Term Projects results and reimagining

I wrote about term projects for the CCIRA blog found here at the start of the year. I love giving students the opportunity to write/create things that interest them. This term I decided that I would use Friday as a day dedicated to term projects. Fridays are great because they often are interrupted by sports events, or assemblies, on top of that kids also had dual credit course work days and missed Fridays to attend the college. I couldn't teach anything new, and so many were missing, so I assumed the day would work well. That assumption was proven wrong as kids who did have to miss struggled to keep up with the check-ins for their projects.

We began with some grand ideas. Cooking shows, instructional videos for various activities, children's books... the list could go on and on. In the end, I started to doubt that we would get anything of substance as students began to change their ideas and become less ambitious. I reminded them that this project should represent their time to complete it. I started to have flashbacks to when students started their projects as a deep dive into the history of hip-hop music and, by the end, submitted an opinion article on what was a better pet, a cat or a dog? As we got closer to the last day of class and the showcase for their work, I had resigned myself to the thought that this would be a failure this year. The apathy our students feel, the competing pressures of school, extracurriculars, and just life are making it harder to hold high expectations without putting aside a bit of grace.

Yesterday was showcase day. An opportunity for the kids to share their work with their peers. We do it as a gallery walk-type event. Students are asked to provide a positive comment on at least three projects. They walk around the room reading/watching/listening to their peers work. While I fully admit I was skeptical that the work coming in would be even remotely close to what I had hoped for, I was pleasantly surprised.

True Crime is a major interest with the kids, why not look at one of the most famous serial killer cases of all time?

We had hand-crafted work like an exploration of country lyrics and inspired poetry, Hello Kitty research, Album covers remixed with student interpretations, explorations of baseball stadiums, and poetry books complete with watercolour paintings.

Many students opted for technology-centered presentations, but the topics ranged from autobiographies to timelines, creative writing, world-building, podcasts exploring episodes of iCarley, and a mini-documentary on Caitlin Clark.

I am planning to revamp this a bit, shift the focus days to Monday (less missed days/longer periods), more checkpoints and support. I very much live by the words of Dr. Gholdy Muhammad,

"Create space for genius, and genius will emerge"

I lost a little faith that the genius would emerge this term. Again my students show up to prove me wrong.