At ACLC I have developed many skills and recognized habits that I already had, continuing to work on them as well as improve. Since I have taken many different classes with all grades and completely new teachers, I have heavily grown on adaptation. Throughout the two years of learning at this school, I have definitely bettered myself as a student and a leader even though I was new. Now I feel even more prepared to take on new challenges and learn more about life and biology in college.
SOCIABILITY— Demonstrates cooperation, understanding friendliness, humor, adaptability, polite-ness, and thoughtfulness in group settings, relates well to others. INTEGRITY AND HONESTY — Demonstrates justice, honorable behavior, and a social conscience; can be trusted, chooses ethical causes of action. I am an open-minded learner and eager to find more ways to present information, gain an understanding of topics, and try to teach others. I really enjoy working with other people and finding ways to solve problems as a group. Working in small groups allows me to take in others’ ideas and information that I did not know about, but also sharing my ideas with teammates often boosts my confidence to show how I can be productive. I have experienced this at ACLC all the time during small class activities. Adapting to a new environment can be easy in certain scenarios. Especially when the people around me are learning or are already adapted and ready show that they are capable of helping me achieve the goals. I relate to other people and assist them whenever they need another hand. I take pleasure in helping others particularly in teamwork groups when cooperation is key. Sociability is a substantial skill to have and going into college with specific skills like being friendly/social is very important. Therefore, I’m prepared for using this skill by being around other people and working well. As well as working with people, I believe honesty is another crucial piece of the most important skills . Honesty is always a positive component of people’s personal qualities. I do best when others around me are succeeding in their own ways and showing they can be trusted with data and certain assignments. I often show integrity and I like stepping up to show I can complete a task when I know what I am doing. I am able to take the lead in group assignments or volunteer when other people already have tasks. I also enjoy short and sweet social interactions and I believe that those little things from co-workers or teammates is all someone needs to brighten up their day. I am excited to grow into an adult, learn new things, and also help everyone around me. I love to take action especially when the ordeal is important. After college I would be thrilled to be a marine biologist and assist in making our oceans cleaner and better overall.
SCIENCE — Understands how things work and the underlying scientific principles, applies the scientific method to everyday life. SPEAKING — Organizes thoughts and communicates ideas, knowledge, and information through fluent, responsible speech.
Since leaving my old high school, I have really stuck to my ideas about going into a career field involving science. It has been one of my favorite subjects since I’ve been in middle school, and after almost completing all my high school credits I am more interested in science. At ACLC I took Environmental Science as a junior, I’ve been trying to enroll in other sciences. This epiphany of my major choice has helped me focus more for school. Now I’m trying to look forward to going to college and studying what I really want to do, which is marine biology. The idea of becoming my own person, and learning about what I want to study, helps me set reachable and exciting goals for myself. As well as learning more about science, I’ve also developed many social skills, one important skill is speaking. ACLC has given me many opportunities to share my ideas and who I am as a person to a few people, as a small presentation, or a huge group of people, (more like a speech). I have since been more intrigued by the idea of speaking in front of larger groups and I am very excited to speak out more in the future. I specifically enjoy planning for a big discussion and when I am able to arrange my thoughts correctly and showing off my skills. Although I feel discouraged when a speech doesn’t go as perfectly as I planned, but I usually can find another opportunity to fulfill my goal, share my ideas, and show my abilities.
DECISION-MAKING — Species goals and constraints, gathers accurate data, generates alternatives, considers risks and consequences, evaluates and chooses best alternative implements decision, and analyzes results. REASONING — Discovers underlying rules and principles; uses logic; draws conclusions.
When I picture myself as a thinker, I tend to like making my own decisions, or even coming up with a big decision for a group. I often set reachable goals for myself, or a group, so that I can manage the work and figure out if I’m sufficient or if I need to pick up the pace. At ACLC I’ve been achieving better skills like time-management, and organization. I have learned that using these skills have and will improve my overall work. I learned this specifically in my core class like Chemistry, English and History, where we worked more on my abilities regarding decision-making. Some assignments include analysis, citing evidence and problem solving. These specific skills that I have been working on, show that I am increasing my ability to work in many different ways. I often find holes, or slight problems in my work, but recently I’m working around the barriers better. This makes me feel more confident and completed when I finish the assignments or pass a class. Another skill that I have been also working on throughout high school is reasoning and support. In school assignments, I often have to find evidence to back up my claim and decide if it works. An example of this is “Analyzing Details” or “CER” papers, which I usually understand more. These are also the papers I have most fun doing. In other words, I enjoy thinking step by step, and including evidence to solve a problem. This can also mean, using logic and/or common sense to plan out methods and succeed. I definitely think that being a reasoning thinker will help me do well in college, as well as, my ultimate career.
TEACHES OTHERS NEW SKILLS — Helps others learn. EXERCISES LEADERSHIP — Communicates ideas, persuades, convinces, and motivates others. Since I was a young kid I have always wanted to work with others, help them learn and show them new things I know more about. I have exercised these skills in softball meets and games, school assignments, but also everyday occurrences. Leadership and more specifically being able to teach are both hard skills to utilize and maintain. I personally enjoy working and teaching others because it often enables us to learn more information together. Once my partner and I understand the way each other explains, we can help build more factual bonds of information together. Being able to teach and learn from others is an extremely useful skill. I will continue to find ways to increase my teaching abilities and use them in the future. One of the main ways that I show my leadership is when I’m placed in a group (usually small) and push myself to either lead or keep the conversation moving. In a discussion, there also could be arguments in which I’d also help try to calm others or have them fully express their ideas or feelings. Aside from leading group work in school, I also enjoy taking a lead role in sports, as well as other game/ group activities. I feel it is most important for group members to be comfortable especially with each other, but also to be aware and have common sense skills so we’re in control to solve a problematic situation. This is an important skill to me personally and I would love to continue showing my leadership throughout school and my career/jobs.
APPLIES TECHNOLOGY TO TASK — Understands overall intent and proper procedure for setup and operation of equipment. MAINTAINS AND TROUBLESHOOTS EQUIPMENT — Prevents, identifies, or solves simple problems with equipment. Recently during Learning Distance at ACLC, I have worked my way around technology problems more than ever before. These changes have helped me adapt to the COVID situation as well as using technology daily. Since March of 2020, I’ve used and gained so much more information revolving around technology. Specifically at the end of last school year, I started using Jupiter way more often than I did before. Going to school versus online school and now Zoom, has really changed abilities and made me accomplish many different forms of assignments through the internet. I am constantly reading an article or website, and using quiz apps in order to show my ability. These online tasks are usually pretty simple and it’s very nice to have all my criteria organized on my computer. The most technology I use is when completing assignments or even researching for school. I have had a few Zoom and connection/ Wifi issues when trying to focus in class, but eventually all the problems were solved. A specific time was when my Zoom class froze because my kitchen microwave was in use. We quickly figured out the complication and I set up a table for when to use the microwave. Even though this isn’t an intricate tech issue, it was one of the biggest setbacks while using technology for me. During the elaborate search for the interference I was stressed but finally relieved when it was figured out. Now, I am more comfortable with dealing with technology and I’ve grown confident to troubleshoot the tricky tech situations.
The biggest challenges I overcame at ACLC was adapting to the new environment, people, teachers, and way of teaching/learning. Another recent skill I have worked on is technology which helped me an enormous amount in the end of my junior year and so far my entire senior year. Although our distance learning practice was not ideal for my final years of high school, I have learned so much more, and I feel that I can overcome anything.