Core Competency Reflection

Personal awareness and Responsibility

Strengths:
1. I am learning to take care of myself.
In the past I felt like I lacked personal care or personal importance in the first place. I was
always focused on caring for others and my friends and their wellbeing and realized that I
lacked the attention of my own. As time passed, I convinced myself that that was just who I was
and there was no going around that. But as I began to focus more on others, I felt like I began
to lose myself, I wasn’t looking into what made me happy and didn’t do what I really wanted to
do and, in the end, I lost sight of my own personal wellbeing. Only recently did this change,
maybe it was something major that happened in my life but during the summer of 2023 I
decided that I wanted to be happy. In the short span of only a couple months I began to change
my lifestyle, go out more for myself, take care of myself and my health, but more importantly, I
surrounded myself with people who truly made me happy.

2. I use a variety of strategies to manage my personal wellbeing.

To take care of one's wellbeing seems almost broad to me, something that doesn’t really have
its definitive answer to what to do. But to me it really is finding those small things that add up,
not only do I do more things and have found more hobbies to help my mental wellbeing, but
also did I need to focus on my physical wellbeing as well. I began to put myself in the gym again,
something I was never able to be consistently on but still I pushed myself and time after time I
fell in love with that feeling, the sweat and energy pushing through every movement. In time I
felt myself progress physically but also emotionally, I felt good about myself through something
healthy.

Area of improvement:
1. I understand my decisions and actions can affect me
When I look back at my history in school throughout every assignment and every interaction, I
lacked the sense of care or importance of my education. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go into
post-secondary or peruse something after school but rather, since it wasn’t something in front
of me, I never was able to see that as a world I was living in. But only recently have I seen the
consequences of my actions where my lack of effort has now formed into the stress and worry
about being somewhere where I haven’t even looked at myself.

Social Responsibility
Strengths:
1. I value diversity, defend human rights, advocate for others, and act ethically
in all my interactions, including online
Throughout my lifetime I have met a diverse set of people, people from around the world,
people who do not exactly hold the same opinion as the next, but overall, I have seen what
makes this world a whole. Diversity is something that follows us daily and something that
benefits our lives even when people lack that same picture. But with an understanding of
diversity comes a larger understanding of people. In some cases, there are those who do not
see why a certain kind of person should be treated the same as you and me, but once you come
down to it, these people are no different from us. That is why I believe in the defense of human
rights, because we are no different and should not be treated differently

2. I can identify and appreciate different perspectives on issues and use and
evaluate strategies to resolve them
I grew up in a place where everyone's opinion mattered whether that be a good or bad thing
but with that, I have learned the nature of everyone and to respect whatever opinion someone
might hold. Everyone is different and the issues we face surrounding those people take a
different look to see solution.

Areas of improvement
1. I am aware of my community and environment and work independently and
collaborate for the benefit of others
I often struggle with the concept of being acutely aware of my community and environment
while simultaneously wanting to provide a balance between independent work and
collaborative efforts for the better of others. Finding this balance is a constant challenge, as I
aim to contribute meaning to my surroundings while honoring my individuality and values.

Critical thinking
Strengths:
1. I can analyze and make defensible judgements, draw conclusions and
consider a variety of perspectives.
It is known that I carry around my own strong opinions but doing so I can draw something
stronger with the opinion of others. When faced with an issue I am slow to act not because I do
not know what to do but because I want to be sure what I am doing is seen as the right thing in
my eyes. When given multiple sides I can decipher the rights and wrongs between each party
and from there draw conclusions. I understand that different people have different
perspectives and with that I want to understand everyone equally rather than coming to
something that is simply untrue.

2. I can analyze and critique my work and my learning

Throughout school I wasn’t a strong or quick learner but found a strength in fixing my mistakes.
I only came to realize this during my tenth year of school in an English class that I dread. English
were one of my weaker subjects and I walked into class knowing this but soon I realized that it
didn’t have to be something I was weak in if I saw my own mistakes and was something I did.
That was the class where I realized through facing my weakness and my mistakes did, I
understood where and how I could improve.

Area of improvement:
1. I can access my progress
I simply do not see my progression sometimes, rather it be physical, or a change in mindset.
Progression is something I sometimes refuse. This occurs due to a lack of self-confidence
because I believe that I am simply incapable of change. This is why I can almost see myself
being that same person that I was 3 years ago all the way to grade 9. Since then, I do not see
myself changing and do not know how to accept it. It does not matter if I have or have not
because I simply feel like I am less than that to do so

Creative thinking
Strengths:
1. I can take my ideas evaluate, develop, and refine them and make something
productive out of them
When entering a new task, I am about to evaluate my situation and form visual ideas for
diverse types of end products. When I get an idea, I like to see how a full picture goes through
its difficulties before concluding to one final product that I can be happy with, with it be
something tangible or rather something else. Even with something finished I like to look at what
it could be in the sense that I might be able to add more or take some stuff away to further
perfect the product.

2. I can persevere, and understand that failure can be productive

To many, failure is where most things end, a stopping point to be seen as a sign to quit or move
on, but it is much more. At an early age I would always think this and feel a reality where this
was the only real option until I started to grow as a person. As time passed, I realized that
failure was not a dead-end but a roadblock on a highway. There would be things to slow you
down but in the end through those roadblocks you venture onto much bigger and change as a
person.

Area of improvement
1. I can create new and unique ideas that may provide new perspectives that
influence how people think about topics
Overall, I do not consider myself a person with many new ideas but rather but off older or
suggested ideas. I am not one to be very imaginative nor do I conceive much of a strong opinion
in any sense with whatever topic that might be. I catch myself with that, even with things that I
find passionate about my outward lack of opinion can come off belittling or that I simply do not
care. It is something I need to work on and something I look at as one of the main flaws I see in
myself. Rather than producing something on my own I tend to always be looking for inspiration,
whether that be another opinion to confirm my own or just a style of art because I lack the
understanding of my own. In the end I feel the lack of this independence and in the long term it
affects my creativity for innovative ideas.

Communication
Strengths:
1. I can engage in deep and meaningful inquiry for a variety of purposes and
audiences
People see me as someone who lacks professionalism, someone who only knows how to go off
and have fun, but I feel different from that. In my life I have had to deal with many
shortcomings in my life which have brought me to an absolute low. But with this I feel like I
have gained experience, rather than looking at the past to drag me down, I take my issues as a
lesson to connect and communicate with others. Whatever the conversation follows I feel I can
keep that professionalism, when necessary. To different people, a deep and meaningful inquiry
can be taken differently. I feel like I can adjust to those differences, realizing that everyone in
their own way is different and requires different things.

2. I can work with other students to plan, inquire, and solve problems
With a struggle of independence comes my strength in working with others. I do not have much
of an opinion but with that I make up for it by being able to work in groups and connect
everyone’s ideas to one. I can successfully bend and tweak others' ideas in a bigger sense to
create something more refined where everyone can see equal footing.

Area of improvement:
 1. I can reflect on the processes of learning and share what I have learned.
Learning is something I find interesting, sometimes I understand quickly, sometimes I do not,
and I cannot understand why. Even when I feel confident in a certain area, I feel like what I
learn is not something I can put into words but seen visually. I am much more of a visual learner
than one of a verbal and that comes into the same case with teaching. I cannot teach someone
something I can only understand in a visual sense rather than a deep-rooted sense. I do it
because I know how to, not because I understand why.

Personal and Cultural Identity

Strengths:
1. I understand how what I value has and will shape my choices
People often belittle my values of people; I hear about the lack of future that comes with
valuing others but in my mind, I feel accomplishment doing so. I understand that what I value is
simply different from others, their goal is always so different from mine. That can be because I
simply do not know what I am doing but what I see are connections that can take me to places
that I cannot even imagine. People are what I value, something I hold dear to my heart and
something that has been in my heart for a long time in my life. Not because of the tangible
benefits that come with relationships but rather the intangible ones that affect you overall.
From what I have experienced up to this point I hold this value with pride and gratefulness for
where I have gotten because of them.

2. I understand how to use my strengths and abilities to my advantage, and I

can explain how I use them to contribute to my community.
I do not see myself having many strengths nor do I have strong strengths at all. But with that
comes the improvisation of my own general ability. Though I lack strong skills, I make up for
using everything I can and tweaking that to my advantage to accomplish my goal. I do not need
traditional solutions but rather I am able to create my own with what I have. My benefit in the
community comes in that same form. I do not see the ability to follow others but rather do
something people under look to make a larger impact.

Area of improvement:
1. I understand what is important to me.
Though I do see what I value I lack the understanding of what I really see as important,
something that, even if I should be seeing, I simply do not. I realize this issue and have run into
what can only be my biggest roadblock yet, that being that I lack seeing the importance of post-
secondary. This is not because I do not see the point or do not want to go but rather, I cannot
process the importance and how it might affect me in the future, simply put, I feel stuck in the
present. Being told that I lack care for my education after a big fallout was a big moment in my
life, not because I took it in offense but because it was true. My life is always seeing in the
moment and sometimes I do not think about my future at all but one day I hope to accomplish
that.