Lesley-Anne's DSA portfolio

One of the items Lesley-Anne had to prepare for her DSA interview was the portfolio. According to her teachers, the portfolio should lay out the child's relevant achievements, as well as reflect his or her academic journey in GEP thus far. We were not shown any samples, I think the teachers rightly wanted to avoid any copying which might result in every child's portfolio looking identical.

Left to our own devices, I suggested to Lesley-Anne that she do a summary of each major project that she had done in GEP, covering all subjects. The teachers did caution against bringing entire physical mockups or detailed writeups as the interviewers would hardly have time to plow through them.

I know for a fact that many of these kids receive extensive help from their parents in putting their portfolios together (In fact, I wouldn't put it past some parents to take on the entire project themselves.) To be fair, I think the schools expect at least some parental involvement. So naturally I offered Lesley-Anne my help, thinking I'd assist in getting some design templates to dress up the summaries of her projects.

To my utter astonishment, Lesley-Anne was quite adamant in tackling the project herself. She wrote up the summaries and reflections for each project, went onto scrapblog.com and independently navigated her own way round the site to create designs for her work. This was the cover:

Here are some of the inside pages. This one is of an English project done on the book 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

This is another book project, on '101 Dalmatians' by Dodie Smith.

And this is of a maths game that she created in p4.

After all the designed pages, she filed her school results, certificates and teachers' feedback forms.

At first, I was slightly peeved that she rejected my help. Everything I offered to do, she would protest, "I want it to be my own work!" Finally, she consented to let me cut the photos for her. And some minor editing of the writeups. Yay! I have a role!

But I think I finally understood her thoughts when I read what she wrote as a cover page for the portfolio:

Magnum Opus

This portfolio is a snapshot of what I have learnt and experienced over the past two and a half years in GEP, as well as my achievements outside school. During this journey of my life, I have not only grown academically but also in character and I have come to know myself better.

My creativity is what I value most in myself. I have really enjoyed creating my portfolio - it is an achievement I am proud of. To me, it is my magnum opus.

To those unaware, "magnum opus" means "great work", borrowed from EB White's 'Charlotte's Web'. Lesley-Anne wanted to take ownership of this project because to her, this is her journey, her achievements and she wanted to showcase something that she could call her own.

As it turned out, for both interviews that Lesley-Anne attended, no one even bothered to glance at the portfolio! But Kenneth and I both think this project revealed her great sense of responsibility which is more valuable than all her academic achievements. For that, it didn't matter whether any interviewer saw it - it IS her magnum opus.