By Dana Michlin
If you asked me my least favorite type of assignment, I’d have a hard time being definitive. What I do know is that the first thing that would pop into my head is projects. From building models and making videos to cooking food and making posters, most of the projects that I am assigned leave me grumbling for the entirety of the time that I work on them. While the projects we are assigned do have some benefits in terms of adding to our knowledge, they often leave us more stressed than necessary.
Although projects are often a way to bring out our creative side, in a school with countless artistic classes and extracurriculars, our major classes should not be focusing on developing our creative side, but rather on teaching us the material. For me, projects that require drawing or making videos only enhance my stress level, not my creativity. Furthermore, this development of my creativity often ends up costing me more hours of sleep, sleep that I would not have lost if I was allowed to learn the material in a different way, and sleep that I really cannot afford to lose. For example, how does a video project in a language class help me improve my speaking skills more than a class dialogue or a listening test? Or to what effect does a project in which I have to make traditional food, for a non-culinary class, further my understanding of a region or culture?
On the other hand, some projects, while encouraging creativity, do not make creativity the ultimate goal, but rather are a different way to teach the material. For example, building models for chemistry or physics classes is almost always required, since the visual truly helps solidify the students’ understanding of the material. Similarly, posters are often a different way to display the information and allow students to use images, a perspective that cannot really be incorporated into an essay. The visual can often provide a sense of deeper understanding than words — we all know a picture is worth a thousand words.
I understand that different students learn in different ways, and for some people, projects are their favorite assignments. But for others, including myself, projects add to stress and do not increase the understanding of the material since there are easier, faster ways to learn the curriculum. For balance, teachers assigning projects should offer their students a variety of options. For example, an assignment can provide the option of making a video, creating a poster, or simply writing an essay on the topic. The specific options will vary by subject and topic, allowing teachers to to fit the learning style of as many students as possible. Furthermore, the assignment should focus on the aspects of the project that truly teach the material. For example, teachers should not require that students dress up to perform skits, since the dressing-up portion of the project may add stress in terms of finding costumes but reap little practical benefit.
I cannot claim to understand all the benefits of projects, but as a student I know that a negative side does also exist. Sometimes the variety in assignments is a relief, but other times it is simply a burden.
