When Grade 9 students at Cochrane High School were told they could immerse themselves in a project of their choice this year, following their passion no matter where it led them, they didn’t have to be told twice.
The first-year high-school students presented their “cross-curricular capstone projects” to the rest of the Cochrane High student body and their parents in the school theatre on April 20. They’ve been working on the projects since September.
Not all of them could be exhibited live in the theatre – those that couldn’t be brought in were featured in video presentations.
But others, like Anna Pace’s original composition “Perdue dans le temps” (Lost in Time) lent themselves to live performance. Her performance on the piano held the crowd spellbound as she hit the notes with well-practiced precision. She said she composed the piece in about seven hours.
Teacher Tara Cunningham said she was impressed with the range of interests expressed by her students.
“For example, one of them wrote a short novel, and as a side project, did an exploration of paper and paper production,” she said.
"Another decided he was going to build an outdoor ice skating rink, with lights and everything – it was amazing.”
Cunningham said the Grade 9 teachers at Cochrane High wanted their students to really go deep with their projects this year.
“If you’re going to really dig in, you have to have a real personal interest from the get-go,” she said.
The projects will count towards the core requirements for the high school curriculum.
Kolby Stefura couldn’t attend, but his project stood out in a corner – a self-made bike camper. It’s a solid structure, shaped somewhat like a teardrop, which can be towed behind Stefura’s mountain bike anywhere the trails may take him.
“When he presented his idea, both myself and my partner teacher were skeptical; it seemed impossible to us,” Cunningham said.
The results spoke for themselves at the unveiling in the theatre on Thursday. Stefura even went so far as to sleep in his camper for a couple of nights night prior to the presentations, when night time temperatures were below zero degrees Celsius.
Another student built a greenhouse and set about to compare the growth rates of plants in it, as compared to a control group.
“They have clear scientific results, which is exciting,” Cunningham said.
Rachel Kinch studied the importance of sleep and how to get enough of it.
Willow Kabanuk, whose father is a pilot, designed and built different sizes of gliders out of lightweight wood.
Hunter Sawatsky learned how to tie flyfishing flies.
And Aniya Brar Ahmed’s video presentation outlined how she has launched a fundraising initiative, with a goal of raising $10,000 to fight Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) – a rare genetic disease. The child she talked about in her presentation needs $10,000 for drugs to treat the condition. Her project is connected to loveforlewiston.com, a website dedicated to the cause.
While the parameters were highly flexible, the projects were required to have components of the four core subjects (math, science, English and humanities). Other than that, the students pretty much had free rein.
Each project’s subject was a passion chosen by the students and included music composition, building, photography, video creation, charitable work and more.
