(MG)Passion: Three sophomores share their connections to their English multi-genre projects

Then-fourth-grader Eva Lowry didn’t want to play on the playground during recess. All she wanted to do was walk and talk with her class’s student teacher, asking questions about her day-to-day life.

In elementary school, every time there was a classroom job available, Lowry volunteered, especially for the role of teacher’s assistant.

“I just always wanted to be with [my teachers], and I looked up to them so much,” Lowry said.

Now-sophomore Lowry hopes to teach either upper elementary school or high school students. She decided to focus her Multigenre Project — a research project every sophomore completes on a topic they are passionate about — on education: specifically how classroom setup affects students.

“This year I’ve been exploring, if [teaching is] something I want, so I’m in the teachers [education] class and I go to elementary schools every Wednesday and Friday and work with kids,” Lowry said.

Lowry’s essay centered around three main classroom aspects and their impact on students — the use of color in a classroom, different types of lighting and desk arrangements. For the second part of the project, the artifacts — where students find creative ways to present the information they researched — Lowry plans to create a vision board showing different classroom setups and design the floor plan of a classroom she would set up.

While some teachers complain about the difficulties of setting up a classroom, Lowry feels prepared to hang up LED lights and minimalist decor when the time comes.

“Throughout my high school classes I’ve been looking at all of [the classrooms] and seeing that our school isn’t great about our [wall color] or our school isn’t great about providing seating options for kids,” Lowry said. “So being able to see that and then looking at other [teacher’s] classrooms and being able to understand why this looks like this or why they did this in their classroom is super cool.”

Sophomore Garrett Brown was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 2. He remembers hearing a story from an attendee at a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation fundraiser gala about someone they knew who had to ration their insulin because of the high cost of pharmaceuticals in the United States.

After some research, he found more instances of the harmful effects of the high price of insulin.

“[Insulin is] expensive and unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who have to make decisions as to whether they’re gonna pay for insulin or pay for food or other basic needs,” Garrett’s mom, Jessica Brown said.

Garrett chose to do his MGP on the effects of the high cost of pharmaceuticals for people with diabetes to raise awareness of the issue. His essay discusses the lengths people go to afford insulin, the cost of insulin and what can be done to reduce those costs.

“I also talk about some of the measures that people can take to circumnavigate the high costs,” Garrett said. “So maybe there’s some pharmaceutical programs with people’s insurance that they can enlist to cut back costs.”

From this project, Garrett hopes to spread awareness for this issue — especially through presenting his research to the class.

“If anything, [this project has] hardened my view that something needs to be done about it, and what’s being done right now isn’t enough,” Garrett said. “I’d love to see politicians get more involved in the topic.”

Sophomore Gabrielle Higgins gained first-hand experience in the adoption process when her family adopted her brother, and now-freshman Quinn from South Korea when he was 10 months old and she was almost 2.

So, Gabrielle chose to research adoption for her MGP. In her essay, she focused on how international adoptions affect the child being adopted, the birth mother and the adoptive family.

Gabrielle’s mom, Stacy Higgins, has seen the impacts of adoption on both her son Quinn and her family.

“In my head I was like, ‘Oh Quinn, we’re gonna get him and he’s gonna be so young and it won’t really impact our family much because we will be a cohesive family from the get go,’” Stacy said. “But the more research that’s been done, the more it says that even though they may be a baby, when you get them it still has an impact on relationships and how families develop.”

Gabrielle found that the grief birth parents feel when giving their child up for adoption can be equivalent to the pain felt by a mother grieving the death of her child. She also discovered that an adopted child’s brain develops differently.

“When you’re ripped away from your parents when you’re really young, most people are like, ‘Oh it can’t affect you, you don’t remember it,’ but your brain develops differently so your fight or flight is a lot higher,” Gabrielle said.

Gabrielle plans on creating an art piece to illustrate the contrast between the good and bad of international adoptions for her artifacts.

“I was going to do maybe a painting [to] represent that [adoption] can be a blessing, but also kind of a curse,” Gabrielle said. “It could be a really great opportunity or it could be a terrible situation.”