#13 Gratitude

I think this chapter really shows how much we take things for granted. I am so happy to be travelling to Kenya this summer because I think it will help me realize how much I take my life for granted without even realizing it. My favorite part of this chapters was Laurie's story. If we had more people in the world that opened up there homes to the less fortunate without judging them then the world would be such a great place!

1. Ten things I am grateful for:

-music

-family

-friends

-phone

-tv

-food

-water (shower, drink)

-transportation (airplanes, cars, bikes)

-school

-clothes

I'm not too surprised with what I thought of, my friends and family are always there for me no matter what, I love them so much! Music and clothes for me describe who I am, couldn't live without some beats. I love travelling and my dad lives in Winnipeg so I need airplanes. Food, water, school are things I have to have. It's sad because not everyone in the world has that. My phone is how I communicate with people, couldn't live without it and tv is nice if you want to relax, same with music. 

2. I am grateful for my mom, grandma, aunt helen and uncle john, cousin emily, my dad, doctors, everyone I work with especially at the farm (love them to pieces, second family!) I am grateful for all my friends! I'm grateful for my leadership class who I'm going to miss a lot when this semester comes to an end and all my teachers.

3.The gifts I'm thankful for are my apartment, bed, heat, water, food, safety, love, education, travelling, the savings for university, ipod, laptop, tiffany earrings, leather jacket, ray bans, watch and a lot of other things too.

I feel like this chapter was good to read after everything with challenge day because that day really changed us, independently and as a class and school. Craig talks about 9/11 and how everyone had feelings of love and gratitude as well as sadness and anger. He says how people of every size, shape and colour were there to help each other out. Since challenge day, our class has come together so much. The day we spent with Miss. Painter it didn't matter what clique we came from, where we lived, what our background was. We accepted each other for who we are and comforted one another. I bonded with people who I haven't talked to much in the class, I talked to people who I used to be best friends with and some how I feel like everything was back to how it used to be. That day changed us more and made us more comfortable with each other than any of our energizers ever could have. 

Today

Today was quite the experience. I had an amazing time yesterday at challenge day and couldn't wait to bring it back to make the school a better place but couldn't help but notice all the negative comments and facebook status's towards the challenge day people. I understand that not everyone got to go to challenge day and everyone has problems and the people who didn't get to go to challenge day didn't necessarily get their problems solved. But the point of challenge day is to bring back the positiveness and trust and being able to open up to people. I'm really glad that the people in our class are beginning to have a better understanding of challenge day after our discussion. It was nice to see that after we did our "if you really knew me activity" everyone thought challenge day to be a better experience regardless if they went or not. I'm glad I got to share this experience with my class and see everyone open up and break down barriers. It definitely brought us closer as a class and I can't wait to see what the assembly tomorrow will bring and how are class will "make the change" happen. I'm super proud of everyone, and I hope everyone knows that even if they don't have someone at home to talk to that our classmates are accepting and won't judge anyone based on what they've been through - I won't anyways.
I think it'd be awesome if we could find a way to incorporate challenge day/if you really knew me through the whole school. 
Love you all and very proud! ...even though I'm not sure anyone can see this because I haven't quite figured out blogger yet..

#12

I can honestly say that this class has changed me. I'm able to deal with things better and I'm not so negative. Hard situations are life lessons that will make you stronger. This class has made me more confident in myself. I always want to do things and get more involved with the school because of my leadership class and the people in it. You don't have to be great at speeches to be a leader, being a leader can be as simple as putting a smile on someone's face by saying hi to them. Never judge someone before getting to know them. To develop as a leader I want to learn how else I can make a difference. I want to be able to make bigger differences, ones that will help influence more people and eventually change the world. To develop as a leader people need to be active in their community, join clubs or sports at school, meet and talk to people you haven't before, volunteer, pick up a piece of garbage, go out for Halloween for Hunger, get involved with me to we, donate things you don't use anymore. Being a leader is as simple as that. I want to make a difference, I try to be positive and nice to everyone. This year I've gotten so much more involved with the school. I joined me to we, went to stair climb, joined best buddies, I'm going to Kenya in the summer to build schools. Everything I've done, I've loved, not to mention the flash mob which was totally awesome! All these things make me a happier person because I'm proud of what I'm doing, I know that I'm making a difference and putting smiles on people's faces everyday.

#11 Haunted House

Project Design Skills:
Our group was assigned the room between the change room and showers. Mike Mix-Master and I got all the false walls and other materials needed to put up the false walls from drama for the mirror room. I cut A LOT of tin foil and attached it to the walls. I also strung the fishing line through the objects for the upside down room. Once the house was finished my job was to stand behind the wall and hold the strobe light or stick my arm out and scare people. I got a lot of bruises but it was nice to see everyone get scared (I say that in the nicest way possible). During clean up time we worked to take the tin foil down as a team and then I helped clean the food colouring off the shower walls.
Identifying and Dealing With Barriers:
During the haunted house the false wall fell down a few times on me and the tin foil fell off a lot. The sheet stapled to the ceiling fell down towards the end. It kind of made me mad how we all worked so hard to put this on for the students and they disrespected things so much. A few students hit my arm (hence the bruises) and some students purposely punched/hit the false walls and sheet. Some of them tried taking the tin foil off and then everyone had kids that made remarks like "oh this isn't scary". Justin was walking through the haunted house so we called him over and he put some of the tin foil back up before the next group came in. Travis and I had to rearrange the false wall so it wouldn't fall again. Another barrier was we didn't know where to put the false walls because of the supports but it worked out very well with the room behind them for us to hide. In the center I mentioned we could put sheets along the lights for a wall and everyone was very helpful with bringing those in.
Interpersonal Skills:
We all worked together well to think of ideas. Justin came up with some awesome ideas and we got the jobs done quick as a team. I tried to make sure that everyone got an input and liked what we were doing in the haunted house.
Understanding and Working with Diversity:
There were times when I didn't agree so I would say a different idea. There were times when none of us agreed with someone so we would all try and say "well that's a good idea but I think this might hold up a bit better!" Most of the times that worked but if not we just figured its not worth fighting about so I went with the idea I didn't like as long as the students were going to have fun.
Leadership Skills:
Teamwork - We worked as a team to accomplish everything. When things didn't work out then we came up with alternate ideas. Everyone in my group was constantly doing something to help out. We all worked together to hang up the stuff and take it down. Mike and I had a good system going with the tape and the tin foil as well as the shiny cardboard stuck on the sheet. One of us would go on one side to hold the board and the other on the other side to push the sheet against the tape.
Organized - I'm a very organized person. I like order. I made sure everyone knew what their job was when the students came through and were in their spots on time.
Open minded - When other people spoke their ideas I listened and inputted on what we could do to make their ideas even better.
Hard worker - I worked really hard on the haunted house, we all did! Even though i was tired after carrying the false walls up and down the stairs I kept pushing till the job was done.
Personal Management Skills:
The week of the haunted house was a really hard week for me so I know I wasn't as enthusiastic and positive as usual but I still put forward my best effort. I think I stayed on task and kept to myself. I didn't really need refocusing because I was fine to do things by myself so I didn't get side tracked. The only thing I struggled with was coming up with ideas from scratch. I'm not the most creative person so I work better when I can add things to other peoples ideas, that's when my ideas start to come.
Self Assessment Skills:
I think I did good. Everyone seemed to enjoy the haunted house. I would give myself a 17 or 18 because I was always working hard but I know other people were better leaders and brought in more things to help.