“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
― Pablo Neruda
In the midst of days and weeks of standardized testing throughout the school, Juniors at Denver Center for International Studies, move forward with their Passages projects on topics of their choice. Last semester they chose a topic to research for a fifteen page paper. In the spring semester, they develop an experience, a service project, a skill they want to learn. They write a proposal they present to a committee composed of teachers, fellow students, community members who they have invited. Then they will engage in the project with a presentation of their accomplishment and learning at the end.
They will be proud of themselves for their accomplishment and ability to see a project through from initial interest to completion. They will be able to articulate what they learned of process and content using a framework for global competence. They will hear feedback, support and assessment of their work and demonstration of learning from their committees and audience.
Life and learning are human needs that find ways to come up through cracks in the hardest system. As long as these students get the chance, support and skills to pursue their passions and curiosity not just once but over the course of their lives (increasingly as they get older), they can imagine their lives opening up with possibility–just like spring still comes every year in all its unpredictability and hope.