Response to "If students designed their own school...it would look like this" article

“It’s crazy that in a system that is meant to teach and help the youth there is no voice from the youth at all.” This was the first line of the video “If students designed their own schools…”  and the article "If students designed their own school...it would look like this" where it showed us about the Independent Project, where a semester of high school was dedicated to their own choice of studying. This can be good or bad, depending on the students mainly.

There are many good things that this “Independent Project” offers. Students have a chance to study what they want, learn to work together with others through a group project, and to present individual projects on what they chose to research about. These things can help a student manage their time better because they are learning about what they want, instead of things they may not like much, like math, science, socials or any other course. Although they do not have to be in these teacher led classes, they still choose a specific topic within a bigger topic, like the workings of an airplane, which would be under physics, and mechanics.

Some students may think that this is an interesting program that they may want to have implemented at Fraser Heights Secondary School . But, will it work? This program depends on the independence of each individual student, where if one does not pull his/her weight, then the program can collapse. The principle of Monument Mountain Regional High School, Principal Marianne Young, took a big chance with the program, whether if the program would take off or not. She knew that there would be many things to consider, the parental views, each individual student, and most of all, the enthusiasm to learn, be it with the students, or on just what they want to learn. This program would not work well for me, as I love learning about many new things, and also touching on many different topics, instead of just the ones I am interested in.

This School-in-School idea, where students “teach” themselves is similar to Genius Hour, which is a project that we take on in Ms. Lees’ English 10 class. The Genius Hour idea is to make a project on whatever we are interested in or enjoy, and present it to the rest of the class. This idea is similar to the Independence Project at Monument Mountain Regional High School because we have a chance to explore what we want, while under the mentoring of a teacher. Although the Genius Hour projects are a part of our English class, it is also going to become a course at Fraser Heights Secondary school, as an elective, where students get one block per day to work on whatever they want.

The Independence Project is indeed, “independent” because students choose what they do and what they want to learn instead of the normal teacher led classes every day. Although the Independence Project works at Monument Mountain Regional High School, I prefer normal teacher led classes because the teacher goes over everything within the textbook, and covers a lot of material, meaning that we get knowledge on many topics, instead of the ones that I am interested in which may be quite narrow.