It’s All About The Process
Project based learning is fun, but it is not easy. Especially for a large group of students. In LEAP our education is in the hands of us. Our effort determines how much we learn and our passions determine what we learn. This means that we should be engaged the whole time, right? Well, kinda. For kids who are used to being told what to do, when, and how to do it, it can be difficult for us to focus and work productively when we are given almost complete freedom. This does not mean that this kind of education if bad, or that we are always slacking off. It just means that we are having to learn a very hard, but very real world skill of self assignment and control. We are discovering that hard diligent work is the only way to get things finished. The process of trial and failure is harsh but a real way of learning, once you fail you are much less likely to ever make that mistake again.
I am learning that in order to start the real physical work for our playground project it takes days of planning and organizing in advance. Most of the kids in LEAP, including me, are really excited and passionate about building and learning physical skills, but not so much the budgeting and organizing part. I understand that without the initial planning the project could never happen so I have taken quite a bit of the budgeting and planning on myself. To be honest, I do it only because no one else will, I think other kids would be better at it than me, but if they won’t do it, I take it upon myself to step in. Me and my boarding house room mate/ fellow Leaper have come to school earlier twice to meet with the head of school to get approval for the design and budget for the project. I would rather not have to do this, but I know that we are on a time crunch and that means working a little more than what I am used to.
The process of creating a project like this is a complex one, especially when we have so many people with so many different ideas working on it all at the same time. It gets really chaotic, and sometimes I’ve learned that even if you like an idea it is important to say no if you don’t think it is realistic. Saying no is very hard for me, I don’t like to shut down people’s ideas, especially if they are good ones, but sometimes it comes to that. We have so much work we need to do, and we are not the most organized or the most productive workers, so adding to our plans is very stressful for me. I also no that just because we can’t do it now doesn’t mean we can’t do it another time. We have created the playground in a way that there are many possibilities to add to it in the future.
We do not have much time to finish this playground. School ends on the 15th of June, right now it is the 24th of May. With weekends, school holidays and Green-Stone presentations we only have 8 to 9 days of being able to work on this project! WOW! That is not much. But we already have all the tires and hardware we need to build the majority of the playground. I feel confident that we can do it. Today was the first day that I saw everyone working hard together almost all day! After seeing that and seeing how much we got done, I believe that even with the time crunch we can do it!
