The use of the "common language" of the RHS Learner Profile and the Core Competencies continues to be posted and increasingly embedded in all classrooms. Throughout the 2018-2019 school year, all of our Grades 11 and 12 students were required to reflect on any two areas of their growth using the overlapping language of the RHS Learner Profile and the Core Competencies. Students completed this task electronically and were provided with descriptive feedback from teachers and administrators at our school. Grades 8-10 students will complete this process later in the school year.  The responses were thoughtful and personal.  Some examples of student reflections:

Resilient:

High school is a heavy transition period. Growing from an adolescent into an adult. Taking on more responsibilities, opportunities, and challenges are huge aspects of high school. Instead of having things taken care of for you, you begin taking care of things for yourself. You start to plan your own life more individually, and you begin to learn the crucial skill of time management. Additionally, you begin to find the order in which things in your life should be prioritized. Through the next couple years, I began to put great importance on academic assignments and tests. My discipline has improved and will continue to improve as I progress through my academic career.  However, life isn’t only about marks and numbers. Moderation is key to a balanced, healthy life. Within the past year, I’ve put importance on my physical and emotional well-being. I exercise in the Richmond High fitness room in the mornings, which gives me an energetic start to my day. I leaveenough time for proper rest, recuperation, and thoughtful reflection. Factors such as sleep and time management were not big focuses for me in the beginning of high school, but my experience has shown me how important they are in order to set myself up to succeed. Everything you put in today will always pay off tomorrow. Emotional and physical health are equally important, and I’ve learned to analyze my day-to-day life better. If one aspect of my daily life is damaging, I will alter it and do my best to create an atmosphere that is conducive to growth.

Tolerance to failure, meanwhile, is something that I have more recently needed to develop. School had been quite easy until the end of grade 10; then I decided to go into the IB program. Even in this first month, I have had to overcome the frustration of not keeping up with my teachers, using only my trust that I would get it eventually. Perseverance has already helped me to learn the basics of Kinematics in Physics, and because I persevered, I’ve been able to improve my work habits in the process. I have also had the chance to develop my endurance through oral presentations, such as a class play that I helped to write and acted in in 8th grade. By overcoming time constraints and stress, I learned a lot about myself, and about Nikola Tesla. 

I have also developed many strategies to cope with stress as I went through high school over the years including taking short, frequent breaks to give my brain some rest, deep breathing, and keeping a calendar. All these things have helped tremendously with coping with stress and I know will be useful for the rest of my life at university and eventually at a job. High school has been a great experience in teaching me how to stay healthy, set goals, regulate emotions, managing stress, and persevering in difficult situations and has equipped me with skills and techniques that I can use for the rest of my life.

Thinkers:

Over the years, I have heard the term critical thinking many times from teachers and other adults, but I do not think I understood what it means until recently. For me, it is to be able to reflect on my actions and others' actions and identify the different possibilities. At school, this skill was very helpful in my studies. Now I can look at a piece of information, and be able to identify the reliability of the information as well as continue onto research more about the topic before making any opinions or judgments. I would not have been able to realize that I was making assumptions until someone called it out to me, but because of this I was able to reflect on my actions and think of ways how I can improve myself the next time. It was because I have learned how to monitor my progress and reflect upon myself and others, I have able to grow as a person. 

Another skill is creative thinking. The difference between human and robots is humans have creative thinking and are not just following the rules. Creative thinking is an invaluable skill for high school students. It’s important because it helps students look at problems and situations from a fresh perspective. Creating thinking is a way to develop novel or unorthodox solutions that do not depend wholly on past or current solutions. It’s a way of employing strategies to clear your mind so that your thoughts and ideas can transcend what appear to be the limitations of a problem. Creative thinking is a way of moving beyond barriers. As a creative thinker, you are curious, optimistic, and imaginative. Some students first thoughts are not new thinking, but rather trying to find relevant answers from the existing knowledge base. However, if the thinking is rigid, then the creativity is gone. Creative thinking requires a certain amount of inspiration.

Throughout the school year, I have developed my critical thinking during and out of class. A recent example would be the project conducted in geography, which involves me comparing the social, economic and political aspects of the United States and Ethiopia. I was required to analyze the countries using statistics and secondary sources, during this process I learnt how to research for information and check its credibility. I looked at both countries without bias and considered ways to present my analysis through different methods, such as an infographic, a presentation or a case study. I was also able to develop my critical thinking in doing my chemistry experiment. Before the actual activity, I conducted an immense amount of research from peer-reviewed articles or scientific journals to ensure that my information is factual. I was also asked to design parts of the procedure of my experiment, I considered multiple options and consulted my teachers to come up with the most effective way of retrieving data. Then, I analysed the data I collected into tables and graphs so that I could further analyze and compare it with my hypothesis.

Responsible:     Reflective:

Reflecting on my four years in high school, I have really deepened my sense of individual responsibility. I realized that now that I’m in grade 11, I’m becoming a role model at our school. A sense of responsibility over my actions comes into play. I do everything with the purpose to put all of my effort into everything I do. The amount of work over the years has gradually increased. This demands a higher level of personal awareness and responsibility for oneself, and that my level of satisfaction for my learning, my results and my accomplishments are really controlled by me.

Since the start of January, I began bullet journalling to record my tasks and progress in lessons. The journal has provided me with a way to reflect on the mistakes and achievements I have made, as well as devise a plan to study to improve and maintain my growth.

Caring:

Being involved in many clubs and activities have helped me develop various skills...there was once a younger student who was left out of the group activity, I made sure to communicate with the person and conducted an ice breaker game so that the student feels included and everyone is participating. Adding onto that, I am an active member of Colt Ambassadors, where I help organize school-wide events that bring awareness to different issues and also provide help to staff and students. ...from my volunteer work, I feel that I have brought beneficial changes to my community by working with children, teenagers and the elderly. My experiences can help me adapt and solve difficult situations, build and connect with a diversity of individuals, and provide positive change on a local and global scale.

Communicators:

Communication is not a skill and technique that can be mastered in a matter of hours. It must be done over the span of many years, learning different ways to communicate with a wide diversity of people. As I progressed through high school, I realized that engaging with the people whom I was most unfamiliar with was extremely helpful and fun. When collaborating for school projects or study groups, the collectiveness of our group would communicate efficient ways in which we could all benefit and contribute. Communicating my thoughts, thought processes, and my ideas was also a skill that took some practicing and hard work to achieve. Whether it was writing essays or communicating through oral presentations, I was conveying my knowledge in a way that I understood it. 

Being a student is hard work and it has affected my well being, the good and the bad; but it has helped shape my perspective and outlook towards the world and myself. Also, being a student has gained me knowledge about my personality, and it also changed my attitude about self love and my personal well being. High school for me is a roller coaster ride, full of ups and downs that is still teaching me to grow as a person and to become aware of my personal being. It can also teach us to have empathy for others.  I cannot wait to explore and to see what will become after high school, and watch myself grow personally and emotionally...-