As the second semester started sophomore classes started to prepare for their personal projects. This year, IB changed their methods on the way these projects were presented.  For 2024, students performed peer presentations rather than presenting to teachers.

The sophomores had some creative personal projects. This varied from learning sign language, to learning how to detail a car, and to even learning different handwriting techniques. IB coordinator Ms. Kaylyn Kingman was impressed with this year’s variety of topics and thought it went well. “[The projects] have gone so well this year, we had a lot more submissions this year than we did in the past,” Kingman stated.

The new presentation style was designed in mind to grow the program and presentations in the future.  Kingman explained, “We wanted to figure out how to expand presentation night, and there were so many different ideas. We found doing it during the school day there was a chance to have 9th graders come and see what they would be doing in English 10, but it was also just another thing to attempt to try and get people involved,” Kingman said. 

The goal of the personal project is that students find a passion and learn more about it.  In some instances, that means finding a passion and learning more about it.  Two examples from this year’s project demonstrate the diversity of projects.

Sophomore Karla Chavarria Moreno decided to do her personal project on learning sign language. “I picked sign language because it’s a different way to communicate with people and it’s something you need that not a lot of people know so I thought it would be something cool to know,”Chavarria Moreno stated.  

While there was another sophomore named Edwin Flores took the route to learn how to cook medium rare steaks. “For my personal project, I tried to cook a steak and cook it medium rare. I did this because I liked cooking and I wanted to learn this skill,” Flores said.