The infamous I-Search is approaching for seventh grade students. When I-Search was created in the 1980s it was meant to be a more personalized research paper. The “I” was meant to indicate the first-person point of view in the paper. Since then it has been modified into a more formal research paper. It is one of the first “rites of passage” for the seventh grade students. All seventh- grade students are required to do I-Search.

Senior Jeremy Gluck has been at the school since seventh grade and he also completed I-Search when he was in seventh grade.

“I remember doing it in seventh grade,”  Gluck said. “In retrospect, I think it’s not really that big of a deal. In the end it’s just a five-paragraph essay that you have to cite.”

The I-Search has been described as a “mini Senior Project.”

“In many ways, it resembles Senior Project and scaffolds necessary skills at the seventh-grade level,” said seventh-grade English teacher Lisa Rehm. 

Rehm said she thinks I-Search will benefit students in the future.

“Research skills are very important for personal, academic and professional reasons,” Rehm said. “As a student grows, a more thorough and in-depth understanding of the many skills increases. Also, our students will be choosing professions which require a variety of skills. The skill base provided by this research is beneficial in many ways to every profession.”

Seventh-grader Ryan D. also said I-Search will benefit him in the future.

“It will help me know how to research a topic and then be able to execute and be able to write about it,” he said.

By Summer Rhodes