Students discussed and reflected on strategies for dealing with times when they had to wait.

Students worked with the Aboriginal Enhancement Worker to create and sew their own button blankets using felt and buttons.

For many of the students making their own button blankets was their first experience sewing and it was a great challenge. This button blanket activity revealed students’ self-determination, their ability to persevere and their ability to be patient.

A student created a whirligig to demonstrate his personal journey.

After studying Paul Fleischman’s novel Whirligig and viewing Pay it Forward, students were asked to make their own personal whirligigs, mobiles or ya-ya boxes that demonstrated their personal journeys.

This project demonstrated that students can be aware of who they are, and students may or may not articulate how they shape themselves or how others shape them.

The teacher provided the following instructions:

A young student shows how she takes responsibility for monitoring her health.

As a person with Type 1 diabetes, the student understands the importance of testing her blood glucose level regularly and before certain activities.  Without prompting, she retrieves her blood glucose meter and tests her level prior to PE class.

A student created a poem to show her growth in personal awareness.

The student participated in a district workshop with professional poets to use poetry as a medium to discover personal awareness.  In her poem, she discusses her lifelong challenge of being naturally thin and the trauma she has suffered to her self-image and in her relationships.

A grade 11 student responds to not being hired because she is from an alternate school.

A grade 11 student in an alternate school interviewed for – but did not get--a job with a pizza chain. She had the courage and determination to call the manager and ask what she could do better in future job interviews. The manager told her that she interviewed very well, but they would never hire anyone from the alternate school.

She responded by making a video about her experiences and her teacher forwarded it to school administration.