Hey class! Below is my model text for the personal project proposal. If you want to check out the descriptions of the different sections of the proposal, you can find them here. I can't wait to see what you guys chose to work on! Annilee Newton Personal Project Proposal, May 20211. Context
For my project, I’ve chosen to knit a green sweater. I’ve knit before, but I am definitely still a beginner, maybe an advanced beginner if you are grading on a curve. When I was very little, my mom taught me how to crochet, and ever since then I’ve been drawn to making things with yarn. For a long time, knitting seemed like the scary, unachievable, almost mystical side of the craft. (I mean what are those needles even doing? How can it be possible to make a sweater with no seams?) I started to teach myself to knit in 2019, and knit a bit more through the early bits of 2020. I’ve knit several scarfs, mittens, a cardigan that was stitched together and a purple sweater top-down sweater that was a humbling and humorous failure. So this will be my third sweater knitting attempt, and hopefully my first successful no seams pullover sweater. 2. Challenge For me, the biggest benefits of knitting come from the process. Having a product is nice, but it is almost like an afterthought. The process of choosing the yarn, selecting and decoding the pattern, and gathering supplies is the dreaming visionary phase when creativity and fun come into play. In the case of this particular project, I bought the yarn and chose the pattern about 6 months ago. At the beginning of the execution of the project, problem solving is a big deal as I begin to turn the pattern into reality. There’s eventually a lot of soothing repetition, which feels like a form of meditation to me. And then comes the low-key ever present wonder of watching a two-dimensional string turn into a three dimensional (sometimes) functional piece of clothing. The product itself becomes almost an artifact of the process, not the point. So for me, the personal benefits come from the mindfulness aspect of the project and the dopamine that comes from seeing something grow tangibly in response to effort. 3. Benefits Our time is a limited resource. There are many projects I’d like to do (many, many projects) and time limitations have always been the most important problem when it comes to choosing a project. After deciding that we would all collectively use our remaining class time together to invest in personal projects that are meaningful to each of us, it took me a while to settle on one. I chose this one for the intrinsic reasons mentioned above, but it will also have extrinsic benefits. As a model project for students, the sweater will give visual information of my progress. The mindfulness aspects of knitting benefit me, of course, but being more mindful always has benefits to my relationships with others. Sympathy, understanding, and wisdom have a better chance of surviving the onslaught of life when my mind is calm. 4. Deliverables My deliverable will be my progress on the sweater itself. As evidence of my deliverable, I will be including photos with my weekly progress updates. 5. Success Criteria So, I thought about making the success criteria product-based, something like “I will knit a sweater in a month.” But the stress of product-based deadlines kind of nullifies the process-based benefits of my project. So, a month from now, I will know I have been successful if I have grown my sweater every day. If I spend the equivalent of 25 minutes knitting every day, and I have visual progress of my sweater at the end of each week, I will consider myself successful. However, I also have to finish the sweater. Clearly written, here are the two concrete aspects by which I will judge the success of the project:
6. Deadlines/Plan
7. Time Budget On the weekdays, I will knit in the afternoons, after teaching morning classes. If an afternoon doesn’t work for some reason, I will knit in the evenings while watching old reruns of Alias or listening to records. Weekends, I’ll use knitting as a mind-preparation tool for writing. So, I’ll knit before I start drafting my work for my writing workshop in the mornings. If I ever hit a snag in my writing, I’ll pick up the knitting again, and vice versa. If I can’t knit for a day because I get too busy or I go camping or something, then I’ll knit another 25 minutes the next day. I want to average at least 3.5 hours of work on my project per week. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
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