January Day

While the actual plan for the mid-year partner project (“January Day”) wasn’t developed until October of this year, having some sort of mid-year event had been planned since last year. Part of the reason for this addition to the EMC2 curriculum has been my feeling that a year is too long to be spending on some of these EMC2 projects; I’ve suggested multiple times that we turn the class into a semester-length course, offered in both semesters. Students who have accomplished what they want to accomplish, or who are struggling to go any deeper with their line of inquiry, could then complete their work by the end of January and then be done (or perhaps re-enroll but change topics), while students with larger projects, or who were really interested in going deeper with their line of inquiry, could re-enroll for the next semester and continue their work. The coordinators and I have not decided to pursue that set-up, but I did want to break-up the year into sections with some kind of demarcation event because I think a full year of “exploration” is a little excessive. The first semester is indeed all about exploration: students can bounce around, researching various aspects of their broader topics, and get experience in their field of study. But the second semester we want to be different; the second semester is all about building. Once the students have explored various parts of their topic, they should be in a position to choose one particular aspect and come with an idea of how to advance knowledge of that aspect. Research may of course continue into the second semester, but this research should be much more purposeful, in that it is conducted to patch holes in knowledge needed for the crafting of the student’s final product. 

So, what would this mid-year event look like? Well, first of all, I wanted to showcase the knowledge that students would have gained during the first semester. That is, I wanted to start treating them like quasi-experts in their fields. Such a showcasing usually takes the form of a symposium or a science-fair-type thing. However, EMC2 already has a symposium at the end of the year for all of the students, and many of the students will be participating in the Capital District’s STEAM Exposition, which has a science-fair feel. So, we didn’t want to be unduly repetitive. We did feel, however, that students should experience presenting their topics, and that repeated presentations would increase the benefits of presenting, namely the internalizing of information and the attempt at connecting it to the outside world, of making it matter for people. We also wanted this event to help the students develop skills that they were struggling with. Communication has been a big issue for many of the students, but collaboration was a bigger issue, for all of the students. Therefore, I suggested that we make this a partner project. This way the students would have to work with each other, and explore how their topic connected to other topics. I also suggested that every pair of students be given their own classrooms for January Day and present about their topics to several groups of students. This would give a sense of ownership and pride in their knowledge, and also allow them an opportunity to make the attempt to connect multiple times. There was also discussion of some sort of scavenger hunt, but I think it was ultimately concluded that that would just confuse things too much. 

So, the goal of January Day is simple: Collaborate with your partner to create some sort of product that represents a synthesis of both projects and communicates the importance of the projects to an outside world, and then prepare a 10 minute presentation of that product. Like other assignments in EMC2, the details were left to the students as an opportunity for creativity and necessary freedom for individuality and purposefulness. That is, requirements were left vague so that students could shape their products and presentations as they wished, hopefully in a way that contributed to the continued progress of their projects. To ensure that we weren’t demanding too much from the students, the coordinators decided that January Day would count as the students’ SDAs for the month of December. 

I believe that this project will help all of the students with their goals for their projects and with contribute to the coordinators’ goals of making the students better thinkers and questioners. As discussed in other posts to this site, each one of the students’ projects is a truth claim about the world, an argument. Arguments are tested by fire and thereby improved when they are exposed to the real world, and exposure to the real world helps students focus their efforts on useful applications of their topics. January Day exposes the students’ projects to the real world. More than that, January Day requires that the students explore how their topics are related to each other, which will require them to think about their projects from different perspectives, and I think that this exercise in different-views will prove useful to their overall understanding of their topics. This project should force them to think and to question. Furthermore, as discussed above, it will give them experience working together and speaking publicly and authoritatively about their topics. And, if they’re motivated, it will force them to be creative as they seek to create a shared product that actually contributes to both of their projects. Everyone has something to gain from January Day.

That being said, it must be remembered that January Day. There’s no guarantee that it will be as helpful for everyone as I hope it will be, and even if it is successful, that doesn’t mean that it was the most effective method of achieving those successes. So, I look forward to seeing how January Day works out, and reading the reflections from the students, and assessing whether January Day was as purposeful as it needs to be survive as part of the program. I almost hope it doesn’t so that I can work with some of the students to craft a better alternative.