Parkland High School celebrated student progress in its International Baccalaureate program with an IB showcase on Monday night.
As an accredited IB school, Parkland’s goal is to help students achieve internationally recognized standards for university admissions. A big part of that goal is self-guided research, and students have spent all year on projects that show off their skills with project development. Principal Noel Keener says that the capstone courses student take foster critical thinking skills that will make them more capable beyond high school no matter what ambitions they pursue.
“The entire purpose of the capstone courses is to help them take what they’ve learned and think critically and use it in a way that works for them,” Keener said.
Middle Years program students, which include high schoolers up to age 16, have spent the year on their Personal Projects. Personal Projects are just what they sound like – students choose their own research 
topic and explore it as they see fit so that they can give a comprehensive report at the end of the year. Subjects of this year’s projects ran the gamut from learning to cook to animal adoption to the immigrant experience in the United States. But the one thing that connected them all was the sense of agency.
“It was easier to learn because you could do it your own way,” Makayla Brown said of her project. “Everything wasn’t set in stone for you.”
The junior class’s projects took a different approach that revolved around the Theory of Knowledge. Students had to dig deep in analyses of the value of different types of knowledge, what constitutes good evidence and how truth can be proven and justified. It’s a project full of open-ended questions and no easy answers, so coming up with a coherent presentation was a rewarding challenge.
“This helps me with my future projects because it helps me think outside the box,” said Yolaemi Valuerde.
Original source can be found here.
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