Imagine a school where its teachers and staff members are regularly engaged in passion-based projects in areas of expertise or a new found hobby. How would that change the school culture? Imagine if students were also given the opportunity to explore their own personal project ideas and they were integrated as meaningful parts of their schoolwork and curriculum. What are the challenges to achieve this?

This ideal school environment is what I began to think about as I went through my self study. 

One of the challenges of being part of a multi-faceted school is that students often have competing priorities among all their different class assignments and their busy extracurricular schedules making it difficult for students to find the appropriate amount of time to explore their own personal projects.

With this in mind, I felt it was important to give time within my curriculum for students to work on independent scientific investigations. Putting myself into the position of the learner as I engaged in my own science inquiry allowed me to focus on the importance of coming up with methods to enable this. In effect, this transformed my self-study into an examination of strategies that could solve the challenge of students having the opportunity to become deeply immersed in personal science projects.

I tested devoting a class period each week for students to pursue these projects. Students were not bound by specific curriculum topics, or even types of investigations. They had complete freedom to be scientists in the quest for answers about the world around them. The idea was meant to give students the ability to engage in their scientific pursuits on an ongoing basis throughout the year. Unfortunately, one short class period a week was not enough time and by spreading it out it was hard for students to fully focus on the investigations. For the upcoming year I will modify the structure of student’s independent projects from a weekly class to an end-of trimester project. Every science class for those few weeks will be devoted to student’s personal projects so they can become more deeply immersed in the experience.

I also explored some ideas of changing how I have the students share their work. What is interesting is that I found myself in the same shoes of my students during the self-study. As I wrote each of the blog posts we needed to complete I felt my attention shift from my personal process to making sure I had a final product that I could present to the rest of the community in the form of these written pieces. This experience made me reflect on the requirement I placed on my students to prepare a presentation at the end of their independent projects. While students did great culminating presentations which helped them learn about and discuss each other’s work, the fact that they were final presentations turned the focus of the discussions from the process to the final product. How would the conversations change if students were discussing their work as it happened? Are there alternative methods to share insights bearing in mind the time constraints noted prior? Would adjusting the format and delivery of the “presentations” allow for a more in-depth exploration and meaningful discussion?

For the upcoming year I want to work on de-emphasizing the final product and emphasizing the learning journey while providing more opportunities for science discourse along the way. Rather than do one final presentation piece, I will take the time spent preparing for those presentations and have weekly discussion sessions instead. To create a more comfortable space for students to openly share their questions, opinions, and struggles I will divide the class into smaller teams who will follow each other’s independent project journey from beginning to end. The expectations of the teams will be to discuss each other’s work, help troubleshoot challenges encountered, and learn alongside each other. At the end, those interested will also be given the space to share any aspects of their project with the entire class.

Moving forward I am making it my ongoing personal project to continue exploring ways I can work within our current school structure to achieve a piece of that ideal school environment I envision for myself and my students. I will also identify areas where the structure of the system itself can be adapted. How can the school structure evolve to facilitate moving the school as a whole towards this vision? And more importantly, how can I contribute to that evolution?