On Jan. 11, senior English students hosted the Senior Exhibition Night where they presented their 20% projects with a live concert and snacks in the high school commons.

The seniors, who are in English, were given a project a project that takes up twenty percent of time in their class. Robert Hankes, English teacher and creator of the project, helps to explain the process. “The 20% Time project is all about students choosing a topic they feel passionately about, and then the students teaching themselves about that topic.”

Seniors, Johanna Burrell and Alexa Walter, chose the topic of volunteering and giving back to the community.” Alexa and I chose this topic because we knew our project would end around the holidays and that would give us lots of opportunities to give back in many different ways.  We both feel that it is important to help out the local community in any way possible and wanted to do our best to have others join us in giving back.” said Burrell.

Burrell and Walter’s did four major things to help out the community. They did Community Swim Day where they taught kids swim techniques and pool safety. They played games that would have those techniques in them so the kids would have fun and learn at the same time. They had a dress down day for the faculty and had all the proceeds go to Central PA food bank. They volunteered at a local food bank. Finally, they gave back to the community. They handed out goody bags and handwritten notes to the custodial staff to thank them. “We thought it was important to give back to the members of the school faculty that are often overlooked, but do so much to keep our school going.” Burrell said.  

Burrell and Walter feel well prepared for presenting their project to the class and at Senior Exhibition night.” Said Burrell, “Our project had a lot of time outside of class dedicated to it. Every Friday we used the whole 80 minute period to put together our next part, or to work on our actual presentation.”

There were, however, students who chose not to use the class time wisely. “Many students chose projects that could only be done outside of school; therefore, the 20% of the week students research time was not used to maximum productivity.” said Hankes.