What would you do if you had 20 per cent of your work time dedicated to personal growth? Students at Hapnot Collegiate showed what they came up with at the 20Time Showcase Jan. 23.
Students from the Grade 9 technology class were given every Friday to pick a problem and attempt to solve it, later presenting their efforts at the Dorothy Ash Theatre.
Projects ranged from awareness campaigns for endangered animals, tutorial videos and fundraising events for the Flin Flon/Creighton and District SPCA.
Joey Lies drew upon his passion as a basketball player and organized seminars for students at École McIsaac School. The sessions, called “Learn the ways to ball with Joey Lies,” drew upon his own experience with learning basketball at a young age, along with advice from his own coaches.
“The type of drills I started off with was the stuff I was bad at in Grades 5-6,” he said during the presentation.
“The stuff I ended off with was stuff I still struggle with.”
The students had to research ideas before beginning to tackle the problem they chose to attack. Dax Lawrence used the opportunity to create a short film.
“I’ve learned it’s very time-consuming to make a short film and the research is unbearable,” he said.
“The real challenge was finding the art of film and figuring out what to base my film on.”
From there, the students tackled their problems head-on. For some, it meant creating something and putting it out into the world. Michael McCracken created a healthy eating cookbook aimed at teenagers. He surveyed his classmates to see what kinds of ingredients and recipes they would want to see in a cookbook.
“I covered all three meals – breakfast, lunch and supper,” he said.
“For all of the recipes, there are pictures to show what your food should look like when you’re done… all of the foods are easy to cook. I tried to choose recipes that took less than 45 minutes to make. This way, I knew the cookbook would be more user friendly.”
The challenge of presenting was a tougher challenge than the project for a few students, like Morgan Markham, who designed a presentation to inform students about bipolar disorder.
“I’ve always been super nervous to speak in front of others,” she said.
“I usually push everything to the last minute and the process of coming up with this topic was a long process of coming up with ideas and then not liking them. I thought about every little thing way too much.”
The 20Time projects will continue into the next semester, as students in the next set of classes will get a chance to tackle new projects before classes end in June.
