Ex Ed was a large part of AHS this September, and as students have had time to reflect on their experience, they have been challenged with the long term task of sharing with other courses and the community what they learned during their week outside the classroom.

For this year the capstone project is still in the formation process, but Ex Ed groups will meet periodically throughout the 2014-2015 school year in order to keep in contact and participate in some kind of reflection.

This year AHS Ex Ed week was scheduled in the fall, and because of this change teachers and administrators had suggested last spring that, because courses would have the opportunity to reconnect later in the school year, all courses should produce some type of final reflection. The Ex Ed committee, open to all staff, but consistently comprised of academic and Ex Ed coordinator Tameira Wilson, AHS principal Kim Martin, Vice Principal Mark Grice, AMS principal Tom Heald and teachers Sarah Graber, Andy Popinchalk, and Brent Maiolo, has been working on what this reflection will look like.

“We’re focused on different aspects of the program at different points in the year. So right now, we’re kind of thinking about ‘alright well how to we get this capstone project off the ground, and what’s it going to look like,” Wilson said.

In the first week of November, all Ex Ed groups met for twenty minutes, and all students were introduced to this project. Groups were asked to brainstorm possible ideas for how they could share what they learned during their Ex Ed week.

“We wanted to make sure we weren’t just telling students what to do, but that students that actually lived through the experience could contribute to what that final project looked like,” Wilson said.

The Ex Ed committee is in the brainstorming phase of this project and they haven’t set a date for when projects must be completed or what these projects will become. However, Wilson did notice that there were some similarities in different groups regarding how they felt they could best reflect and share their experiences. Skits, making some special edition of the newspaper with more than just pictures, and skills demonstrations were three of the most common project ideas.

Though the requirements of these capstone reflections may not be established yet, the goals that the Ex Ed committee hopes to accomplish are clear.

“From my point of view the goal is to give students an opportunity to further reflect on their experience now that some time has gone by, and to reconnect with their group members,” Wilson said. “And furthermore to create some kind of project or presentation that can share what [groups] learned with the rest of the student population.”

Sarah Graber, member of the Ex Ed committee and AHS Spanish teacher, agrees with Wilson in that the project should be a reflection, because what you learn from the courses takes place during your experience, not after. These projects will also in the long-term be used to show the community what students are doing on Ex Ed, and serve as a course description for other AHS students.

“I spoke with the students that did not participate in Ex Ed, and one of the things that they cited as a reason [for not going] was that there wasn’t really enough information about the course. And so they didn’t really know, just from reading the course description, what they would be getting into, so this is an opportunity to actually visually show what those courses are like, and hopefully get more participation,” Wilson said.

Many students agree with the teachers and administration, and they feel that these projects will provide new perspectives on what students learned over Ex Ed.

“Hopefully this year with the reflection projects everyone will actually learn something from what other courses did, verses just looking at their pictures,” AHS senior Megan Doherty said.

For now the committee is still in the drafting process, but expectations are set high for what this project will accomplish.

“I’m really excited to actually be able to see what students took away from Ex Ed,” Wilson said. “I think sometimes, unless somebody offers up information, we never really know what each courses is doing, and so I think this is a great opportunity to kind of see what great experience are out there, and to just increase our own knowledge basically, on what courses will offer.”