The Innovator Project

The innovator project was a self-directed experimental time for seniors. We were given about 2 months of free time to work with and told to design and implement a project that could allow us to explore something we were interested in. Projects ranged from trial musical compositions to studies of film styles to the development of video games and more.

My innovator project focused on poetry and developing my own voice. I wanted to work on the way I present my ideas creatively, and because poetry is (arguably) my favorite litereary form, I decided to try working on my poetic skills. I wrote and performed 3 spoken word poems to develop my rhthym, alliteration, and public speaking skills. I also designed a book in Adobe InDesign, which you can view below. This book holds all of the poems I wrote during the Innovator project, with a variety of topics under my central theme: what it means to be a part of my generation. I wanted to sort of explore the instability of youth and the unsteadiness I notice in myself and my peers as the next generation, or Generation Z. My only hope is that I won't look back on this and cringe!

Or if you want to see something a little more wordy, you can check out the research paper I wrote here!

I chose my innovator project because I wanted to work on my personal literary skills and I’ve always had an interest in poetry. I thought it would also be beneficial for me to try to work on my sharing and collaborating skills, because I believe that is something I have struggled with in the past. I decided that working on some of the things I know I struggle with would be easier and more interesting if I attached them to a medium I am familiar with and interested in.

My research process taught me a lot more about the history of poetry and the culture around spoken word and slam poetry, which is what originally interested me and got me invested in poetry. Learning about the cultural roots and influences that began spoken word poetry, things like under representation and identity politics, helped me feel more connected to poetry and develop my voice as a poet. Developing that poetic voice and learning how to share that was really what my project was about, so I think my research ended being highly personal and well integrated into my project. I think a lot of my success in this project can be partially attributed to the more critical scholarly articles, book reviews, and news stories I read while researching.

For the collaboration aspect, I worked on reading my poetry to small groups of 2-3 people and asking for their opinions, focusing heavily on whether or not I was getting a deeper meaning across and connecting with my peers. I tried to take my peers suggestions and any confusion to heart without becoming defensive, which is something I know I can have difficulty with, so that I could effectively use their diverse opinions to make my poetry more relatable to other members of my generation. My poetry during innovator revolved a lot around what it felt like to be young and what it meant to be a part of my generation, so working with other teenagers really helped me develop those poems. I think that my collaborations were largely successful in that I got to listen to a lot my peers talk about their experiences and their opinions on youth; but I think that at some point it became a little overwhelming for me because there was so much variety. There were also points were I got really frustrated from being unable to communicate the meanings of my poems, which was a huge barrier for me. Generally I’m pretty proficient at communicating, so I wasn’t really used to having such a hard time explaining some of my ideas.

If I could do the project over, I think I would have tried to make a more realistic schedule and give myself a little more time for the book. I tried to do a lot of the designing in April, which is when I was writing the bulk of my poems. I didn’t really notice the emerging theme of the poems until I had written about half of them, so I had to edit my book’s design a lot, which was honestly just really annoying. If I had tried to write more poems in March and focused more on the book in April and just kind of moved things around, I think the whole project would have gone much smoother for me.

I think I improved the most on my self direction and collaborative skills during this project. I think designing a project from scratch and trying to deal with it when things changed or I got new ideas really helped me develop the way I adapt myself to new problems. I haven’t had a chance to design my own work process in traditional schooling, so the opportunity to do so has really helped me to identify more areas I struggle with and start testing out my own solutions to them. I think I was able to open up a lot more to others during the project and share my work in a more serious way, which was really nice. I honestly tend to hide behind humor, so sharing these deeper poems and feeling like other people were taking me seriously was a strange but rewarding experience for me. I don’t think there’s any particular skill I worked on less than the others, but I guess I was the least successful in improving my productivity. I spent more time than I thought I was going to have to trying to write poetry that was meaningful and sounded appealing. I guess I sort of expected myself to have an unending well of creativity for poetry, so when that ended up being untrue and I had to try to write when there was no inspiration, I hit a pretty big wall, thus lulling my productivity. I haven’t really figured out a solution to getting over that wall, which is why I feel unsuccessful in developing my productivity, but I did sort of learn how to work around it, albeit somewhat awkwardly.

As I wrote earlier, I learned more about the kinds of things I struggle with in developing and designing an idea. I know that I’m really good at getting ideas and developing those ideas in the early stages, but I never feel finished, so actually completing things to my own satisfaction and keeping my interest in the work is really hard for me. Through this project however, because I was able to design my own project, I was able to sort of test out other solutions for myself. I tried to implement strict, short deadlines and do a lot of work towards the beginning before I started to lose interest in the project. I think that trying to get more done in the beginning was a step in the right direction, but the strict deadlines I set ended up getting broken and started to really stress me out. I think that in the future if I can find a way to get myself to do as much as possible in the beginning of a project without setting such strict deadlines, I’ll have a much better system that helps me to be a productive member of society.

I feel like the opportunity to choose my own path and study more in-depth on a subject of my own choice allowed me to feel more invested in my education. I think that allowing students to pursue their own passions allows them to produce much more fulfilling work and gives them the opportunity to engage themselves with their education wholeheartedly. Overall, I think this project was really valuable for me even though I kind of messed it up.