In my grade 11 year, I had the opportunity to teach three different lessons using the optimal learning model, with 12 different classes and 190 students in kindergarten and grades one, two and three in Louis Riel school division and St. James-Assiniboia school division. Prior to making my book, I taught a lesson where students created their dream characters based on what they learned about character development and using their imaginations. I then digitized every student’s drawing, removed the backgrounds, and added them in as the characters you see in my book. During the development stages, I made sure to receive feedback from the students as I wanted to include them in my overall creation. Lastly, I held a celebration lesson where we read the final book together. Along with my book, I also filmed and edited a YouTube book reading to make it easy and accessible during the remote learning period. That way, everyone can take part in making our world a better place! My goal is that the students will see their dream characters in a book, and this will motivate them to make a difference in the world and put an end to climate change. After ten rounds of receiving feedback and making changes, I was finally ready to print my book!

After an inspirational grade 11 semester I decided I would be continuing to grow my program with a completely new idea. I am working with over 600 students across Winnipeg, on a large community outreach project. I am built and donated six elevated wooden garden boxes and teaching a grade three science curriculum outcome. I crafted lesson plans, applied for donations and grants, and started building my garden boxes. I received a donation of lumber for the eight garden boxes from McMunn and Yates Building Supplies. After reaching out to many elementary schools and receiving overwhelming interest in joining my project, I decided on 12 classes. I am working with six schools and their grades one, two, three and four classes. My project teaches the entire grade 3 science and biology unit: “Growth and changes in plants.” My afternoons at Propel were spent scheduling, responding to project inquiries, and building my garden boxes In June, I delivered the hand built planter boxes, and the students will had the opportunity to plant the gardens. I am so grateful for all the support from teachers, mentors, and peers. As well as receiving the Manitoba Teachers society $1000 project grant. This project not only impacts the current students but will also impact future students. I am so excited to see my ideas and projects come to life to impact so many young people around me. I am leaving these students with a sense of empowerment.

My goal is that every student makes a difference!

In the early stages of my projects, some people were hesitant about whether I would be able to accomplish all my goals and achieve the desired quality with the time I had. I spent many meetings with my teachers talking about the Time, Quality, Quantity triangle. I have always strived to accomplish and achieve everything I set out for myself, and I was not about to let time dictate whether I achieved my goals. From the beginning, I knew I would need to use class time and my own time; this was not a problem for me as I absolutely love my projects! One of the first challenges I overcame in my first year, was that I would not be able to physically go into classes and engage with the students participating in my lessons. This was luckily resolved in the second year, where scheduling and time management became a daunting task to overcome. I went through many stages of developing a lesson plan that would engage a young audience. I quickly realized that talking and explaining was not going to captivate my audience, so I decided to incorporate screen sharing into my lesson as well as sharing circles and interactive dances. I received many complimentary and encouraging emails from the teachers about how much the students loved the lessons. One of my favorite moments was in our second lesson a student said to me, “you inspire me to be a better person, I can’t wait to grow up like you.”

The biggest challenge the first semester came towards the end; we were now all in Remote Learning and I was using Adobe InDesign for the very first time. I knew this was going to be a learning curve, but I did not realize how big of a learning curve this would be. The first time I transferred my documents to InDesign, I ran into a variety of resolution problems. Thankfully, my teacher Mr. Hansen spent time in a Teams call with me working out the technical problems. My second semester most my challenges came towards the middle when I would be scheduling six to ten lessons in a day. I asked my friends and peers for their feedback.

The generosity and encouragement from my friends, teacher and mentors gave me the opportunity to take my project to the next level and achieve a new set of goals. With a strong work ethic, a positive attitude, and support from the people around me, there were no challenges I couldn’t overcome.