The last few weeks before school ends, seniors are given the opportunity to learn through experience.  Students can choose between a two or four week project where they work with a community sponsor and a GBS mentor to learn in a specific field of study.

Before starting the project, students must correspond with business teacher Dawn Hall to present their ideas in order to gain clearance to pursue the project.

Through their projects, students gain knowledge about a certain job by actually attending that job and creating a project on it.

Kalie Halpin is interning at Pathways, an organization that provides physical, occupational, and speech therapy to kids.

For Halpin, senior project is an exploration to see if speech pathology is what she wants to do in the future. Even though there are challenges to senior project, such as actually having to create a presentation and getting enough materials, there are still advantages, according to Halpin.

“The advantages [of senior project] are being a step ahead of all the other kids in school in my field next year because I’ll have first-hand experience,” Halpin said.

 While Halpin knew from the beginning that doing this project would be worth missing school, Brittany Simo was not as sure when beginning her project.

 “Though I was skeptical of missing school, I thought it would be a great opportunity to see what is was like to work in the real world,” Simo said. “So far, I have enjoyed it.”

Simo’s senior project revolves around art therapy, in which she works with an art therapist who has her own private practice in her house.

According to Simo, art therapy includes many different strategies involving art to understanding the inner workings of a person, such as mandalas and sand trays.

“For this project, I go outside the lines of art therapy to work with energy, meditation, breathing, pendulums and other things as well,” Simo said.

According to Simo, even though missing school was scary, she doesn’t miss anything about it.

“It’s great to be doing something that can guide me toward a career and my adult life,” Simo said. “I have grown up quite a bit, as well as taken on larger responsibilities.”

 While Simo is learning about how art therapy can affect a person, Hannah Russel is learning about the effects of physical therapy.

Russell is working at Kirk School in Palatine, which is a school part of the Northwest Suburban Special Education Organization. Russell assists mentally and physically disabled kids.

“My main focus is to work on therapeutic physical therapy, so I’m mostly in the pool with the kids,” Russell explained.

Russell chose a project in this field because she hopes to continue to study it in the future.

“I’m mostly trying to get a feel for the area of study I want to go in,” Russell explained. “I know there are a lot of ups and downs in [this field] because one day there will be a student who is doing really well and the next day they won’t concentrate for anything.”

Russell explained that this project will help her learn more about this line of work.

“It takes a lot of heart and a lot of patience to work with kids with special needs,” Russell explained. “I know how much credit I give to a person who devotes their life to working with them.”

While some seniors have chosen to do projects outside of school, Tyler Ellis has created a project within the school.

He is working with GBS mentor Rich Winship and Kyle Gyondla, Illinois State student and Community mentor to Ellis, on building the set for the Honors and Awards Ceremony, which will be held in the auditorium on May 24.

In order to design the set, Ellis proved he would use four weeks for working by creating an outline and giving a presentation.  Ellis checks in with an adviser every week and will acquire 110 hours of work over a span of four weeks.

“Being able to go through the design steps, which [are] typically [to] make a model, make paint schemes, [and make] sketches [are] the [steps] I haven’t done in high school so far, but will be things I will do in college, ” Ellis stated. “So I want to try and have a little experience doing it before I get [to college] because I am going to be a theater major.”

According to Ellis, he has really enjoyed being given this opportunity.

“I don’t know why [a GBS senior] wouldn’t do [senior project],” Ellis said. “There’s like fifty people doing it and I’m like, ‘What? Our senior class is like 400 people. Why isn’t everybody doing this?’  It’s great!”