Muskego 7th Graders Set a Challenging Course for Themselves

I have long been reaching out to our schools, as they are always a font of information, so I was thrilled to be the one to receive an invitation at the district level to take part in Project i, which is a program that involves student-driven learning.

Shortly after I signed up, two students involved in a leadership project at Bay Lane Middle School, Cassidy Shaw and Nicole Brezinski, contacted me and asked about what it was like to put together a magazine.  While Patch is online only, publishing is publishing, and the discussion led to my appearance before their class, led by advisors Laura Kerrigan and Nancy Dohr.

Project i students were selected from a pool of about 100 applicants at Bay Lane as well as Lake Denoon Middle Schools, with the projects mission for students to innovate, inquire and imagine as they develop 21st Century learning skills.

The program is in a pilot phase and the role of the students is 'to build their own learning plans and manage their learning process to achieve academic standards, using teachers not just as instructors but also as advisors,' according to program documents. In this case, students were to come up with their own projects to present leaders and leadership concepts.  Nicole and Cassidy chose a magazine format to present their topic, but Dohr also said that other students were doing the same and others could select that format in the future.

With regard to magazine projects and gathering information for reports in general, we talked about interviewing techniques and where to look for information using the internet as a tool and not necessarily as the end.

The Project i program is much like Muskego Patch, undergoing a period of trial and error and open to change, so I could identify with hopes and anxieties that go along with it. 

Students are also asked to develop their own blogs with in a secure, invite-only environment online.  Our discussion in that regard led to what topics to blog on, how to present topics and how to develop a list of topics so the 'blank page syndrome' never occurs.

A lot of heavy stuff for an 8:00 a.m. start time for most 13 year olds, I would guess, and a few probably were wishing they could just rest their heads. My hope however is that we can build on their interests by providing smart and effective tools to investigate and learn about their world.