Seen and Heard: Student Achievement and Accomplishments
1. Independent Motivation: One evening in class I explained the idea behind the Passion Project and showed an example of my own. Completely unprompted, I had three different students arrive the next evening with Passion Project proposals. I was shocked. By mid-semester students were working on their projects independently and often during their own time. I had students in my evening class that came in to the computer lab to work on projects at 8:45 in the morning. Students put in time on the weekends at home and at the library. Considering my students have families and many have multiple jobs, it speaks volumes that they made time to work on the projects.
2. Collaborative Behaviors: Tech savvy students were quick to lend a hand to students who were struggling with the technology needed to complete their projects. One student was falling behind with his project and another student who was almost finished with her project jumped in to help him complete his project. Even outside the realm of the Passion Projects, students got together outside of class to study for the final test (another first for my class).
3. Improved Technology and English Language Skills: Students all used technology in some way to complete their projects. Students learned to create simple web pages, edit video, and create presentations. Additionally, students demonstrated improved pronunciation and speaking skills when delivering presentations. Additionally, I noticed a decreased reliance on native language and saw students speaking to each other in English even when they had the same native language. Finally, students showed a marked increase in vocabulary using many new words related to their passions.
4. Increased Confidence: After we presented our projects, we had a short debrief session. Many students made similar remarks "I never had a teacher let me do something like this before". "Thank you for letting us learn what we want to learn". "Even when I studied in college in my own country, I never had a teacher let me give a presentation like this". Students who were so shy in using English in class, went off the cuff during their presentations to talk about what inspired them. They answered questions from classmates without reverting back to their native language. One aspect of the Passion Project that I find extremely valuable is that students are forced to step outside of their comfort zones. As adult immigrants, many of my students tend not to stray from their own communities outside of the classroom. They find a comfort zone and have difficulty leaving. But for people to grow, they need to leave their comfortable surroundings. My students did this. I saw my students exhibit traits and accomplish tasks that I have never seen in my classes in the past. While all students had struggles and difficulties along the way, I know that each student walked out of class on presentation night with a huge sense of accomplishment.
Part two of this post will include a discussion about the challenges we encountered and what changes I plan to make for the projects next year as well as links to the resources and forms I created.
I would like to take this time to give a big thank you first and foremost to my wonderful supervisor for allowing me the freedom to do this and the support necessary to carry it out...thanks Karen! Also I want to thank all the members of the 20% time in Education Google+ community for the ideas and support. Anyone interesting in using 20% time in their classroom should definitely get involved in this community. And finally thanks to Joy Kirr for providing me with ELL appropriate resources and information! I can't wait to get started again next semester!
