Research Symposium: Breaking Through Chaotic Scheduling  

Kimberly Brito, Staff Reporter

It’s that time of year again, the research symposium is approaching. Every year there is a day to showcase what students have been doing in their assigned research classes. In Millennium Brooklyn High Schools website it states that “through this required course sequence over four years, students engage in long-term project-based investigations that support the development of quantitative and qualitative research methods and writing skills”. The Research program at MBHS mission also allows, “Students create their own research questions, and use qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to collect and analyze data and present an exhibition to share their reflective process.” Having this said, each grade is to present their research project to students in other grades as well as seeing other students projects throughout the day. This year’s research symposium will be held on March 31, 2017.

In preparation for this day, teachers from the research department have to figure out when students will be presenting. Most of the time would mean scheduling issues and it wouldn’t be the first time either. There have been times in the past where there were either too many presenters in one classroom and not enough time is given to each student to present, or there aren’t enough presenters and there is extra time. A senior at MBHS who wished to remain anonymous said “Oh yeah, I feel like it’s always a mess. There is always something that goes wrong throughout the day, like the other year I was supposed to present a certain period, the teacher had gave us at what time we were supposed to present, what room and with whom we were presenting but then on the day of the symposium we were told that the schedule was changed and it was just a headache, many kids didn’t know when and where they were supposed to be.”

For many freshmen this is a new thing that they’ll be doing. A freshman at MBHS who wishes to remain anonymous said “I’m definitely excited to be going through the experience of the research symposium. In middle school I never did anything like this. Yes we had times to share with our class but never with other students of the other grades. This is something new to me and hopefully everything will run smoothly that day and turn out great. I also can’t wait to see the other presentations and what the other grades are doing. It would give me a preview as to what the year’s ahead hold.”