Local school vying for world records
Compass Academy is looking to break world records. Thursday and Friday, students are taking on the challenge, “what are the coolest world records the school can break?”
“There was one student that was like I want to build a fort in the school. I was like ‘is that a Guinness World Record?’ They said, its not on the internet so maybe we can just make it up ourselves,” said Shameka Kimmel, a student and executive board member at Compass Academy. “At well if you want to do it go big or go home.”
The magnet high school puts on a first week of school event each year. It is designed to show new students what project based learning looks like and helps create relationships with other students.
“We do a lot of collaborations and a lot of networking with other people and other students,” said Ethan Martin, another student and executive board member at Compass Academy. “This gives the students mainly the incoming freshman a chance to network with each other, collaborate with each other, and reach out to people outside of the community.”
Each student will have a little over 24 hours to find, practice, revise and attempt to break a Guinness World Record and find their own ideas to contribute to their group. Once each group decides on a single world record, the group will try and break it. The students will then compete against each other in a bracket system.
When the school gets to the top four groups, the school will vote on their favorite two attempts. The two fan favorite records will be submitted to Guinness.
“Hopefully get somebody here to time it or whatever they decide to do, hopefully get them in the book,” Kimmel said.
Compass Academy hopes to continue the tradition of team building of each fall during the first week of school.
“I come from a background where the adults were the ones who were leading and telling the students what to do,” said Shelly Smede, the director of Compass Academy. “Whenever the students tell me they have a great idea, I breath. I think about it, then I usually run it by my daughter and of course she always says, ‘Oh that’s wonderful, they have a great idea. So then I trust.”
Each project is created and run entirely by the Compass Academy student body.
