Sunday, February 17, 2013
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Project Week?
Project Week is a experiential learning opportunity that provides time for an extended and vigorous investigation of an essential question through outstanding educational opportunities that are not possible in the standard classroom setting. Possible essential questions are as numerous and diverse as the interests of the students and faculty.
Students engage in self-directed learning with appropriate adult guidance, and they self-reflect about the process, experience, and outcomes of their project throughout the week. Finally, students and faculty share their experiences and learned outcomes with the broader New Hampton School community, including parents and alumni, via slideshows, movies, works of art, journals, and even good old-fashioned conversations.
When is Project Week?
This year it is March 3-8, 2014.
What is the role of the Project Leaders?
Project leaders are the heart and soul of this program. As a project leader you will:
• help students explore multiple ways to answer their essential question,
• meet with students before the experience to help them develop their research and planning for the project,
• physically help guide your students through the project's location (which can range from on-campus to China, and everywhere between) and guide them through a discovery process,
• be on free time duty or house duty one extra time per week for on-campus projects and every night that your group is off-campus.
What do students get to do?
The students’ experience is the center of Project Week. Students will ask meaningful essential questions and try to answer them through their experiences and project curriculums. Specifically, students complete a final product, which can take many forms, and present their findings to their peers, parents, and community. Above all, students are asked to be respectful, to be responsible, and to have fun!
Can I leave early for Spring Break?
Project Week is a graduation requirement for each year that a student attends New Hampton School. Each day of Project Week is like any other academic day, and students are expected to be present and engaged in their project through the end of the Project Symposium at 12:00 pm on Saturday.
What are the students going to learn?
We expect the students to come away with these outcomes:
• investigate an area of interest in depth,
• interact with professionals or faculty experts in their field of interest, opening up possible avenues of creative career exploration,
• direct their own course of investigation within their itinerary,
• reflect on their own skills as independent learners before and after Project Week, and
• ask a meaningful question, formulate an answer, and back up their answer with findings from their experience.
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What kind of financial assistance do you offer the students, so that a student's choice of project is not predicated by family affluence? Is there is an equal opportuity for all the students to persue the learning experience of their chosing, regarless of the projects' actual per student cost? This inherrent unfairness was the main reason that 'Project Period' was discontinued at NHS in 1980. The PP choices for PP 1979 ranged from exploring the tropical beaches and jungle of Belize, or windsurfing off the Great Barrier Reef, with the rich kids, or staying on campus (during the most depressing time of the year in NH) to dig dugouts for the baseball field, or make cheese .... Essentially, the wealthy kids (and faculty) had an extra two week vacation, that they got to brag about how cool it was for their 'presentation', while the other kids, mostly students who were only admitted to NHS because they were intellectually and athletically gifted, had to pick projects that matched their families incomes, not their desire to learn and 'experience' a unique learning experience. Unless every student at NHS has an equal choice in selecting whatever Project is offered that they desire to learn from, regardless of cost, the NHS Project Period will be the same abu$ed sham and waste of education time it was when it was decided to be discontinued. '80 Alum.
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