if there is no one holding me accountable, so I decided to help coach middle school track.  During some practices I just participated in the same workout as the middle schoolers, but on some days I led the mid distance on runs. In addition to these activities, I also wanted to learn about injury prevention. Especially in cross country, many of my teammates got injured from overuse and were unable to run for large sections of the season.  I learned some stretches from my coaches during cross country and track, and I read some chapters of Roar, by Selene Yeager and Stacy T. Sims, as well. 

 After finishing two projects around fairy tales during the first semester, I wanted to learn about a different subject for my next global studies investigation. So I went in a completely different direction, diving into conservation in Vermont. While looking for interesting stories on species native to Vermont, I found some articles about loons. While they are currently doing pretty well, loons were endangered in the past, and this was primarily due to lead poisoning. While searching the bottom of ponds for small pebbles for their gizzards, loons would swallow lead fishing gear. The lead from just one sinker was enough to kill them. Laws banning some sizes of lead sinkers as well as the work of conservationists helped save the loons, but lead fishing gear still affects loons and other wildlife today. While learning about them, I got the chance to email questions to Vermont Fish and Wildlife who sent me to Rosalind Renfrew, a biologist who helped to protect loon nests! I didn’t want to write another essay for this project so I made a poster which I printed out and laminated. A few days ago I emailed a curtis pond comity to inquire about hanging up my poster to raise awareness about this issue. 

Riparian buffers are areas of trees, shrubs and other vegetation growing near bodies of water. The root systems of the trees stabilize the soil and absorb excess water, playing a huge role in preventing erosion. During my time with VYCC, we spent two days planting trees to strengthen these riparian zones. Ever since working on that I have thought occasionally about doing a project around riparian buffers, but the chance never really came up in my work. During the second semester I switched to pilot science with one earth science proficiency still to get. I needed to plan an experiment. My content advisor sent me a link with ideas for experiments, and while looking through them, I found an experiment on how plants affect erosion. I was able to use what I learned from VYCC and a few articles, to plan an experiment that would demonstrate on a smaller level how plants affect soil erosion. I planted mizuna and grass seeds in small foil tins, and after letting them grow I poured water over them, comparing how the erosion differed from the tins with seedlings and the ones with only soil. I have not finished this experiment but I am hoping I can complete it by the end of the school year. Getting science proficiencies through pilot is harder than other subjects, and there is a lot less room to learn in different ways. This experiment has been more stressful than I would like, but it has still been an interesting project.  

I have written poetry for the past few years. I'll go outside and write a haiku about spring, or a poem about clouds, I’ll write when I’m feeling particularly inspired or depressed or…. Poetry-ey, but they are few and far between. This year, for the first time, I committed to writing more than one or two poems, but it's hard for me to write when I'm not inspired without it turning into pretty sounding tree descriptions. However when I do have an idea, when my emotions are on the tip of my tongue, fully prepared to fall into words, I write poems easily, all i have to do is listen for the words that are already coming. I also started to edit my poems this year, and I have realized that I really enjoy it. Because the words are coming so fast as I write, I don’t feel like I have the time to play around with words and order. But when I come back and edit, I can have fun with my poems, I can arrange them in interesting unique patterns, I can shape the lines, and find new meanings. The poems I have written this year are very personal and anoy=ther struggle has been finding the right ones to share with teachers. I may love how the poem turned out, but when all my emotions are laid out on the paper I don’t want to share it with anyone else. Ultimately I have ended up with two google docs, one in my shared drive with polished poems, with words I can share with the world, and another doc, which is a total tangled  disaster of half finished sentences and broken hearts.

I finished my short story, Shadows and Starlight, during the first semester but during the second, I had to edit it. I came into the editing process much more confident than I should’ve been, thinking it would only take a few weeks. But it turned out to be much harder than I expected. While I had written several short stories before pilot, I had never tried to edit them. By the time I finished the first draft, if I finished the first draft, I was thoroughly sick of the whole story and never wanted to read it again. I had edited essays many times, but never fiction, so I didn’t really know how to start. The first third of the story was pretty problematic, it was the section I had transferred from verse to pros, and a lot of the writing felt jerky. So I started by deleting whole paragraphs and rewriting them. This felt more enjoyable because I was actually writing instead of reading through the story over and over again, but after doing this for a few weeks, I was burnt out. Rewriting took much longer than I expected and I did not want to continue like that for the whole story. So I switched my editing style. I read through paragraphs and changed the sentences that needed work. This was much faster, but it got boring and there was A LOT of procrastinating involved. While editing was very frustrating and took much longer than I had hoped, I have to remember that this is a learning experience. I was editing my creative writing for the first time and it should not be as easy as editing an essay, something that I’ve done multiple times this year. This story was somewhat of a milestone for me, not only was it my first time editing my creative writing, but it was the longest draft I have finished, and the first of my stories that I have really felt proud of. 

I couldn’t have done everything I did this year without my mentor Sayward Scoonmaker. She has been so amazing to work with and has given me such insightful feedback on all my work, from poetry to essays. Everytime I start a new project, she has sent me great resources and supported me with anything I need help on. It can’t be fun to help a highschooler sight sources, but when I needed directions for it, she was happy to work with me. She has encouraged me the whole way with Shadows and Starlight, always leaving great feedback, she has been a huge part of that story. When I started exploring poetry she sent me links to poetry, and showed me new formats. I am so grateful that I got to work with sayward this year. 

I have thought a few times about painting a mural at U32 and the chance to do this came a few weeks ago. Amy challenged us to find a new way of showing work, and I immediately wanted to paint a mural. After talking to the librarians, I sketched a few ideas and then started painting the entryway to the library. I am hoping it will brighten student’s days as they walk into the library.  

I set a lot of unrealistic expectations at the beginning of the year, and I planned a lot of projects that I never even started. However I think this was part of figuring out independent learning for myself. I ended up spending much longer on projects than I originally planned, but I think that is part of being your own teacher. It does take longer. 

“I want to study folklore and mythology from around the world, creative writing (I want to write a novel/book of short stories), and many mediums of art. I also want to learn about endangered species and Climate change. I will also do VYCC” -(learning plan) this is what I wrote in my learning plan at the very beginning of the year. My expectations were very high for my first year of independent learning, and obviously I did not get to everything, but in a way I touched on all the ideas from my initial brainstorm. While I did not write a novel and I did not write several short stories, I did write one. Similarly, I did study fairytales, but I didn’t end up learning about folklore from multiple areas of the world. I learned about loons and conservation, but I didn’t do a project around climate change as I planned. I did all my goals, just not in the way or on the scale I thought I would. I’ve noticed this in my personality as well. Outside of school I plan huge paintings that I never even start and draft novels in my head and never write further than the first few pages. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I would rather have my dreams be too big than too small. I just need to recognize this tendency in myself and in cases like learning plans, try to set more achievable goals.   

Because I had such big plans it has been disappointing to realize that I can’t do everything planned. While being in pilot has given me much more freedom, I still have to be thinking more than I want to about the proficiencies I have and the ones I still need to get. I had also hoped I’d make more art being in pilot, but it never really worked out when I tried to incorporate it into my schedule. I tried a few times to plan a day every week dedicated to painting, but I only did it a few times. But I have been able to add some art into projects. When making my poster on loons, I spent a few days working on a watercolor background. However, after the first quarter, I have done a lot of creative writing. I wrote some poems, and after editing a few of them, I like how they turned out, and although it was a frustrating and very long process, I am really proud of my finished short story.  

I am so excited that I have the opportunity to do this again next year. I don’t want to make any concrete plans and I’m sure that even if I tried to, they would change, but I have some ideas for projects I want to try. I took pottery 1 this year, and I loved working with clay. I have always loved drawing but working three-dimensionally has been so cool. My neighbor up the street is a potter and when I toured her studio she mentioned that she might be open to letting me do some sort of work trade to use her studio. I think it would be a really amazing experience to work with someone who does pottery for a living and see what that is like. I want to continue with expressive writing, hopefully writing more poetry and some short stories. It might be too big of a goal, but if I stay in pilot for three more years I might even be able to write a novel in the course of my time at U32. I would love to learn more about climate change and conservation, and continuing with folklore I want to learn about mythology from around the world. Or maybe I will try something completely different like the history of metal work! 

Documentation is a huge part of pilot. Without being in class every day our content advisors have to base most of our work solely on what we put in our folders or portfolios. I am not an organized person, my ideas are scattered, my desk is scattered…. with a bunch of papers, and books, and pencils, and sewer rat cups, and poptart wrappers, and drawings, and my jacket, and bags, and half a muffin, and also Mayla’s stuff. Essentially I am not great at documentation unless I set my mind to it. At the beginning of the year I was pretty good with my documentation folders because I was thinking a lot about it, but when I got more comfortable with pilotI started to forget about keeping track of my progress. Just last week I had to add several docs to my pilot shared drive that I had completely forgotten about. During the second and third quarter I was using checklists each week. They worked well for a little while but eventually they got messier and messier and I stopped using them. Knowing what I have done in pilot is very important, so I need to figure out the best way for me to do that. 

Similarly I was on top of my journals for a little while, but by the end of the school year I am barely writing them. That said, I have been trying to be better about writing, because when I do  journal, I feel like I am actually able to reflect on my work. This year, for the first time I really think about my work and my learning. Writing journals or narratives isn’t always fun, but the self awareness and reflection that comes from it is important. 

When I think back on my year in pilot, so much of personalized learning, at least for me, is balance. The balance between challenging myself, and working on projects I enjoy, between independent and alone, between letting go of projects that don’t feel exciting and interesting anymore, and perseverance even when it doesn’t feel fun. It’s always changing and part of being a learner is figuring these balances out. I'll never find the perfect answer, but I have started to figure it out this year and I think the more I explore personalized learning, the more I will learn about this part of myself.

I have started a few projects this year that I never finished. The effect of DDT on bald eagles would have been really interesting to learn more about, but by letting go of it for this year I was able to explore other topics that I was more excited about at the moment. Similarly, I still would love to write a graphic novel at some point, but working on it this year would have sacrificed a lot of time. However, giving up is certainly not the answer for everything. If I had stopped working on my short story all of the numerous times I didn’t feel like writing, I would never have finished editing, or even the first draft.  

When I started with the pilot I had a lot of big ideas for creative writing, I wanted to write several short stories, I wanted to make a past story into a full length novel. However, during the first quarter I barely wrote at all. I was obsessed with writing essays and reading confusing articles because the less I enjoyed something the more it felt like school work, and the more I felt like I was succeeding in pilot. And this pushed me away from the things I enjoyed, from some of the reasons I wanted to join the program in the first place, creative writing and art. But at the same time If I only do the projects I am comfortable with, the things I already know a lot about, I’m not learning. Growth flourishes from discomfort. Over the course of the year I have started to figure out this delicate balance. I wrote two essays and read dense articles, but I also finished a twenty page story, wrote poetry, and started a mural in the library. 

There will always be hard parts in independent learning, there will always be difficult balances, but I am so glad I got to join the pilot program. It  has let me see school in a whole different way this year. I have studied subjects that interest me, I have finished a story, explored poetry, worked with an amazing mentor, and been surrounded by supportive and interesting people everyday. I can not imagine going back to normal school after this experience.