May 28, 20202 min read

8th Grade Research Projects

Project titles and a glimpse of artistic expressions!

Moira Tripp's multimedia piece expresses the fear, confusion, and overwhelm a child might experience when diagnosed with PANS/PANDAS. Her research project was called Children, PANS/PANDAS, and Hope.

Like other 8th grade classes before them, the class of 2020 embarked on year-long research projects based on each students own interests with an aim toward learning more about a topic that was educational and/or useful to greater world exigencies. This project allowed students the opportunity to practice their research skills, establish a working relationship with a mentor, collect, synthesize, and draw conclusions from information, and deliver a poised, confident, informative, and artistic presentation to an audience.

This week the students presented their work via Zoom presentations. Each 8th graders' passion for the research topics, abilities to field questions about the studies, and overall warmth and maturity was impressive. Below are some of the equally impressive artistic components of the presentations.

Ellie Nawrocki - Traditional Chinese Medicine And Pulse-Taking

Ellie's recreated a drawing fromThe Body as Garden demonstrating the interconnectedness of each part, and how Eastern medicine tends to the health of the whole body.

Cece Wagner - Small Farm Struggles

Cece's drawing explores the dichotomies of small farming — the joy and the struggle, the new and the old, and the cared for and the dilapidated.

Kharan Wilbur - Adaptive Sports

Kharan created a sculpture of an adaptive ski chair to represent how accessibility is important to sport experiences.

Nolan Hunter - The Irish Troubles

Nolan's replica of a monument to the hunger strikes crumbles, just as Irish society violently crumbled.

Barron Loeffler - Veteran Homelessness

Barron's thoughtful installation piece offers veterans experiencing homelessness a path towards recovery through health care programs.

Masha Charnashei - Immigration and the Economy

Masha's portrait of Rita Moreno details how, through the process of immigration, a part of a person is left behind as one tries to reimagine themselves in a new place.

Emmett Dorsey - Fear

Emmett's conceptual drawing captures how fear comes into our lives and impacts our bodies as seen through his experiences as a soccer player.

Saffron Lenzo - LGBTQ+ Mental Health

Saffron uses a Russian nesting doll to represent the feeling one has when that which is on the outside does not match what is on the inside.

Sebastian Hunt - Investigating Geometrical Infinity in Separate Cultures

The careful work of geometric tessellation represents a window into the divine through the infinite, as shown here in Sebastian's laser cut Islamic design. Sebastian worked with his mentor to create this piece.