American Studies students are taking all the knowledge they learned this year to work on a final project. Students have been separated into groups and tasked with creating a physical representation of what they think it means to be an American. 

“The ‘What is an American’ project is really cool because it allows the kids to come up with their own definition of what it means to be an American after looking at all the time periods in history that we’ve led up to now,” American Studies teacher Ashley Worsham said. “It also allows them to get together and have that physical product that is something one that we can showcase in our classroom so that others can see but it also allows them to have that creative visual.”

There are many different creative visuals students can create, but junior Ava Clerkin and her group decided on building the Capitol Building.

“Throughout the semester we’ve been kinda looking into America throughout history, throughout different time periods, and what the major defining features of Americans and what they thought American culture was,” Clerkin said. “I’m working with my partner Mason Classe to create a 3D rendering of the capitol building, and along the outside, we’re using clay to make small images that represent various ideals and cultural iconography and threads that America has had throughout different generations. That’s going to be covering that outside of the building to show how all these small communities come together to form the American identity.”