It’s not artwork, so what has come to cover the the hallway besides Jarrett Young’s office leading into the social studies wing? Recently, the students from 9th grade World Cultures classes underwent a demanding project about the Industrial Revolution.
Beth Calderone, 9th grade World Cultures teacher, explained that after talking about some industrialized and newly developed countries, students had to “figure out at what point did they become industrialized…The idea is that your answer would then highlight your own definition of what you think is most important when you say a country is industrialized.”
The way this project was lead was to explain the industrialization of a country through infographics, which the students were given a few weeks to create without any instructions on the actual design. Beth Calderone adds, “Infographics are kind of the new trending way that people on [social media] are showing a lot of data in a really user friendly way. It gave a creative element to a project that is otherwise very academic.” In addition, the reason for the lack of instruction was to “get a sense of just how varied the arguments could be,” in the sense that “students would be thinking about the various ways that you could define it [industrialization].”
Proving that the goal of the project was absorbed, Sarah Weinshel ‘18, a student covering South Africa, said, “I learned a lot about how different people look at the industrialization, since my answer was so different from many other groups. I liked having a lot of freedom in being able to research on our own and having a less structured schedule of things. It felt a little crunched for time.”
“The goal was historical research, but more with an eye to teaching that historical research is not just a report,” Calderone explains. So the next time you are walking by this project, don’t just hurry onto your next class. Stop by and read about this fresh perspective of industrialization. Perhaps your opinion of what it truly means to be industrialized will change from just a picture.
