Olivia Wright says project-based learning and Regents together build skills
Olivia Wright, a senior at MELS, says she took all Regents and also completed projects. Projects helped her collaborate, retain content, and develop public speaking and time management skills. She supports Portrait while noting Regents can still be useful.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Olivia Wright and I'm a senior at Metropolitan Extrusionary Learning School, also known as MELS, and I'm a student advisor for NYC Albert Bound Schools.
When I think about having this type of conversation, I think about my best friend.
She's a special person and has my back no matter what.
I have friends like her because I go to a special school like Mel's.
Mel's is a place where to graduate I have to have both took my regents, passed them, and demonstrate my learning through projects.
Because of the projects we did, it gave me a way to collaborate with other students and helped me learn through a perspective that wasn't just my teachers.
It also gave me a way to make friends, not just outside of school.
I know everyone is having mixed feelings about the Regents no longer being a graduation requirement because they're concerned it's going to affect our success in the future and won't be a challenge for us, but I don't think that's the truth.
As someone who has taken all of her Regents and does projects to show my learning,
I can say that the projects have given me skills to be successful in the future and have also helped me pass the regents.
For example, taking the history region was easier for me because I have a love for history and the projects I made along the way helped me understand and retain the content I was learning easier.
In my history class last year, for our final product, we had to get into groups of three to four and put on a performance about a historical figure in the founding era.
The project was not only fun, but it also gave me and my peers a chance to build team working skills, team building skills, and public speaking skills, and time management skills.
Those are skills that I need for work.
I think while assessing everyone the same way, like with regents, is a good thing, schools can begin to take away from what really can help us students be successful, when its main focus is just passing a test.
In my opinion, what can help students be successful is teaching us how to learn, collaborate, and be social.
Math, science, English, and history are important, but can we really express this knowledge without having these skills?
These skills can start to develop through the project-based learning.