FL students to exhibit projects during Leadership Showcase

FOUNTAIN LAKE — Middle school students at Fountain Lake Cobra Digital Prep Academy will exhibit projects they have completed throughout the year during the third annual Student Leadership Showcase on Wednesday.

Projects are completed in elective classes as part of students’ personal success plans, according to school counselor Linda Webb.

“Each student here has a personal success plan and the PSP class is an elective that they can take at the end of the day and they can choose classes to take that fit into their plan,” she said. “These can be career-type classes or things they’re interested in like that.”

Eighteen classes will have displays Wednesday, Webb said, and projects range from science-heavy Project Lead the Way courses to classes focusing on skills like filmmaking, journalism and service learning.

Projects will be displayed throughout the middle school, she said, and students will serve as tour guides for guests.

“I could come and if I wanted to see my student’s project, then I would just come in and the greeters and tour guides would show me where to go to see her project,” Webb said. “Or, if I just didn’t have anybody here that belonged to me then we will have student tour guides showing people around.

“It is an open house style setting and we will provide lunch to whoever comes. You can come eat lunch with your students or you can just come enjoy lunch while you’re here.”

Sixth-grader Faith Jones said her group’s first activity this year was to create a special boot for children with cerebral palsy. After that project was completed, her group started developing a cube puzzle, similar to a Rubik’s Cube.

“There’s also medical detectives in which they dissect a sheep brain,” she said. “There’s robotics where you create a robot and make it move and see how fast it can go. These are all things we do in our afternoon classes.”

Students involved in the Student Lighthouse Team will share Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” in unique ways for visitors. “Seven Habits” is a focus of the school’s advisory classes.

“(Student Lighthouse Team) is our leadership group and their part of the showcase is to show the ‘Seven Habits,’ and they’ve come up with some very creative ways to do that,” Webb said.

Lainey Mungle, sixth-grader, said student tour guides will provide a Bingo card to guests when they arrive which will assign them the task of finding different things throughout the showcase, many of which involve the “Seven Habits.”

“We have advisory and we get to look more at the ‘Seven Habits’ in that class,” Mungle said. “We learn what all they mean and how you can use them in your everyday life to make your life better. There’s going to be a game show like ‘Family Feud’ but all the questions will be about the ‘Seven Habits.’”

Jones said a fellow student will even be dressed as a superhero named Habit Man, who will share with guests the “Seven Habits” and one of the tasks on the Bingo card will be to find this character.

“We have books from Stephen Covey and it talks about how to use the ‘Seven Habits’ in your life, and in our advisory we read maybe five to 10 pages one day a week and then we do an activity based on the ‘Seven Habits,’” Jones said.

Webb said the showcase provides more than just an opportunity for students to talk about their work.

“I think one of the best things about the showcase is the kids are totally running the show,” she said. “We help them organize and plan, but when the showcase gets here, they just take over. When kids have that ownership it just adds so much more to their education. They’re really proud of what they’ve done.”