Early last semester, many students across the school were introduced to a new project: the Patriot Project. Not unlike last year’s DaVinci project, the Patriot Project was designed to provide students with a break from schoolwork as well as encourage creative thinking.

For two of Robin Dauma’s eleventh grade AP Language classes, this project easily fulfilled both purposes.

After only a few Patriot Project sessions, the fall semester juniors decided to build a bench that would dually function as a school time capsule.

“My two classes divided into groups, focusing on construction, design, artwork, and the time capsule itself,” Dauma says.

Though each group made progress, the combined efforts of both classes were not enough to finish the project; Dauma’s spring semester students will complete construction of the bench, which will function like a piano bench: the seat will lift up, and the time capsule items will be stored inside.

Currently, the bench-time capsule hybrid is partially constructed and several time capsule items – including old and new Bob Jones souvenirs and archived yearbooks – have been collected, but Dauma speculates that the project will not be complete until later in the semester.

“My goal would be to finish before spring break,” she says, “because things get really busy after that.”

As the bench-capsule construction resumes, Dauma has high hopes concerning the end product. “I hope that people who see anything that gets done will go, you know what, this is about Bob Jones…that it’s not just a place where we walk in, sit passively, and then walk out.” She adds that “it doesn’t need to look like something that could be found in Canada or California or Illinois – it needs to look like Bob Jones, and I think that the students are what make it.”

Leah Hong, the eleventh-grade student artist for Dauma’s Patriot Project, thinks that the completed bench should also be pleasing to students and staff. “It would be nice if students who pass by the capsule would be intrigued enough to pause and examine it,” Hong says, “and perhaps be inspired with a greater respect for the school.”

Although the completed project will benefit all current Bob Jones students by, as Hong states, “expressing the impact we as students have made within the school,” the actual planning and construction seemed to be especially advantageous to Dauma’s students.

“Personally, I believe the project was more of a break from classwork, a refreshing outlet for non-AP English-related energy,” says Hong.

Ademola Ayokanmbi, a junior, explains that he most enjoyed and benefitted from the physical construction process. “Yeah, I helped saw it and stuff – I didn’t get anything chopped off, so that was good,” he jokes.

Additionally, the bench project required students to think creatively, which is something Dauma certainly finds important.

“Creative thinking is not about drawing a picture,” she explains. “It’s about seeing possibilities.”

And perhaps, once the bench is complete, it will inspire future students to see all sorts of new possibilities.