On Wednesday, February 12, 2025, Aspen High School held its first IB MYP Personal Project exhibition.

The IB MYP (International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program) Personal Project is completed by all AHS 10th graders. The project allows students to explore an interest and create something out of it. Aspen School District (ASD) received its MYP certification from IB in 2023. The project is the culmination of the MYP program.

“The personal project is the culminating project of the middle years program for IB, which is sixth grade to 10th grade,” AHS Personal Project Coordinator Kate Korn said. “That project happens for our 10th graders… students are coming up with a learning goal, what’s something they’d like to learn about throughout the process, and then what is their product goal. They’re actually going to create something tangible, whether that’s something physical or maybe it’s a digital product.”

This year’s exhibition, the first in AHS history, is an extension of the personal project. For the showcase, students were given a tri-fold display board and suggestions about what to include. These suggestions included the student’s learning goal, product goal, and ATL (Approaches To Learning) skills that they used to complete their project. Most students also included photos as evidence of their process, and they all presented their physical products alongside their board.

“I think for the first year, it was a success,” Korn said, “I think students actually found a little bit of joy, being proud of their work and it’s a good way for them to be able to showcase what they did with teachers in the district, and with other students.”

In the future, Korn hopes to continue to make progress with the showcase.

“I hope that next year, we will have a lot of examples of really high quality, strong display boards. Hopefully, kids will have more school time to be able to work on this and to get those [boards] laid out, and my hope is that we can increase the number of students who can stay after [school].”