Albany Senior High School has released a new short film, Where Academics Meets the Real World, directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker and ASHS alumna Kaia Kahurangi Jamieson.

The film offers an intimate look at one of the defining features of an Albany Senior High School education: Impact Projects.

For the past 17 years, every Wednesday at ASHS has been dedicated to Impact Projects, giving students the opportunity to take their learning beyond the classroom and apply their knowledge, creativity and skills to substantial real-world projects.

Ask many Albany Senior High School graduates what they remember most about their time at school and Impact Projects will be near the top of the list.

In Where Academics Meets the Real World, viewers meet the young people behind some of ASHS’s latest projects. They are designing, creating, researching, problem-solving and working alongside experts and community partners to turn ideas into something real.

Some are developing children’s books and learning resources designed to teach empathy, inclusion and challenge stereotypes. Others are exploring business and financial responses to local ocean and climate issues. In the materials lab, senior students work alongside younger students to design and construct go-karts using recycled materials.

But the film is about much more than the projects themselves.

It captures what happens when young people are given the opportunity to pursue something that matters to them, experience uncertainty, solve genuine problems, learn from setbacks and discover what they are capable of.

ASHS Principal Claire Amos says Impact Projects are an important expression of the school’s belief that academic success and real-world learning should strengthen one another.

“Impact Projects give our young people permission to try, re-try, create and succeed. Along the way they develop self-belief, resilience, critical thinking and the ability to work with others. These are not extras. They are the capabilities our rangatahi need to thrive at school and well beyond it.”

“Students still work hard to achieve academically, but we also want them to graduate knowing how to take what they know and do something meaningful with it. That is what we mean when we say Albany Senior High School is where academics meets the real world.”

The film follows students as they reflect on what they have learned, how they have changed and the confidence they are developing as they prepare for tertiary study, employment and life beyond school.

Central to the film is the idea that project-based learning can have a profound impact on student wellbeing. By giving young people genuine ownership, meaningful relationships, opportunities to contribute and authentic experiences of success, Impact Projects can help students develop a stronger sense of purpose, belonging and self-trust.

The filmmaker behind the project has her own connection to this story.

Kaia Kahurangi Jamieson is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and graduate of Albany Senior High School. She is also a University of Otago BASc graduate. Returning to ASHS to direct Where Academics Meets the Real World brings the story full circle: an ASHS graduate using her own creative expertise to capture the experiences of the next generation of students preparing to make their mark beyond school.

Amos says having an alumna tell the story made the project particularly special.

“There is something incredibly powerful about having Kaia return to ASHS as a professional filmmaker and tell the story of the kind of learning she herself experienced here. In many ways, Kaia represents exactly what we hope for our graduates: confident, highly skilled young adults who know who they are, can pursue their passions and can make a meaningful contribution to the world around them.”

Where Academics Meets the Real World is a celebration of project-based learning, but more importantly, it is a celebration of young people: their ideas, their potential and their capacity to do remarkable things when learning connects with the world beyond the classroom.