This week, students in MPI social studies teacher Raleigh Werberger's IB History of the Americas class presented final projects to their peers as well as teachers and staff.
Click to view a project photo gallery!
The course project was a survey of modern racial and gender inequalities in the US, and the connections to the origins and goals of the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s, which they studied as they constructed their exhibits.
According to Werberger, The goal with project-based learning is to:
"1. Make work meaningful, which meant connecting history to their own experience and context. So kids with interests in sports studied racism in sports, kids with mixed-race background studied being mixed-race, kids from military families looked at sexism in the military."
"2. Allow kids to develop new skills and express themselves creatively, yet with intellectual rigor. So this was meant to have them do research into the issue they chose, and develop a presentation to exhibit what they learned using technologies and approaches that they deduced worked best."
"3. 'Own' their work. I wanted an exhibit that challenged the students to think about the display, but also stand in front of it, as it were, and explain what they wanted to accomplish. I don't favor assignments where the kids just hand you something and there are no consequences beyond my opinion. Here, they stood in front of peers and adults. Here, the display itself had to tell the story, and they were there to answer further questions."
