For one night, the fifth-grade classrooms at Poudre School District’s Olander Elementary School transformed into theaters where young directors premiered their films to an audience of families and friends.
Students worked as a team to facilitate and operate their own theater, which featured students’ stories demonstrating how they stepped outside their comfort
zones this fall during their Eco Experience at Colorado State University’s Mountain Campus as a part of Project Based Learning.
PBL projects are the heart of the educational experience at Olander. Each grade builds its academic year around three or more projects that address Colorado Academic Standards while incorporating student interests, and this Eco Experience Film Festival is one project fifth graders complete.
To prepare for their trip and the narrative storytelling project that would come after, students began with a driving question: how can we, as storytellers, inspire people to challenge themselves and step outside their comfort zones?
Elsa Han shared her story about the B-17 Plane Crash Hike in her film, “The Flying Fortress.”
“Eco [Experience] kind of means to me that we’re maturing more because we got to go without our parents,” Han says, reflecting on her experience. “It’s a big opportunity to go up to Eco [Experience], not everyone gets to do it.”
For some students, stepping out of their comfort zone took an entirely new meaning. Sofia Balderas Izquierdo shared her journey of courage and teamwork in her film, “The Ultimate Swing,” which captured a particularly memorable moment: tackling the ropes course with the help of an adaptive harness.
“I am happy, I feel big, I feel excited,” Balderas Izquierdo said in her film, the text accompanied by photos of her smiling while in her adaptive harness next to physical education teacher Makenzie Stevenson.
This climbing harness is new to Olander this year. Stevenson teaches a climbing unit in PE, and after realizing some of the students in Integrated Learning Support (ILS) programs could not participate, she worked with a parent to raise money and get this brand-new adaptive climbing harness to include students who could not participate in these activities before.
“It’s always great to see kids included. All of the kids smiled when they saw [Sofia] in her harness and they were cheering her on,” Stevenson says. “To me, it’s a big, big thing to create those memories for someone who might never get to experience any of those first-time memories.”
As the evening wrapped up, Olander students and families were proud to see the culmination of months of hard work. Olander fifth graders showed that sometimes, the most meaningful learning happens when we dare to step outside our comfort zones and inspire others to do the same.
