Spending a total of eight hours crafting and writing, Arini Tandon created her project. Although she started two days before the due date, she was not stressed. Combining her personal experiences and new perspectives gained about “truth” from the Truth unit, Tandon knew what she wanted her piece to look like.
“Originally, I had no idea what I was going to do, but then I just started to think of things that were unique but would also make sense,” Tandon said. “I started to remember that when I was younger, I used to watch these YouTube videos of riddles. Then this three-doors thing just popped into my head, and I adjusted it to make it work with my project.”
The Truth unit consisted of analyzing the theory “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato, the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and the movie “Life of Pi” by Ang Lee, which each discusses the concept of relativity in absolute truth. By examining how the authors and the filmmaker conveyed their message, students learned to analyze and come to their own conclusions about truth.
“[The unit] gave me different perspectives on an inner truth and an outer truth,” Reza Brame said. “It helped build my own character and get a more self-actualization when I’m thinking about my truth, and it helped me realize my truth about [the] inner feelings, rather than the physical self.”
After being introduced to the complex nature of “truth” in the first semester, AP Language Arts students were assigned to create a visual representation of their own definition of it as their first project of the second semester. Students were assessed on their ability to demonstrate their understanding of the complexity explored throughout the unit, their writing skills in explaining their element choices and how their chosen media represented them on a personal level.
“I was taken aback by the creativity of thought and by the ones that I hadn’t seen a lot of,” Ms. Emilie Cavolt said. “This year, the projects overall were very much different. I didn’t see a lot of duplicates, so I felt like the creative thinking was even above, beyond.”
The finished projects were displayed in the library Jan. 21-22 for anyone on campus to view. Students in the class had 30 minutes during class to participate in a gallery walk. During that time, students looked at others’ projects and read the attached explanations to investigate each other’s perspectives on the prompt.
Dayton Smith said, “I was impressed seeing everyone else’s projects. They were all really good, and I can tell that a lot of time and effort was put into this. I think the takeaway is that everyone has their own version of truth, and there’s no one way to define it.”
by SARAH CHOI
