The opening of the display

On Tuesday January 29, 2008 , parents and students attended the opening of the Personal Project Display and were amazed by truly personal projects completed by this year’s grade 10 students.

There is an astounding variety of approaches to the personal projects. We have a number of projects this year that aimed at creating awareness about social/community issues. Such a project was completed by Roshni Suchak who examined flooding in the Mikocheni area of Dar es Salaam. Other students reflected upon their culture in relation to living in Tanzania. Examples are Ekta Vithlani’s project in which she illustrated the merging of Indian and African culture through dress design and Nikki Golding’s comparison of Glasgow and Dar. We have students who have shown their caring sides and have created projects aimed at helping others. Josephine Smit’s guide to climbing Kilimanjaro from a health perspective and Katie Walter’s Fitness guide for teenage girls are just 2 examples of this type of project. Some projects also examined the impact of human ingenuity such as Safia-Alisa Jamal who researched how His Highness Prince Aga Khan helped to develop East Africa and Susan Akwera who examined advances in telecommunications in Tanzania.

It is great to see that increasingly our students take a truly PERSONAL approach to their projects and as such their learning has value and meaning. In many ways the Personal Project serves as excellent practice for the Extended Essay in the Diploma Programme as both require independent research, intellectual risk-taking and reflection on a topic of interest, as well as analyzing it in a written structure. Students who struggled with organization and time management have hopefully learned this about themselves and will focus on improving that as they approach the Extended Essay.

Many thanks too to Eamonn Hobbins as the grade 10 Team Leader who helped me to monitor students’ progress, and to Tim Wagner and Daryl Rustad who kindly let me use some of their lesson time to work with the students.

Finally, I’d also like to thank the supervisors for the guidance they provided to the students throughout the process. They are essential in helping our students achieve success.

I hope you enjoyed the display this year.

Well done, everyone!

Melodee Peters: MYP Coordinator

Photogallery click here