IDEAS Project and Fair

End of year event

Towards the end of the academic school year, teachers are very close to burnout, and students are also very exhausted. Students often watch many videos in the final week of school, and many teachers are probably googling activities to engage their students at the end of the semester. In my school, grade 8 to 10 students have final exams, and teachers also need time to finish marking and entering grades for report cards in time. I start to think about what we can do as a school to create students’ experiences and allocate time for teachers to finish grading.

Students are pretty much treated as ‘workers’ or “doers” throughout the academic year. They start a unit, learn new things, participate in formative learning tasks, and complete their summative assessment at the end of the unit. The cycle repeats. Physical and emotional exhaustion has gradually built up as school life unfolds. What are the things that we can do to help students relax and just enjoy life? In education, the notion of preparing students for future work or preparing them for universities or careers is highly promoted. I think it’s paramount to pause and rethink what holistic education means. MYP is a very ambitious framework, and teachers and students are constantly challenged to learn and grow. Great emphasis is on cognitive and practical learning experiences to develop student’s knowledge, understanding, and skills and help them apply and solve problems. What are teachers, parents, and the school doing to design emotional learning for our students? Social interactions can be fostered through classroom activities, and the question is can we build upon the existing system and zoom out to develop the ‘bigger picture’ of education?

IDEAS project and fair

After many hours of brainstorming and dialoguing with teachers at my school, I came up with a prototype called IDEAS.

Initially, I was only thinking about what student well-being activities we could offer to help students relax and learn how to develop lifelong habits to become physically, mentally and socially healthy individuals. Then after a conversation with the service coordinator, we both felt that our students could be better supported when organizing fundraising events. Students often lose money when they sell their product or service for fundraising as they usually do not know how to price and project their profit. Additionally, we would like to start a ‘KIS service bank’ and raise money to help our immediate school community members. Voilà! IDEAS project is born. It is an initiative to help our students be creative and innovative in a simulated real-world interdisciplinary environment and help them explore their interests and identities. Throughout the project, students will practice and develop approaches to learning skills.
Through the project, we aim to

• promote student innovation;
• guide students to follow the design thinking process when building an enterprise;
• learn how to collaborate and negotiate ideas with their peers;
• encourage students to participate in different activities to increase creativity and be balanced;
• take a business-like approach to improve people’s lives in our communities.

Learning across the curriculum will be linked to the project. Students will work in mixed grade-level groups to develop small businesses. They will investigate entrepreneurs’ characteristics and find out what makes a successful business. They will also learn about how business works and profit and loss. Additionally, we encourage students to consider social, cultural and environmental issues when creating their small business.

How does the schedule work?

Students will work with their group to develop their business prototype in the morning and participate in student well-being activities in the afternoon. The culmination of the project is IDEAS Fair, when students set up their own business booths. Each group will start their business with no more than 500 baht contributed collectively by the group members and will try to use that to make a profit. After students pay for costs and expenses, all profits will be donated to the KIS Service Bank. Students will be reimbursed for their 500 baht funding capital against the receipts they will submit.
To maximize student learning through the IDEAS Project and ensure that all the groups have an equal opportunity, we ask parents not to give any additional money or consumable items to their child’s group.

How is this project supported by the school community?

I worked with grade 10 students and asked them what MYP students would benefit from different activities to relax at the end of the school year. Lots of great ideas were shared. I then asked them if they would like to offer breakout sessions to other MYP students. It was great to see grade 10 students working together and submitting their breakout session proposals. I also reached out to the whole school community and parents to invite everyone to offer a breakout session. In the end, we have a great variety of activities for students to choose from. MYP students have enjoyed having choices and freedom to sign up for their preferred well-being activities. Although it took a while to set up the sign-up system, it was worth it.

Since this is a new initiative, I will also like to help parents understand better. I met with our MYP parent representatives and explained to them what I would like to do. Of course, money is needed to cover the cost of some activities, such as baking, pizza making, cross stitch, jewelry making, etc. I would also like to offer book vouchers for enterprise groups for ‘most profitable’, ‘best marking’, and ‘most innovative product/service’ groups. Parents were very supportive as soon as they understand the purpose and goal of the IDEAS project. I received a great fund from parents to run this project.

Concluding thoughts

Whenever you want to start an initiative, there are also challenges and pushbacks. What works for me the best is to consolidate ideas and then make a model to explain to teachers, students, and parents. The diagram of the IDEAS project allows me to sell my concept successfully and gain support. I am also very aware that this is an ambitious project. Students and schools often engage with an enterprise project for at least six months or a year. Our purpose is to expose our students to this type of learning but not dive in-depth yet. The first time we implement the IDEAS project will be in a two-day boot camp style. We will see how it goes and modify and improve our prototype.

Reflections

(Updated on August 2)
MYP students successfully raised 52,000 baht (about 1696 US dollars). It was a great learning experience for students (and teachers). Students began to develop the concept of profit and cost, and how to organize a small size business.
Some areas for improvement include:

• identifying appropriate working space when catering food. Students need to be reminded of the importance of food safety. Gloves should be used when preparing food.
• creating a procedure for students to request materials in the design lab and art studio. Students asked for resources from their design and visual art teachers and claimed these materials were free. These would be consumables and should be paid for.
• emphasizing academic honesty and copyright. I noticed some groups were making stickers and using copyright-protected images. Some students and teachers did not realize this was a problem. Giving the context that we are in Thailand, counterfeit is common. It occurs to me that we have to make an extra effort to transfer their understanding of academic honesty from classroom projects to real life!
• helping students understand the negative effects of false advertising. It was great to see students making posters and/or sending emails to promote their products. We very quickly spotted the promises that students were not able to deliver. For example, one juice company promises their customers that they might have a chance to visit Japan if they bought the juice from them. We caught this early and it was a lesson learnt both by students and teachers.