Tag Archives: passion projects

Passion Project Presentations

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I’ve had the privilege of watching a few final presentations for our IDS courses – Independent Directed Studies – at Inquiry Hub. Our students choose a topic and put 100-120 hours of work into research, design, and creation of their own courses. The topics vary considerably from making a movie to learning to suture stitches, to designing a facial recognition doorbell, to creating a tabletop role playing game based on the student’s heritage.

I love seeing the diversity of the presentations, and the passion and enthusiasm students have sharing their work. I’m so impressed by both their presentation skills and so their slides. These students could teach a thing or two about how to create a slideshow to many professional presenters I’ve seen.

That’s because they get a lot of practice designing presentations and presenting. They have to do so in groups and on their own many times a year… more than in any typical school. And they get feedback, lots and lots of feedback, from peers as well as teachers.

For these final presentations parents are also invited, and even if parents can’t make it, students still have an audience beyond just the teacher. Students can invite anyone they want to watch, and we’ve even had two of our secretaries invited because they have similar interests in the topics, one on hairdressing and another on embroidery. The community aspect of these with parents, mentors, and community members joining in is absolutely wonderful. Our assistant superintendent also joined for a couple presentations.

It’s pretty special watching these final presentations. I think that every student should get a chance to delve into an area of interest that they choose. Learning shouldn’t just be about transmitting knowledge but about knowledge construction, and what better way to do this than to have students design their own learning experience?

The habits project

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I have a project that I’ve been working on for quite a while now. I’ve been telling myself that I want to finish it, but I haven’t put enough time in (yet). It involves making 10 short (2-3 minute) videos based on James Clear’s Atomic Habits for students in a school where they get a lot of self-directed time. I’ve actually spent a fair bit of time white-boarding and developing the idea.

I have spent a few more hours going through James Clear’s 30 Days to Better Habits lessons, and I’ve worked on creating a script for the 10 lessons I have in mind. I’ve done a lot of work, but now comes the execution. Now I’ve got to actually record and edit/produce the videos.

I’ve used so many strategies I’ve learned in this book to create regular routines around health and wellness, and also to be more productive at work, but for a project like this, I have really not used the strategies. I have blocked off time and worked on it in large chunks, but I haven’t made any routines or habits to get this done… and I probably won’t. Instead, I’m going to block a bunch of time to do the recording all at once, and what I get will just need to be ‘good enough’, and then I’ll block some more time and try to do a marathon of editing.

The big question is, will this be shown to students this year or to start next school year? I won’t know until I start recording and then see how long it takes to edit one of these. But this has been a project in the making for almost 2 years now and I feel like if I don’t share my plan, I won’t get it done for another year. Wish me luck.

Grades and university admissions

Today is report card day. I’ve looked them all over and I don’t think there are going to be any surprises for parents. A few positive bumps, a few dips, but overall pretty good results for students at our school. Further to this, I’ve only heard positive news from our grads about getting into the programs they want to get into. This last point, post high school admissions, is the only reason grades are really important… but I can spend hours telling you why marks shouldn’t be the only thing that matter.

I haven’t looked at the stats recently, but pre-covid stats about drop out rates during or after the 1st year at the top two universities in our province were 14% and 12%. I know some of these are students changing their minds, or other legitimate reasons, but I also know a large percentage of those dropouts are students who just couldn’t handle the change from high school. Most were probably straight ‘A’ students. They did well on all of their report cards. They were good at high school. They were good at giving the teacher what they wanted. They were good at test taking.

Then they head off to university. With no parents or teachers policing them, and no regular routines to follow, without after school activities that they used to fill their high school evenings with, there is suddenly a lot more responsibility to manage time. With professors not outlining assignments as clearly, or not providing samples of expectations, the work seems harder to manage and still get top grades. And for some, the freedom away from strict schedules is a chance to rebel a bit, and late nights don’t go very well with school work production and studying. There are as many variances to the reasons as there are students, but 12 and 14 percent drop out rates are a significant number when you consider the thousands of students who apply and don’t get into these top universities. Those are high percentages of top students not handling the transition.

Grades don’t tell the whole story.

What did students create? How did they build community? How did they manage their time? What does their portfolio look like? Portfolios aren’t just about art, they can be projects. It’s not surprising that a kid like this gets into a top music program in the country and wins awards, or when this kid gets into art school, or one of these kids gets into a small 40-student two year business program, and the other one gets into Mechatronics. It’s disappointing when a kid like this doesn’t get into the Ivy League school school he wanted to, but he still got into Computer Science at UBC, and  he didn’t drop out after his first year. None of these kids have or will drop out after a year, unless they decide they want to do something different.

All of these kids were ‘good at school’, but that wasn’t all that they were. They were students who had opportunities to work on their passions while in high school. They were students who had time in their schedule to decide what they were going to do, and they learned to manage that time… like they would have to at university. Not all of them were straight ‘A’ students, but all of them were successful students that got to demonstrate more than just good marks on tests.

To get into university my average was 73%. By the 4th year at my university, back in 1990, the average to get into the same general arts program was 81%. Had I been born just 4 years later my meager average would not have gotten me into my university of choice. Today, most popular programs at top universities demand an average well above 90%. But I have to wonder, how many of these high achieving students are going to drop out after a year? How many of them will have high school experiences that truly prepare them for the transition into these high stakes programs?

What other evidence should universities put weight on besides marks? I’d take a ‘B’ student with curiosity, drive, and a wide variety of interests over a straight ‘A’ student who fights for every 1/2 percent they can on a test. I’d take them in my university. I’d hire them at my company. I’d even be more likely to want them as a colleague or a friend. Grades should matter, they just shouldn’t be the only thing that matters, and the stakes on them shouldn’t be so high. Being a good student should also mean being a well rounded students, and that would improve the success rate of students finishing more than just one year at a university. When grades are used as the only measure to weed out students, many of the students being weeded out are exactly the students universities are wanting.

Students following their passion

Last year I didn’t update the students page on the Inquiry Hub website. The past couple weeks I’ve added projects by Senn and Miró, and I’ll add more next week. One of the best things about Inquiry Hub Secondary is getting to see students work on passion projects that they decide on, and that they design their learning around.

Students projects come to life when students get to follow their passions and interests. If you’d like to learn more, we have a website for educators. Even here, you will hear student voice. Soon we will have a digital open house. Students are working on both advertising and content for this event.

We are small, and agile, (and have students working in scrums – more on this later). We have educators who are passionate about what they do and focus on supporting our students. And we have self-directed students who are still taking all the required courses for graduation, and also working on projects they want to work on.

Visit our student page or our educator page to learn more.

How do we get to ‘YES’?

I watched this Peter Hutton TEDx talk tonight and more than one part struck a very familiar chord with me and the things we do at Inquiry Hub.

The part of the talk I want to discus is this one:

“We have a saying that ‘Yes is the default’. So, the firth thing about that is if any staff, student, or parent has a suggestion or a request, the answer has to be ‘Yes’. Unless it would take too much time, too much money, or negatively impact on somebody else.” ~ Peter Hutton

My mantra over the last 8 years at Inquiry Hub has been:

“How do we get to ‘Yes’?”

The reality is that at our school the teachers are always trying to say ‘Yes’ already. Or, they are trying to guide students to a path where ‘Yes’ can happen. If it gets to me, there is already a reason for it to be a ‘No’, and it’s my job to figure out how do we get to ‘Yes’ when a teacher already couldn’t get there?

Here are 3 concrete examples:

  1. Students wanted to put our garden onto the concrete and not just in our courtyard. They were told ‘No’ by the district, because it would be in the way of maintenance vehicles. I had the students go back to the district and ask how far out it could go and not still be in the way? They didn’t get what they wanted, but the small encroachment onto the pavement was a win for them.
  2. In our second year one of our students wanted to grow hemp in our garden. We were a young school, still not fully developed, and our courtyard has no fencing, and is open to the public. I could only see bad (misinformed) publicity coming from this. I suggested a couple indoor plants and the student wasn’t interested. In the end, I could see a lot of downside beyond the project, and felt I had to say ‘No’.
  3. A student wanted to bring his Jeep engine block into the school to work on it. He had his own hoist and equipment. We don’t have the supervision and it would be completely unsafe, and would break all kinds of rules put in place to protect students. This was a hard ‘No’. So, we invited him to bring in anything he could lift without a hoist, and he could work on it with hand tools, or electric tools with supervision. We did have to have a few conversations about flushing gas/oil smells out of the parts he worked on before they came to school. But overall it worked out. We simply couldn’t bring items big enough to crush someone, or their finger or foot, into the school to be worked on.

Our default tends to be ‘Yes’, but that default doesn’t always work. When we can’t get it to work, then next question is, “How do we get to ‘Yes’? The answer isn’t always ideal, but it means something to our community for staff and students to know that we are all at least trying to get to ‘Yes’.

~ Also Shared on Pair-a-Dimes For Your Thoughts.

 

Talents, Time, and Space: Passion Projects in Schools

In every school there are athletes, musicians, dancers, artists, designers, and creatives in the areas of coding, electronics, mechanics, and even gaming, who do not get to express their full potential in school. And while it is not our job to be everything to everyone, we can create the time and space for students to work on passion projects that let them shine.

It’s time for all schools to let go of rigid block schedules that corral students through the entire day from teacher to teacher, where every moment is determined and controlled by adults.

This isn’t about the teachers and teaching in some of those blocks, we have amazing teachers that are engaging and excellent at teaching the curriculum. This is an issue with the schedule, and design of the day, in such a way that classes after classes fill a students day with courses that limit their ability to shine… Shine in fields they are passionate about that schools could but don’t always allow students to express themselves in.

When students have time in their day, they can do some amazing things, like write an entire musical, design an app to help homeless people and their support workers locate resources, and build a non-partisan app & website to help people make an informed vote, (actual projects at Inquiry Hub).

Teachers are still essential, they are the compass that helps guide students. And teachers still have classes and curriculum to teach at different times of the day… they just share that time with other times and spaces where students can follow their passions.

Learning doesn’t have to only happen in a guided way with the teacher leading the way. If that’s the approach, letting students follow their passions will be overwhelming. The task would be too great for teachers. To do this the schedule needs to build in the time and space for students to lead their own learning, with the ever important teachers and mentors helping them find their way.