Cedar Int. students show off creative school projects!
It's some thing that comes from deep within their being, their passion, indeed it's the story of a personal project programme of Cedar International School. An interest of persons about the programme at the Ceder College was awaken with the publishing of an art piece done by Rikkiya Brathwaite and made further public on Virgin Islands News Online. A visit was made to the school and the details of the programme were told by Middle Year Coordinator of the school, Mrs Michelle Lee-Jones.
The programme is an International Bachelorette programme called (IB), "its a very interesting programme and very dynamic and one of the most dynamic parts is that it is a personal project that takes place at the grade 10 level," explained Mrs Lee-Jones.
The project was designed to allow children to demonstrate the skills and knowledge they learnt over a period of five years. "It can be somewhat a daunting task but because they get to choose their own way to express something of their personal interest, the students are able to take this on as an exciting challenge."
This year there are ten students participating in the programme and will be graduating in June 2013. The have been working on their individual project since september of 2012. It started with them finding something of personal interest, something they felt have roots or connections with their local community and then develop that interest by conducting some research and coming to a point where they can actually decide on a product that they want to make.
"There were some interesting ones in the past like a talking trash can that was used in the kindergarden to actually encourage children to throw things in the bin." There were also pieces of drama productions, fashion shows. "We even had one student who made a kayak completely out of natural wood that they found here on the Island," said Mrs Lee Jones.
The main objective is to help the students develop what the college calls "approaches to learning" which is an intrinsic pillar of the Middle Year Programme (MYP).
Each student will pin their project in a column called an area of attraction. This is something that will form an umbrella over their project and should give them a sort of guiding objective. "Its quite a complex project and requires a lot of research and a lot of individual personal thought as well. Once students have done that research and created their product they then write a report."
That report these students have to prepare is between 2500 and 4000 words and is designed for them to be able to lay out everything they have learnt through the process as well as how they went about the process, including what decisions they made, solutions the came up with, challenges and how they were solved and what they would have learnt about their area of attraction, community and otherwise.
"Its quite intense so far and it lasts from September (2012) to May and they work on it outside the school time. It's not done in school at all and they come to the school to do the report. We have a personal project evening which we would love the community to come and support and that's a chance for our students to demonstrate their product," said an elated Mrs Lee - Jones.
On the judgement of the Programme Coordinator, the most extreme project this year is the amphibious vehicle, a creation of Justice Amory. "Justice had the idea to create a vehicle that could be driven under water and he wanted to use local welding techniques to actually create this vehicle. So I think that's proberly the most ambitious of the projects this year," said Mrs Lee-Jone.
There were others that were similarly unique including Darissa Rogers' who held a fashion show for which all the clothing were made of recycled materials that she had gathered on Tortola and Virgin Gorda. "She had models go down the ramp and model the pieces. Her goal was to sell off these outfits to raise money for charity. I don't know yet if she has gotten to that point but I felt that was also very pretty ambitious," said the teacher.
The most simple and impressive one was done by Daniel Petrovic's whose goal was to rehabilitate a red tail hawk, which was rescued by his father who is a biologist. "He has been taking his creation around to local schools educating children as to the importance of preserving the wild life that is found in the BVI but also to the process of rehabilitation because a lot of people don't know of that process at all. I think that one was very simple but it had a significant impact on his community," said the teacher.
The programme at Cedar International is part of the school's accreditation process.
"Holistically, becoming a IB school has really put us on the map." She said that IB is a very rigorous programme, which affords the students the opportunities for international studies at tertiary institutions in the USA and UK. It has also brough in an international and global influence into the community with students and teachers from all over the world. "So we are working to identify this Caribbean root but also keep this global focus."
Cedar International is the only school in the Virgin Islands to offer the IB programme. "There are some schools in the Caribbean that have began to offer some of the programmes but Cedar is one of only two schools that are currently offering all three programmes in the Caribbean- the primary Years Programme (PYP), MYP and the Diploma Programme (DP).
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