During the 11th Grade Year, C.C.P. Chinese 3 students completed a project called the “My American Holiday” Video Project. In this project, students made videos over a three-week period explaining an American holiday for their Taiwanese pen pals. Through this project, I grew in the quality of Collaboration. I grew in Collaboration by becoming a better leader for my team by being more strict and responsible, and by becoming a better teammate through patience and aid. Through acting as a better leader and as a better teammate, our team achieved greatly.

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The “My American Holiday” Video Project was a project in C.C.P. Chinese 3 where students wrote, acted in, and directed videos about American Holidays. The purpose of the project was for C.C.P. Chinese 3 students to share American culture (in the form of holidays) to their Taiwanese pen pals, while also incorporating language and grammar concepts from Lesson 14 Dialogue 1 of their Chinese textbook. At the beginning of the project, students joined into groups of three to four. While there were no official roles, one of the team members had to be the team leader, which meant they had to organize their team and hold onto paperwork. After forming teams, the teams decided on which holiday they would represent. The holidays chosen ranged from Christmas to St. Patrick’s Day. After choosing a holiday, the teams worked on a storyboard to draw and write the purpose of each scene. The storyboards had to include pictures, English writing, and Chinese writing about what the scenes contained, but neither the drawings nor the writings had to be specific. Once the teacher approved the storyboard, teams worked on the script of the video. The script had to include as much vocabulary and grammar concepts from Lesson 14 Dialogue 1 as possible, such as the word for fruit (水果; shui guo) or beverages (饮料; yin liao). The script also had to mention the differences between American culture and Chinese culture in terms of holidays, effectively explain the American holiday, and include some form of creativity to make the piece memorable or exciting. The teams went through many drafts of their scripts before the teacher approved them. Once the teacher approved the scripts, the teams began recording videos. The only major requirement of the video was that it had to be between two to four minutes long. The video’s lines had to have accurate pronunciation and intonation, in addition to being of good quality. Finally, after recording the video, the teams edited the videos and submitted the final videos to a website called Padlet that the students used to communicate with their pen pals. Apart from the scripts and storyboards, the video was the only product of the project. The project collectively lasted approximately three weeks.

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In this project, I was the leader of my team. I had not previously been a leader for a project for a couple of years, and I was nervous to become one. However, this project challenged me to become a good leader for my team, and gave me opportunity to grow as a leader and a teammate. Though this project, I became a better leader, and I found growth in becoming a better teammate. My artifacts to represent or show my growth are the second draft of the script, the final script of the project and our video drafts for the project.

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My first and second artifacts for my growth in Collaboration are my second script draft and my final script draft. At the beginning of the project, I did most of the work, despite the fact that I was the leader. In the very beginning, we worked on the storyboard for our script, and while everyone in my group participated in planning the storyboard, I was the one assigned (by myself) to write and finish the storyboard. I thought it was okay for me to work on the storyboard alone, since I did not want to seem as an overbearing, abrasive leader. However, I soon realized that my group was behind other groups who had finished their storyboards before us. When I thought about why that occurred, I thought about how other groups worked together in both planning and writing. I decided that working together in addition to planning together would help our productivity. Furthermore, I decided that I had been too sensitive as a leader in not expecting more of my teammates. Therefore, I assigned my teammates greater roles in writing the script once we moved on from the storyboard, and while we started slow, the decision worked. Since everyone worked together rather than one person working alone, we got the final script done in only a few days while the storyboard took us about four to five days. This is why my second script draft and final script draft represent my growth in Collaboration. My second script draft and final script draft represent my growth in Collaboration because it represents how my decision to become a stricter leader helped me become a better teammate. The final script does not show growth of Collaboration on its own, but shows Collaboration when compared to previous drafts. While the second draft had untranslated sections in scenes two, five, six, and seven, the final draft had complete translations in Chinese. Since I expected more of my teammates as a leader, we completed our task in much less time than we had completed our previous task. Requiring them to do more had us work together further. Not only did this help us work together, but this also helped me realize how I could act as a better leader. As a result, we finished our task early and met the same pace as our classmates.

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My third artifact for my growth in Collaboration is our video drafts. After writing the scripts, our next responsibility was to memorize our lines and shoot our videos to edit. We decided as a group to shoot the videos at my home over the weekend to give us a controllable space and plenty of time to record. We had plenty of time before the weekend, about three days, to practice our lines for the video. It was a requirement of the video to memorize our lines so we would not have the script in the video. However, we found that as we started recording, we had hard times speaking our lines. Whether due to stage fright or mispronunciation of words, everyone in our group had trouble recording our video. We expected our recording to require one or two hours to shoot, but we ended up taking several (about three to four) hours recording until we had enough video. During that time, we did not get annoyed with each other or leave each other alone to memorize our lines. Instead, we tried to help each other with our lines, and more importantly, we demonstrated patience for each other when we faltered. For this reason, our video drafts show Collaboration not only for me, but also for the group. Our video drafts show our growth in Collaboration by growing as teammates to help each other when we struggled. As one can see in the video drafts, everyone in our group spent multiple times recording their lines. Even I, who thought I had mastered my lines, misspoke or forgot my lines in some cases and in other cases started awkwardly laughing. However, as one can also see in the video drafts, we tried to show positive reinforcement to our teammates as they struggled, and we waited respectfully for each other to be ready. By being patient with each other, we did not delay the recording any further than we had to. In addition, we were content with the shots we recorded, and they were ready for editing. By being respectful, reinforcing, and patient with each other, we worked better as a team to overcome our problems.

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After this project, I feel further prepared for taking part in projects as a leader or as a teammate, whether in school, college, or in a job. I realize now something that I did not understand as easily before: a leader can be strict and expecting of their teammates and still act as a good leader. In addition, I found further evidence of how positive reinforcement is a useful and efficient tool to help overcome problems. After this project, I believe I am ready to be a better team member in future endeavors.