8 minute read
Cornerstone Projects
Eighth Graders Reflect Upon Middle School with Cornerstone Projects
Each spring, eighth-grade students create Cornerstone projects, in which they look back at their Middle School experience and reflect upon how they embraced different challenges, show their growth as learners, and demonstrate who they are through the lens of our adaptive expertise traits—flexibility, mastery, risk-taking, autonomy, metacognition, purpose, communication, synthesis, and reflection . These projects are then presented to large groups, sharpening their presentation skills .
Meet Findley O’Brien, Blair Henderson, Zoe Griffith, Sophie Condon, and James Joyce, who each did an excellent job articulating their growth throughout Middle School .
James Joyce
Finding Purpose, Living with ADHD
If you ask James Joyce for his personal definition of ADHD, it sounds like this: “One minute someone is explaining a math problem to me, and the next I’m staring out the window wondering if the yard guy gets paid enough.” In the third grade, James was diagnosed with ADHD, a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention, impulse control, and over activity.
“The worst part of ADHD was that I didn’t know why I felt like this,” James said. “I didn’t know why it was so much harder for me to learn and stay focused, like everyone else.”
In his younger years, James admits he spent a lot of time trying to be liked by others, as well as trying to do what everyone else did. But he also understood that having ADHD “automatically took me out of the category that everyone else is in.”
Throughout Middle School, James participated in lacrosse and cross country, which he credits for helping him understand that despite mistakes made along the way, he was driven to improve. “I began to realize that mistakes are at the heart of learning. At the moment of any mistake, I will always be mad at myself. I just have to remember that mistakes aren’t terminal. They bring out the human in me,” he said.
The process eventually led to self-acceptance. “Only until my last year in Middle School did I realize that being myself is the most substantial thing that one can accomplish,” James said.
“My purpose isn’t running cross country or playing lacrosse. My purpose isn’t trying to thrive through school with a learning disability. My purpose is to have experiences and live and learn from them. My purpose is to take all of the challenges I have faced and become a better person from them,” said James.
Findley O’Brien
Master Yak
When Findley O’Brien first thought of the word “mastery,” he assumed it meant “perfection.” However, his journey through Middle School helped him craft a better definition of the word—not being the best, but instead learning from mistakes, improving, and moving forward.
Shortly after he moved to North Carolina and started at Cannon in the fifth grade, Findley took a risk and joined Mr. Northrup in the ThinkTank to learn a little bit about Lego robotics. Despite having little prior knowledge, Chase quickly discovered a love for coding, and eagerly applied to become part of the Brainy Yaks, our Middle School robotics team.
“As soon as the applications came out, I typed as fast as I could, afraid that I wouldn’t get in,” Findley recalled. “I was stuck in suspense with each hour crawling by. The email arrived in my inbox, and I took a deep breath and opened it. I was a Brainy Yak!”
Findley spent the next few months coding, researching, and practicing, but quickly learned that not everything always went to plan. In fact, it was quite the opposite— things RARELY went as planned. “There were times we fumbled a transition, ran the wrong code, or let go too late. These are what we called ‘Epic Fails,’” said Findley.
It was these “Epic Fails” which ultimately displayed to Findley what true mastery means. “It may sound cliché, but mastery is learning from mistakes, setting goals, and always improving.”
Blair Henderson
Adapting to the Unknown
We all remember, rather vividly, March of 2020 and the sudden shift our lives took due to the pandemic. For Cannon students, the rest of the year was spent online, adjusting to WebEx classes and learning from home.
For Blair Henderson, online learning didn’t stop in the fall of 2020, when the majority of Cannon students returned to campus. Blair continued learning from home. “That year was even harder for me,” she reflected. “I saw my friends on the other side of the screen and it made me feel excluded. All I really wanted was to be with them, but I wasn’t going to put my family’s health at risk.”
“School passed every day, and it was always the same thing—wake up, eat breakfast, and join Zoom. By this point in the year, I started to become disorganized, distracted, and I put in little effort. It was around the one-year anniversary of COVID that my parents briefly brought up the conversation about going back, but at that point, I was fine in my comfort zone.”
When Blair did return to campus later that spring of 2021, she realized that the time that had passed presented new challenges. Her friend groups had shifted, and Blair was struggling. “During this challenging time, I learned to adapt to the new environment around me,” she said. “I was already becoming a pro at being flexible in any situation I found myself in. But I finished through the year strong with a couple of good friends by my side.” The following year, Blair continued to stay flexible, discovering an even larger circle of kind, accepting friends. “Every day they encourage me to step out of my comfort zone,” she said.
“Now, if I take a moment to reflect on the challenges I have faced in Middle School, there are quite a few. But each and every one of the roadblocks I have conquered has made me stronger.”
Sophie Condon
Staying Flexible
Zoe Griffith
The Power of Metacognition
Zoe Griffith had always associated reading with suffering. “I thought my struggle was that I just didn’t like to read, so I didn’t do anything about it since I believed it was something that couldn’t change,” she said.
As her Middle School years progressed and teachers asked Zoe to apply what she learned from readings, her life became more difficult. Her grades slipped, as well as her confidence.
That is, until a teacher mentioned the situation to her parents, who were eager to help. Testing resulted in a diagnosis— dyslexia, a learning disability characterized by difficulties with accurate or fluent word recognition, and poor spelling and decoding abilities. “It was a full-circle moment for me to finally have an explanation for my inability to read well,” Zoe recalled.
Even with that understanding, it took Zoe some time to adapt her mindset and embrace different habits and strategies that would enable her to learn. “As if I was learning a new language or how to walk, it took time for me to understand how to correctly and productively add this new routine to my everyday lifestyle; so starting the process was difficult,” she said.
With the help of some great teachers, including seventh-grade history teacher Mr. John Cooke, Zoe learned that with her new adaptations, she was, indeed, an excellent student. “Having a fun-hearted, vivacious, and engaging teacher who consistently guides you to be the best learner and student possible makes all the difference,” she said. After accepting her diagnosis and changing her mindset about what she was and wasn’t capable of, “I can confidently say that this is what I’m most proud of from my Middle School years.”
Sophie Condon readily admits that when she started Middle School, she was someone who hated the unexpected. “Life is like driving on a highway,” she said. “You stay on the same path until your navigation tells you to get off at an exit.”
But…what happens when that navigation system reroutes? Though she was skeptical at first, Sophie’s Middle School years taught her that she could adjust, change, and adapt.
Sophie credits her older brother, Aidan, with helping her realize this about herself. Aidan has a genetic disorder called Prader-Willi Syndrome. “For those of you who have met Aidan, you know that he loves people, and is very caring and outgoing,” Sophie said. “What you may not know is that he has difficulty regulating his emotions, sometimes doesn’t sleep through the night, and also follows a very strict diet that doesn’t include all the sweets we normally eat.” For Sophie’s family, traveling can be unpredictable. Sophie recalled a recent trip to Costa Rica in which Aidan gamely braved the zipline, much to his enjoyment. The return trip to the United States, however, presented challenges—challenges Sophie didn’t necessarily want to deal with—but because of her love for her brother, she faced them head-on, talking him through customs and the plane departure.
“There are so many of these examples of times where I wouldn’t think I’d have to be flexible, but with Aidan I’m able to better regulate my own emotions,” Sophie reflected.
“Just like that trip, when I’m with Aidan, the navigation is going to reroute our drive constantly, but we’re always going to reach our destination. Sometimes we may just have to take a different road to get there.”
