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Kindness cards
Classical music in class filming and production will all be completed by the end of April. The videos will be screened in the auditorium for students on May 6 and for parents on May 10. Apart from these details, however, many of the specifics of the project have yet to be decided. The most difficult challenge that Cler, McMillion and Tanabe are facing is technological: gaining access to the equipment necessary for more than 200 students to produce quality videos is not an easy task. However, the administration has supported their efforts. Both Tanabe and Borelli are receiving personal MacBook Pro computers in order to have access to iMovie and Photoshop. You have the Although the students in Tanabe’s power through Contemporary Literature classes and Borelli’s everyday Humanities classes are being required to actions to complete the project for points, only those in Cler, McMillion and Tanabe’s World make a positive Literature classes will be participating in impact in the competition. Students who are not in the everyone’s life. World Literature classes of these specific teachers may not submit their ideas for the English teacher Stacey Cler $1,000 prize. “This is a little bit like an experiment,” McMillion said. “We’re trying to keep it small, in a controlled environment, so we can see what happens.” Ideas worth spreading What they’ve seen so far is a wide spectrum of ideas. Students’ proposals have ranged from small in scale to wildly ambitious. However, students’ options are still limited. “Opening up markets in third world countries is not a viable project, clearly,” Tanabe said. “They can’t even get to a third world country, much less open markets there. So I’m having them start small and then branch out.” According to students, most have chosen to pursue MVHS-oriented projects. Suggestions included introducing a Home Economics class to FEBRUARY 13, 2013
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Students are still in the early stages of the project, but groups have finalized their topics. Here are some of their ideas.
teach students skills necessary in day-to-day life, lunchtime activities such as yoga and pilates in order to reduce student stress and classical music in classes to encourage better learning. Another group in Cler’s class intends to reintroduce kindness cards to MVHS. “I think most of the students are focusing on MVHS because it’s easier to win it, obviously,” said sophomore Aunoy Poddar, a student in Cler’s third period class. “It’s on a much smaller scale, so the ideas are more practical. And if you do go large, there’s people with much bigger ideas, and they have much more resources than we do right now.” A change in mindset The idea is to pave a path for the students to not just propose a change, but also implement it in their community. “The reason why we chose something small where the students would propose something that would cost about $1,000, was because we wanted them to be able to see the change happen next year,” McMillion said. “So it wouldn’t be something that would take 10 years to plan and get approved and so forth … That in itself is an education.” But all three teachers are hoping that the project’s effects will extend beyond whatever is proposed by the eventual winner. For them, the end goal is not a single $1,000 change, but a change in mindset for all the students involved in the competition as well as those who witness it. “You don’t need to do something monumental to change the world,” Cler said. “I think that’s what all these TED talks show — that you don’t have to, that you can do something simple, that you have the power through simple everyday actions to make a positive impact in everyone’s life.” a.dorai@elestoque.org | y.lee@elestoque.org 9