Five years of classes with the same people every year, vigorous projects, and a heavier workload finally comes to a close with the IB program’s final project.
“The MYP personal project is a culmination of the five years of the program. Students have been exposed to a concept and skilled based curriculum. The intent is to show their knowledge of skills in something that is a passion for them,” IB coordinator Michelle Bowen said.
Each student began with discussing the topic of their projects with librarian Levi Owens. After choosing their topic, the IB students then begin their research. Their overall progress is monitored by 10th grade English teacher Emilie Merrill.
“There are four parts to the project. First students must pick their project and complete research, they then must come up with their plan and criteria to evaluate themselves. Next, they must complete the action to their project followed up by reflecting on their project and what it means to be an International Baccalaureate student,” Bowen said.
Tahir Johnson wanted to work with younger students and combined his love for sports into his final project.
“I’m hosting a basketball tournament for the Moore students. It’s really difficult because it is a long way away and there were a lot of privileges that I had to earn. I also had to ask permission from people to be able to use certain locations for the project,” Johnson said.
Like Johnson, Martin also worked with children for her end of the year project.
“My project was to make Elsa’s costume from the movie ‘Frozen 2’ and visit the children’s hospital, but I had to change it to visiting an elementary school because of the safety precautions both hospitals I contacted had. I’m doing it at North Elementary instead and I’m visiting the kindergarteners,” Martin said.
Other students like sophomore Elizabeth Christian chose a project where they chose to learn a different skill and teach themselves how to apply those skills.
“My project was to learn how to play the guitar and then perform a song. I started picking up the guitar and learning cords from videos and books that I had,” Christian said.
The project, with extensive research and hands on activities, has caused the students to run into some obstacles along the way. Location for performing the action aspect of the project became a problem for each student.
“Most difficult part was finding a place to perform, thankfully I went to this camp thing and performed there,” Christian said.
Although there were some difficulties, there were aspects of the project that came easily to the students.
“I feel like deciding what I wanted to do was the easiest part for me because making costumes is something I’ve done for a while and childrens theater is something I’ve done for a while,” Martin said.
Another part of the project that the students have to complete are the reflection questions. These questions give the students the opportunity to reflect over the success of their project by reflecting on the Learner Profile attributes of the IB program.
“The attributes are knowledgeable, inquirer, thinker, caring, principled, balanced, risk-taker, communicator, reflective, and open-minded,” Bowen said.
While answering the reflection questions, students of the IB program begin to reflect on the five years of work put into half of their secondary, scholarly careers.
“We’ve been thinking about it for awhile. It started hitting like last year when it was like ‘wow next year is our last year’ and now it’s our last year and it’s just kinda crazy. We’ve been in the same classes with the same people for forever,” Christian said.
This project that the students have to complete by March 19th, not only brings the end of a different learning environment, but it brings mixed feelings about the future towards these students.
“It’s kinda hard, cause we’ve been ahead since 6th grade with everything and it’s weird to have all that just wrapped up into one big thing,” Johnson said.
