Making Projects Personal

Educator and psychologist John Dewey (1916) said that people do not learn from experience alone, but from reflecting on experience. As a teacher of Chinese at an independent school, I have followed Dewey's advice and reflected more intentionally on the materials I have created for my courses—setting out to provide more personalized instruction and assessment. How can I better help each student reflect on his or her learning and become a more productive learner? How can I build each student's individual passion, creativity, capability, and sense of purpose using my Chinese curriculum as a platform?

With these questions in mind, I redesigned a project that I have been assigning to my Chinese language students for the past three years, which led to increased student engagement and improved project quality. Students showed more creativity and responsibility on this project as they combined their knowledge of Chinese with their personal interests and passions.

Project Revamp