(The picture above is my students working on their passion projects. This round of projects is learning something you always wanted to know how to do.)
My students have been doing passion projects every week from 10 to 11 am on Wednesdays throughout the year. We are now heading toward STAAR time, and I will continue to do passion projects, from 10 to 11 am on Wednesdays, each week until the day of the STAAR. It is a non movable piece of my schedule.
Some students are learning to make a cake from scratch, learning a language, drawing the anime character they love, building a shelf, and I am sure I am leaving some others out. This can be deemed unimportant or a waste of time to some, but I have found it to be essential. My students have begun to learn some very important life lessons through passion projects that they otherwise would not have been exposed to.
Within this passion project my students have been tasked with building a plan, and executing on that plan to learn something new during this 6 week time frame. My students are beginning to assess what is important to them, and how to develop a plan to get there.
Something that I realized this week doing passion projects, my students needed to take time to reflect on their practice and whether it was effective. I was so surprised what I heard from my students. One: I need help from experts in the area I am studying. In previous passion projects I had guided students to contact outside experts. Yesterday when reflecting multiple students adjusted their plan to reach out to different experts. Two: I may need to dedicate more time then the hour a week to reach my goal by the end of the six weeks. Those students made adjustments to their plans to include time outside school.
Not having a way to end this blog without feeling I am preaching. Yes I will be dedicating 1 hour of time to passion projects, so my students can build on their capacity to be self guided learner.
I like how you dedicate time for passion projects. More so, I like how you have crafted pathways for students to take ownership of their own learning. I never deem creative, unstructured time as an energy waster, but more of a energy booster. And in my opinion, you may have to extend your passion project time because of your personalized lessons and classroom... your students are excelling off of your energy and it shows.
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