Ms. Valerie McFadden is the teacher for pre-calculus at Clear Springs, and she has recently assigned a project that many students couldn’t wait to make their own. The task was to make a twenty-sided shape, every side equal to the last, called an icosahedron using certain formulas and equations.

Each project is now hanging from the ceiling in Mcfadden’s room. “I really enjoy giving this project, especially this time of year. I would do it at my old schools, so I thought it would be a good idea to revamp it a little and start doing it here,” McFadden said.

One student in particular who went “big” with her project was Emily Hines (11), making her icosahedron as big as a classroom desk.

“Go big or go home is what I thought. I knew I was going to make it big, but I didn’t realize how large I was making it,” Hines said. She said when she walked into the room, the students in class were talking about a pretty big example of the project already, but when they saw Emily’s, all of their jaws dropped.

Hines said that she stayed up the night before, about ten hours to put the finishing touching on the decorated shape.

“I love getting the chance to see the students’ understanding of the skills and the highlights of each one’s creativity,” McFadden said. “I am thinking about doing this again next year as well, since this was such a great group of students to start it up again.”