Project season emerges for many classes as the end of the school year approaches. It can be difficult to get students to care about assignments when summer is just around the corner, but implementing projects that students are passionate about makes it much easier. 

“[The passion project] is an essay that allows students to choose their topic and then narrow that topic down as closely and specifically as possible,” English teacher Kimberly Villegas said. “The goal is for them to explore in depth something that they personally like to nerd out about.”

Students are instructed to choose a topic that they find interesting and want to research more about. After the essays are finished, the students present their projects in the downstairs lab to fulfill the presentation learning requirement in their Dual Credit course. Teachers are invited to bring their classes to watch the presentations so the students can engage with different people. The goal of the essay is to prepare students to transition to college where they will be writing on more topics that are relevant to what they’re studying.

“I think it’s nice to let students get a feel for what research looks like at the college level and you get to deep dive into things that you’re personally interested in and how that can actually be fun as opposed to being assigned topics that you don’t really care about,” Villegas said. 

While not many students will ever truly enjoy writing an essay, getting to write about something they enjoy makes the assignment a lot more appealing. Senior Norma Matute did not initially enjoy being assigned an essay but found it got better as she went.

“It was a lot easier than I thought it would be because I found myself writing more than I thought I would be writing,” Matute said. 

Senior Alex Wright also found himself writing a lot on his project about the Founding Fathers and how their ideals influenced society. He is incredibly passionate about history and the passion essay was a perfect excuse to dive into something he really cares about. 

“Being able to write about something I actually enjoyed made writing come a lot more naturally and easier for me,” Wright said. “I was more engaged with the assignment and was more motivated to actually do it because I cared about what I was writing.”

The passion essay has been a successful project that Villegas has been assigning for many years. She always finds that students get more into writing and she gets to learn about everyone’s interests too. 

“I always have a few students who don’t have a great time, but generally speaking, everyone nerds out, everyone learns a lot and it’s fun,” Villegas said. “It’s fun for people to geek out with other people.”