In English Teacher Joe O’Brien’s, “Novel and Drama” course, seniors are tasked with a senior research project that requires them to learn a new talent or skill over the first semester. At last Wednesday’s Talent Show, students shared their new skills, which included fire juggling, knife-throwing, cooking, guitar, tuba, keyboard, app/game development, DJ-ing, driving stick shift, short story/novel writing, drawing, Rubik's Cube solving and more.
Mr. O’Brien says, “On the first day of class, I ask students to write down a few things they've always wanted to learn how to do, or hope to do when they get older. We use it as an ice breaker, but they soon learn that they'll actually have to learn it this year! Assigning students to do something they've always wanted to do, but just haven't, gives them incentive to, “seize the day,” a through-line theme in most English classes.”
By completing these projects, students do and create things that they might not have done by their own motivation. The end result is stories, paintings, and songs that could possibly have gone unpenned. Mr. O’Brien also points out that many students benefit from spending quality time with family members as they learn their new skills, citing an example of a student who learned carpentry from his grandfather.
One major goal of the project is the development of metacognition. Students use journals to process their own thought processes, noting their trials and triumphs. A final paper includes their action steps and a reflection on what and how challenges were overcome. The paper also delves into each student’s findings on his own learning process, with the hope that this awareness will be a benefit in the relatively unstructured college environment.
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