Speyer Eighth Graders' Pandemic-Twist on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation?"
Over the summer, Speyer students had to contend with a global pandemic, leading to the cancellation of nearly all plans (no camp, limited travel, not able to see relatives). We challenged the older students to think about how they might respond to this sudden gift of time, with this summer assignment:
Take a topic of interest to you and then see what you can create over a 6-8 week period. You might tackle a novel, a series of films training younger children in a sport you excel at, a related series of short stories, a full-length play, a themed album, choreography for a dance, a serious graphic novel, a movie about children on the cusp of adulthood, a huge canvass or a series of pen and ink drawings. The only requirement is that the viewer/reader/observer learns more about you from colliding with your art and you learn more about yourself when birthing it.
As you can imagine, there were many responses to this challenge. To be able to do anything that they want with the one focus that it must provide an insight into who they are can be freeing...but also a tad daunting when figuring out exactly what to do. Of course, they were undeterred and their end results truly gave a new dimension to phrases like "making a virtue of necessity." We know you are curious about what they did…here are a few examples:
A couple of students designed and then built computers (which may heighten their participation in Zoom classes maybe).
Two are co-authoring a novel (currently over 130,000 words although the editing process is apparently paring it somewhat).
One wrote a series of short stories describing a hero’s journey but with each section showing a different time and place and protagonist.
One choreographed her own dance and another documented the summer through photography.
And one young man wrote and circulated a survey to better understand why more of us are not leaping to action for social justice in the current climate.
Impressive, yes. But there’s more…and we have permission to share these with you:
Here is a movie explaining how a student turned her bedroom door into the Sistine Chapel.
And another movie capturing just how one student actually spent her summer (working…)!
There is a blog on soccer (and if you want to know about the top player in each UK premier league team, this is all you’ll need to read).
And here is a link to the survey mentioned above about social justice. Our student would be interested to have your input to add to his research.
Tapping into the metacognition process that drives our students -- thinking about what they are learning and how they are learning -- is an element of every class at Speyer. As you can see, what our oldest Speyer students are thinking about and how they are thinking cover the full spectrum of concepts and themes. This assignment is an excellent example of one of the hallmarks of Speyer's differentiated curriculum: allowing our students to dive deep into their specific interests and then challenging them to share it in a creative way with the larger community.