Resilience Café Project

6th April 2022Duncan Robertson

With thanks to High Tech High for allowing us to share their student’s beautiful work.

During the Resilience Café Project, 8th graders learned about resilient heroes from the past and present, and explored together what it means to be resilient. Students identified specific attributes to celebrate and communicate through their work.

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They connected a resilient historical figure, a resilient community member and their own personal story of resilience through writing and by creating an art piece full of symbolism. They honored their resilient community members by inviting them to a night of celebration through music, spoken word, poetry and artwork.

 

Teachers’ Reflection

Students took the basic concept for the project and made it their own. The elements of choice, and the fact that students were working on this project in two out of their three classes, allowed for creativity and personal connections to emerge. Throughout the project, the energy was high, the creativity was buzzing, and the students were empowered to honor the resilience all around them!

 

Student Reflections

During this project I learned about the Civil War, Brown vs. The Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement, and the Blues. I also learned that resilience is the ability to endure and be strengthened by the hardships you face. Basically, learning about resilience teaches us to go out of our comfort zone and to know that the struggle will help us become a better person.

—Andrew Sanchez

 

I loved exhibition because I felt proud of all of my pieces. Everybody liked my art piece and I felt like it represented my community member and historical figure. I was able to have in-depth conversations with other parents about my art.

—Hannah Hoang

 

I felt so good about this project! I was in my element considering we could do music. People were blown away by our song and that meant a lot to me. We got so many compliments that night. My grandmother said that she felt honored by our performance and was so proud of me.

—Lizzie Mooney

 

To learn more about this project and others,

visit the HTH Unboxed website.

The Bee Project

5th April 2022Duncan Robertson

Why do we need honey bees and how do they affect our world? In order to answer these questions, second graders investigated the role of bees in our ecosystem, and the various ways bees are being threatened.


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Once their research was complete, students became advocates for the bees. Working collaboratively in groups, students wrote and performed bee plays to educate the school community about the threats to bees. They also wrote letters to the city and large corporations, planted over 200 bee-friendly plants, and built beehives to donate to a community organization in Mexicali.

Teacher Reflection:

This has been one of my favorite projects because it gave students the opportunity to advocate for what they feel is important and to make a change in our community. I knew this project was meaningful when students insisted we write letters to our local government asking if they could plant more pesticide-free flowers for bees. Our students were so proud as they stood by the plants that they put into the ground with their own hands. I think that what impacted me most as a teacher was to see my students take ownership of their learning. When they began to understand the problems that honeybees were facing, they also realized that there were ways for them to advocate for change. Students began to ask questions about why people, namely adults and big corporations, are not doing more to help the honeybees. After building beehives to send to Mexicali to help a community of women and children there, students felt a sense of accomplishment and contribution to solving a problem that they realized is affecting us all.

Student Reflections:

I learned that if we didn’t have bees we wouldn’t have most of our favorite food.

—Silas

Working in a group helped me because I got more ideas. None of us is as smart as all of us.

—Aiden

To learn more about this project and others, visit the HTH Unboxed website.