Grade 10s Preparing for Personal Project Deadline

January 21, 2022

Academics

GNS

With the project deadline of January 24 fast approaching, Grade 10 students are scrambling to finish their IB MYP Personal Projects.

The Personal Project allows students to explore their passions, which differ as much as the student’s themselves.

Shawn Vink ’24 is choreographing a contemporary jazz dance piece as her final product, and has done research and experimentation on how the body reacts to different types of music.

“I’m choreographing a dance style of contemporary jazz and I’m looking at the scientific connection between music and body movement, so that correlation as we hear music, how it affects our bodies need to move,” she explained.

She has encountered many difficulties along the way, but she has let these experiences strengthen her scientific finding and knowledge of her topic.

“It’s hard because it’s a very intuitive thing, so as different people acquire different music, you take it very personally,” she said. “Everybody’s different so it’s very hard to pinpoint exactly what it is.”

Charlotte Quin ’24 is combining her knowledge of nutrition and health with her skill for sports by designing a specialized workout intended for teenagers.

“My Personal Project is about making a workout plan designed mostly for teenagers, more specifically for girls, but boys can use it of course too,” she explains. “Part of it was learning more about nutrition and what foods are better and more energy optimizing and mood optimizing.”

Her inspiration for this project came from an observance of her community and how her peers were often affected by problems that most teenagers face. She created this project in hopes that this would improve the physical health of the affected populace.

“It is designed to increase the amount of physical activity girls do as teenagers, because at 17, it decreases by 70 percent,” she said. “We live right now in a time where there are a lot of foods that are unhealthy that can affect your mood and also physical health.”

Caitlin Chen ’24 created a brochure filled with information about the LGBTQ+ community, such as stories and definitions of terms that are used. Faced with such a meaningful and complex topic, Caitlin has had difficulties with deciding what to include in her brochure. She discusses one of the most important lessons she’s learned through her project.

“I think it’s the information part of it. Learning about cisgender or gender fluid, like these nouns we don’t usually intend to learn,” she remarks. “Of course, we know to be respectful and all that but I think to know the details to every term and the facts behind everything is the first step to really understanding…to know what they’re going through so you can actually think about it and that’s when you really respect them.”

The diversity between projects is one of the special aspects of the IB MYP Personal Project. The Exhibition has been moved to early Marchin the hopes that more members of the community can attend and see what the Grade 10s of 2021/2022 will showcase.