29 students in Mrs. Mallard’s Problems and Solutions class began their global issues project aka their GIP in the beginning of November. The course allows students to take what they are passionate about and turn in into a yearlong research project, eventually allowing them to create solutions for real world problems and actually implement them.

The first thing that the students did was read the book High Noon by Jean-François Rischard. They learned about 20 major worldwide issues and some details of them. From there they picked two to three topics that interested them, or felt passionate about fixing, and did more research about those topics. For some students, they immediately knew what topic they would want to work on, but for many it was a challenging task. The topics range from homelessness and child abuse, to climate change and international labor/ migrant laws. Mrs. Mallard asked the students to think about what upsets them the most in the world and what could they do about which led all the students to pick the topic that made them passionate. The purpose of this was to allow each student to root this project in his or her passions and let it be truly something they wanted to try and solve.

“Most of the popular topics had to do with humanitarian efforts which I think shows the fact that this course is allowing students to take their passions and do something about it. I picked world hunger because a lot of the volunteer work I do helps provide meals to people here,” sophomore Jacob Besser said. “ The level of hunger we have here in Dallas is crazy, and I know it is prevalent all over the world, in every city and country, so if I can do something to help change that it would be amazing”

The students are now in the research stage of their projects. Resources like online databases and professionals on each topic are available to the students, as well as many more.

“ It is great to have so many resources available to use so we can ask questions and make sure we understand the majority of our information. I think it will help a lot to spend a while researching so our solutions can be the best for each different situation,” junior Stephanie Mara said.

After they are done with researching, the students will conference with other students that have similar topics and create solutions that they feel will be most effective. The project will continue on for the rest of the year and hopefully do a lot of good in the community and in the world. The students will aim to first present their ideas in February then continue throughout the rest of the year. I plan to follow up with some of the students after presenting and learn more about the whole experience. Many plan to host open presentations in the spring, so make sure to listen for announcements for more details to come.