English teacher Rachel Appleby’s students create a Genius Hour project with a theme of social justice that will be due October 22.

Students are using one day a week in class to work on it. This is typically a Tuesday or Thursday, but anything else they need to do must be done on their own time.

Social justice is privileges within a society. Appleby’s project is for students to find groups of people around the world that face or struggle with social injustice and come up with a solution for them.

Students are researching and creating solutions for anything from child labor to physically disabled people.

All students will display their work through a creative product many using a tri-fold poster.

Appleby explains that her inspiration for this topic is two-fold. First, it fits in with the theme of the first marking period, which is Social Justice. During this unit, students read To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men.

Secondly, Appleby feels that it is very important for students to be aware of the needs of people in the world.

Appleby’s students used mostly internet sources to complete this project and some used physical references, such as non-fiction books.

Appleby wants students to “become advocates for someone else” for this project. She explains she wants students to forget about themselves and to help foster empathy.

Sophomore John Moscynski is doing his project on women in Saudi Arabia. He is using this as his topic because women’s rights are important, and he wants to see them improve.

Sophomore Tyler Ballard is doing his project on women’s rights in South Korea. Ballard says he is about a quarter of the way done. He believes this class and project is very opinionated.

Students have never had a project like this before, so some have been having trouble with it.

The students’ products will be shown in the media center for peers and staff to walk around and look at the posters. Appleby hopes people will learn something and be interested in them.