As a small community of students in the larger TC Williams High School setting, The International Academy students have a unique voice that not reflected in the larger population. A cohort of students from 9-12 grade was chosen as a leadership advisory to create a body of students to speak to this need. Students were given an open forum to discuss and reflect on the types of problems they saw in the TC Community that they could speak to and contribute to creating change. Students formed 7 sub committees to address these problems and created SMART goals to record and document their progress. Students were tasked to collaborate and implement all aspects of their CivicTREK project.The goal of this project is for students to combine the content knowledge gained throughout the year about the 5C’s of leadership skills, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Citizenship, to solve International Academy and the greater TC community issue. Students will be reflecting on their growth as leaders and the progress of their action plans throughout the year. The summative assessment for this project will culminate in a group portfolio and presentation of portfolio.
Cohort members: Christal Jackson and Jacqueline Rice
Students: 9-12 grade students in the International Academy of TC Williams High School
Essential Questions:
How can students participate in their community by finding and solving problems?
How can students gain leadership skills by working on a problem?
Standards:
Critical Thinking:
● Analyze and evaluate evidence, arguments, claims, and beliefs including and alternative points of views
● Coming up with new ideas to solve new types of problems
● Asking questions about what other people might want in order to solve the problem for all involved
Creative Thinking:
● Use a wide range of idea creation techniques (such as brainstorming)
● Elaborate, refine, analyze, and evaluate original ideas to improve and maximize creative efforts
● Be open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives; incorporate group input and feedback into the work
Communication:
● Communicating thoughts and ideas in a way that everyone can understand through different ways of communicating including speaking, writing and multimedia applications
● Speaking appropriately depending on who s/he is speaking to, what culture they are from, and what language they speak
Collaboration:
● How well do you take responsibility and enable others to assume their own responsibilities as well?
● Working well with others and being respectful to group members who present different ideas
● Recognizing equal value in everyone’s individual accomplishments and projects
Citizenship:
● Conducting research that uses a wide range of sources
● Working with others to develop a solution
● Taking action to address an issue
