Going into high school, there were a lot of things about it that were still unknown to me, which meant I had a lot of expectations going in, many resembling the movie experience. Unsurprisingly, those expectations weren’t met, but although Gleneagle isn’t a scene out of High School Musical, grade 9 has been blast. 

Something I had been looking forward to was the new type of schedule. I used to take all of my classes at once in middle school, but now that I’m in high school, I just have to focus on four, which is much more manageable. Something I hadn’t expected, however, was to not know anyone in any of my classes. Im not a very social person so having to meet new people was daunting and was a skill I had to keep working on throughout term one and two. And although it was scary or awkward at times, I’ve made so many new friends over the course of the year which I am grateful for. 

Back in middle school, my class was very involved with technology, we brought our own laptops and almost everything was online. There wasn’t much of a change for me going into highs school regarding technology usage except for digital literacy. With digital literacy, it’s really been a course that has forced me to be aware of my device usage, habits and the different ways to use media which I hadn’t known before. 

A core-competency I‘ve always been proficient in has been communication. It’s a very valuable tool that has aided me in many group projects from a range of subjects. Recently in Socials, we had the project of re-enacting the Act of Confederation in Canada, with each table group being a different province. This required us to present our ideas in an orderly way to the class and we achieved that by sharing and developing ideas within our group.

Like I mentioned before, making new friends was daunting, especially since I knew no one from my classes. Thats why I believe I‘ve improved my Social Responsibility core-competency the most this year. I’ve built so many new relationships and have gone out of my social comfort zone in ways I hadn’t been able to do in middle school. In addition to that, I joined the green team, which focuses on environmental justice and cleaning up our local trails. I got to contribute to my community and find new ways to care for the environment which is another important aspect of Social Responsibility.