Hapnot Collegiate students will have a chance to present months of work at their school later this week.
Grade 9 students at the school will present 20Time projects they’ve been working on since September at Hapnot’s Dorothy Ash Theatre Jan. 23, starting at 6 p.m.
Libby Stoker-Lavelle is the teacher of the information and communication technology (ICT) class at Hapnot. She said the 20Time Project is an idea that big companies have used to great success.
The idea is to allow workers or students to spend 20 per cent of their work time to focus on personal projects that move a classroom or company forward. Stoker-Lavalle pointed to Google’s Gmail as an example of a 20Time project.
“The premise is that when you give students time to focus on something of their interest, they're more productive,” she said.
“They're more engaged and they create really useful things. That's been a really positive learning experience for them. The way that the 20Time work project works in our class is students spend every Friday focusing on their 20Time project.”
The project is broken into monthly steps, including writing a proposal, researching the topic, building the project and creating a presentation.
Stoker-Lavelle said it was up to the students to find a project they wanted to tackle.
“They have to identify a problem either in their community or the world at large that they're trying to address with their projects,” Stoker-Lavelle said.
“That problem could be something as simple as saying, ‘I've always wanted to be good at photography, so I want to learn more about photography,’ or something more concrete. ‘I wish we had a football program at school,’ and they want to resolve that or something bigger. ‘The population is suffering in the world at large and I want to address that.’ The problems can be large-scale problems or much smaller problems.”
Stoker-Lavelle said this kind of project can provide good opportunities for students.
“Often there are kids who struggle at school who rise to the occasion,” she said.
“Some kids really have a hard time with an open ended project. They really have to figure a lot out for themselves, which is tough for a lot of students. I think that's one of the most valuable parts of this project, having to problem solve on your own and taking ownership of your own project. I think project based learning is really empowering for kids.”
After completing the projects, a new kind of pressure is put on the students - the pressure of public speaking.
“It's a legitimate fear and it's definitely something that is hard for a lot of students,” Stoker-Lavelle said.
“What we do is we spend a lot of time in January in the theatre. Kids are in the environment where they're going to be presenting and practicing... In September, half of the students say ‘There's no way I'm doing it.’”
Stoker-Lavelle encourages everyone who can make it to make the trip to the theatre, despite what her students may say.
“It's great for students to see that other people care about what they're doing in school and it just makes it more authentic for them,” she said.
“The students will tell me, ‘don't tell anybody to come, please just don't tell anyone,’ but it is meaningful that other people should care about what they have to say.”
