Unknown to some, Reedy High School offers a unique opportunity called the Independent Study Mentorship (ISM). This allows for students to gain a stronger understanding of a specific field of study. ISMis a course with an outstanding, intensive curriculum.
ISM gives an incredibly special chance to get a solid grasp of a field students are interested in before entering college or the workforce. Each year students enter into the class through an interviewing process from the year before. Students have the resources to realize their potential in an environment that facilitates such achievement.
“The Independent Study of mentorship program is an advanced level class for juniors and seniors,” ISM teacher Lesli Russell said. “It’s a professional level class that actually teaches them real world application in the professional world, so they get to choose a career field that they want to go into and research and study.”
Students and teachers alike have a similar description of the curriculum structure that ISM offers.
“It’s a program where you interact with a mentor and create an original work and product for the end of the year,” junior Eleanor Chau said. “It displays all the work you’ve done in your field of choice.”
Moreover, ISM is unique in that it provides students with a learning experience unlike what they have had before.
“It’s very self-paced which makes it so important to us because it kind of exposes us to the real world and how it is in the real world,” senior Preethi Chunduri said.
Similarly, other students comment on the unlikeness of this course to other classes at Reedy.
“In most classes you’re kind of set with a different curriculum. But in ISM, you can just choose what you want to study,” senior Om Kherde said. “I know some people doing astrophysics or molecular biology, and those aren’t classes that are found on the Reedy campus. So I think it gives a lot of opportunity to kind of do your own self study.”
There are several ways you can use the ISM course to fit a student’s desired field of study. ISM can give students the opportunity to actually make a difference. One can see that within the aspirations of the students in the class right now.
“I really want to pursue a career in healthcare when I’m older,” junior Nidhi Pandari said, “so I decided that for my research this year I want to study pediatric oncology because I want to become a pediatrician.”
Several students are planning to enter the medical field and this class has given them the resources and time to get an understanding of what the field could be like.
“I’m studying neuroscience, and I’m doing a concentration in public health,” Kherde said, “So I’m seeing how neuroscience can be applied to populations and [specifically] marginalized populations for different communities.”
Others are taking different approaches. Many are looking to step into the financial sphere through the ISM program.
“My topic is management consulting, and it’s a little broad right now, I’m working on trying to narrow down to a specific sector,” junior Ananya Krishna said. “I picked my topic because I like how diverse it is and you get to keep learning with different cases every few months. So it kind of ties into my interest with learning psychology and economics.”
This year’s ISM class has been working hard to prepare and plan for their end of year project. The students first started with a symposium in September.
“Symposium [is where] all the ISM students in Frisco meet up together, and you interview different professionals,” Chau said. “You speak to other people around the district that are in ISM and [find out] what they’re doing in their fields.”
This allows ISM students to get a better idea of what they will be working towards and meet the peers around them. Many feel that a sense of unity is found in the class.
“I think it’s more of like a community because it’s a small class, and everyone kind of knows each other,” Kherde said. “So I think that it’s unique in that. In other classes, you’ll talk to your friends and everything, but you won’t really have a chance to work with them on the level that you do in ISM, because you’re always getting feedback from others on your projects and just looking to see how you can make your work better.”
Students are working on creating an original project in their first semester. Currently, students are attempting to contact people to gain a mentor for the course.
“In the month of October, we’re looking and finding contacts that we cold call, cold email, cold message on LinkedIn” Pandari said. “And based off of everyone’s texting or emailing, calling different people, and whoever responds, you go and interview them. And so this entire first semester is composed mostly of interviews, because everyone receives their notifications from their professionals at different times.”
Students in the second semester of ISM will be working with their mentors to create something to represent their tireless work.
“Second semester you come up with a final product project,” Chunduri said. “So you’re ultimately producing two projects that are going to be like your overall work, or a culmination of what you did first and second semester.”
The end result of the students’ work will accumulate into a final product to present to the people who helped make it happen.
“Our final big thing is our final presentation night, and it’s going to be in April, and that is an opportunity for the kids to invite their family, friends, teachers, their professionals, their mentors, all the people that have been a part of it,” Russell said. “Each student will give a 25 to 30 minute presentation where they discuss all the work they’ve done all year long. They present the product that they’ve created, they acknowledge their mentor and the work that their mentor has done with them, and they get an opportunity to showcase that.”
ISM is a course offered in high school that hopes to offer a test trial for students to experience the field they are interested in.
“I want students to take pride in their work and realize that they can literally do anything that they want to do if they put the effort into it,” Russell said. “I want them to learn professionalism and how to maneuver out there in the professional world and how to get ahead. This really is one of the only classes that prepares you for the future, for the real world.”
