I put down the pencil that I was doodling all over my notes with, and my ears perk up as my Chinese IV teacher, Ms. Annie Choi, announces that there will be no Unit 12 test. Instead we will use the new vocabulary words to write and record a skit. As a test-hater, this is good news; but as a project-lover, this is the best news. As the class moves to a grammar worksheet, my mind races ahead, fixating on the upcoming project. Who will my partner be? I think my skit will be set in France! Will we get to perform it live, too? Mine is going to be so good!
I have had a big imagination my entire life, and whenever I have the opportunity to use my creativity in my academic classes at school—especially the more difficult ones like Chinese—I always jump at the chance. Personally, projects help me learn because I benefit from having a longer period to refine my thoughts and use my creativity to work through problems. Whenever a teacher announces a project, I know that I am going to have fun with it.
At Westridge, many teachers incorporate projects, or creative assignments, into their curriculum. There is a wide variety of what projects can look like, including making posters, videos, slideshows, creative writing, building models, and more to showcase a student’s mastery of the course material. Students usually have an extended amount of time to work on their projects and are often assigned to work on their projects as homework as well as allotted time in class to work with group members and ask their teachers questions. Each class has a different balance between these projects and more traditional assignments such as tests, quizzes, and analytical papers.
In Upper School Science Teacher Mrs. Michelle Amos’ Advanced Environmental Science and Sustainability class, students complete long-term semester projects such as the Ecocolumn project where students create a small ecosystem out of stacked plastic water bottles to learn about biogeochemical systems and how living organisms interact with their environment. In the second semester, students in Mrs. Amos’s class complete a passion project on an environmental issue of choice. Mrs. Amos also has many smaller-scale projects and hands-on assignments such as using pudding to learn about dirt and a biome speed-dating project where students take the identity of one of Earth’s biomes. “Enviro has lots and lots of hands-on learning. I very rarely lecture…but that then opens up the classroom to do so many other fun things,” said Mrs. Amos.
Other teachers also try to maintain a balance between different types of assignments because different methods of learning may be beneficial for different students. According to Upper School English Teacher Ms. Molly Yurchak, “Each individual human has a different point of view, has different skills, has different talents. And when we can use those, everything clicks, so we’re looking to create opportunities to help those clicks come faster and more persuasively.”
Mrs. Amos echoed this idea, saying, “Every student’s an individual, and every student [is] unique, and every student therefore has a unique learning style.”
Outside of Westridge, creative projects are also recognized as beneficial to students’ learning. According to the Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning, “The benefits of creative assignments include increased student engagement, motivation, and satisfaction… These types of assignments promote innovation, academic integrity, student self-awareness/metacognition (e.g., when students engage in reflection through journal assignments), and can be made authentic as students develop and apply skills to real-world situations.”
While projects can be fun, engaging, and beneficial to students’ learning, in most academic classes, especially humanities classes such as English and History, traditional writing assignments like essays and paragraphs are necessary for students who are learning how to write and think analytically. Ms. Yurchak said, “I’m often trying to not totally upend the traditional work, but [instead] wherever I can, give it a twist.” Sophomores in Ms. Yurchak’s English II course complete a variety of projects, including the Macbeth acting project at the end of the year where students use their text analysis skills to recreate a scene from the Shakespearian play.
Senior Sydney S. has fond memories of her sophomore year Macbeth project as it helped her express herself. She said, “When I had a sophomore year project on [Macbeth] I had to write a song for it, and it came at a very good time of my life where I needed to write a song…I’m really grateful that I had that option.”
Serafino S. ’27 also appreciates when classes incorporate creative assignments. “Personally, I do find that creative projects in my otherwise non-creative classes—like history and math and such—really do help my understanding because they let me frame these ideas that I’m sometimes struggling with in a new way so that I can grasp them better, and [projects] really get me more engaged and they make me want to learn,” she says.
Upper School Science Teacher Ms. Laura Hatchman sees that these experiences are generally what stick with students. She said, “I think when students are having fun, they’re going to be more engaged. But also, there’s research to show that coloring, or that tangibly making something can help you remember concepts better, too. So there’s that reason science is creative, so we want to mimic that process in the classroom and collaborate.”
Similar to Ms. Hatchman, many other teachers choose to assign projects because they see that projects are typically more fun and engaging for students, which creates a better learning environment. Mrs. Amos said, “When you think about it, if you’re excited and you’re enthused, you’re going to have a better learning experience and you’re going to learn more. There’s a huge amount of emotion in learning and a huge amount of emotion in assessments as well.”
While the opportunities for learning abound in projects, there are multiple aspects that students find challenging. Many projects include a presentation aspect, which can be frustrating to students who struggle with speaking in front of large groups.
Working with classmates on a group project can also be difficult for some students. Hermione W. ’27 struggles to coordinate with her peers during group projects because everyone has different schedules. Hermione also notices uneven effort from her peers. “In every group it’s inevitable that you have strong links and weak links,” she said.
Similarly, Noelle S. ’27 finds it difficult to work with group members who usually have differing opinions and work ethics. “It’s just hard getting all your views together in one idea,” she said. However, Noelle prefers and benefits from projects when she is given choice regarding her group members.
The difficulties of being stuck in a group with people who are not on the same page or willing to put in an equal amount of effort stretches far beyond Westridge, so much so that the struggle has become a common internet meme.
Some students also find the creativity aspect of projects difficult, feeling lost if a project includes an ancillary skill like play-writing, something that they did not learn how to do in class. Hermione says, “Sometimes projects can feel more abstract next to other material we’ve been working on, so it can feel kind of irrelevant or hard to connect.”
To maximize the student experience while completing her projects, Ms. Hatchman tries to give students different choices, including whom they work with and the format of their projects. Ms. Hatchman said, “Some students love projects, and some students don’t love projects. So, I think as long as we’re putting choice into the project, in some regard, usually most students will stay engaged.”
While Ms. Hatchman gives students different choices within the same projects every year, Upper School English Teacher Ms. Yurchak adapts assignments to fit each class. “The balance is kind of reading the room and being open to changing your game plan,” she said. Ms. Yurchak assesses her classes to see what works or doesn’t for each class. Some classes need a more traditional approach while others need more creative assignments. Ms. Yurchak isn’t constrained by her lesson plans and deviates from them anytime she feels something is off. This also helps Ms. Yurchak stay excited about her work, as teaching the same book every year can feel repetitive.
Despite the drawbacks that can accompany projects, there is research to support that being creative in the classroom can be beneficial to students into their adult lives. According to the article, On the role of creativity in the application-oriented university students’ engagement and success from the National Library of Medicine by Wenjuan Li, innovation in the classroom is necessary in preparing students for careers that require deep and out of the box thinking, like writing, teaching, engineering, etc. According to Li, “Enhancing creativity in academic settings plays an important role in bringing about the development of future societies.”
When I think about the projects I’ve done over my education at Westridge, so many highlights come to mind. I am not a straight-A student. I am an easily-distracted, commonly-bored, wish-I-was-in-my-art-class student. In the least offensive way possible, lectures and quizzes do not do it for me, and I hope every day that no one will ask to see my notes because I did not take any. However, I thrive when I can focus all my creative energy on one project. I love making things, and if that means I have to learn something new to make that thing, I will fully commit. After a semester of struggling through Chinese III, my teacher assigned a poster project. When she saw me picking over every little detail and staying focused the entire work period, she told the class that she had never seen me happier. Truth be told: I had never felt happier in Chinese than I did doing that project.
