Alexandra Schweitzer
Pines
Traverse City Central HS
1st Place
Division 2, Yearbook
Academic Writing
According to a study by the American Psychological Association, about 88,000 students graduate college with a psychology degree every year. In order for students to decide what they aspire to be, they required a real-world experience in the field that gave them insight as to whether or not it would be an appropriate career choice.
One project that revealed that connection and allowed students to observe psychological behaviors outside of school was the child observation project, which was done by teacher Kristina Brunink’s Psychology classes. “For the project, we had to observe a child between the ages of 3 and 8 years old,” Emily Ledford ’14 said. “We had to test them for their different developmental stages, both physically and morally.”
The project required students to not only meet and observe reactions and responses of children, but also to write-up their results afterward. “In the paper, we had to include certain terms that pertained to our psychology course, some that were familiar, and some that were new to us,” Ledford said. “It really helped to give examples of the terms because it prepared us well for the test. Since we actually observed the terms, it made it real and established a real-life connection for us.”
Other factors also prepared the students well for their upcoming assessment. “This experiment is different from others because you are using real people and conducting the experiment yourself,” Christine Twietmeyer ’15 said. “The hands-on experience of the project provided a very effective learning approach.” The students not only gained knowledge for the test, but also received insight into the minds of young children. “I think it’s interesting to see what stages children are at during specific ages in their life,” Twietmeyer said. “Children don’t see things the way that older people do, so it’s interesting to see things from their perspective and get a glimpse of their way of thinking and acting.”
One student thought that the effects from the project would be long-lasting. “This project makes you engage really well,” McKenzie Miller ’14 said. “It gave us better and more useful information that could be carried on throughout high school. Seeing and analyzing the things that we had learned about gave us a unique connection that increased our knowledge and understanding of psychology and the world around us.”