Mount Vernon high school principal Steve Brand presented an update on the J-Term 2025 program at Mount Vernon Schools.

The J-Term is a nine day intensive course of study where students delve into one course for that two week period.

The ninth-grade students have an intensive class that helps guide them on the pillars that make up the Mustang Nation and help them set goals for the rest of their high school experience.

“It comes at the perfect time for those students, where they’ve had a semester of time at high school and encourages them to get involved in more school activities,” Brand said.

Brand said the goal for the courses in 10th through 12th grade is to expose students to the world. That’s done in some cases by having travel opportunities like a class with the Disney Leadership program in Florida, or traveling to other countries. It’s also done with programs that have opportunities for day trips to locations in the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids corridor that go alongside what students are learning.

“The importance is to get students outside of the school building’s four walls and exploring,” Brand said.

Members of the science-fiction class shared a video they had recorded as part of the class, as well as what they learned.

Sarah Sharif said she didn’t know what to expect when it came to J-Term, and her knowledge of science-fiction was just the cool futuristic worlds that it conveyed.

“I have to say I made so many new friends I hadn’t seen in other classes I had,” Sharif said. “I also learned a lot more of the language around science fiction.”

Sharif and students learned that by having a choice of creating either a short film or a science-fiction inspired escape room in the program.

The class was taught by teachers Alaina Appley and Bonnie Ahrens.

Ellah Shook said she took the class because she was excited about the teachers instructing the class.

“It was the most interesting course of the ones offered this J-Term for me,” Shook said. “I was nervous about being part of the film, as I had never done that before. When we started work on that project, I learned a lot about filmmaking and the ability to make something fun and awesome within the limitations we had.”

Andy Morris had originally planned to take part in an internship this year, but that fell through. She missed a few of the first days of the class, but said coming back to work with the group when she returned and collaborate on making a film was a truly great experience.

“We had to think about things like scene shots and dialogue that we wanted,” Morris said. “It was a unique experience, and something I wish to be able to do again.”

Elise Owen said that teachers Appley and Ahrens had done a good job on splitting these groups of students into teams and took into account the strengths of the students involved.

“I found I really loved the process of making a short film,” Owen said. “I especially loved the process of editing the film after the fact and coming up with the story.”

Owen said that it taught her some skills that she could later apply in life, including time management skills for working within the required deadline of times and adapting to complications to make their filming work.

Brand said that highlighted the goals for the classes in J-Term overall – to give students real world skills and open their eyes to different opportunities.

Students utilized cell phone cameras to record the movie, and for things like shots that required the camera to move, they used an improvised dolly of a rolling chair to get the effect they were looking for. They also utilized a drone shot for the start of their film, taken at the quarry in Mount Vernon.

One of the challenges for the students was the availability of their chosen main actors in the picture. They only had two filming days, and a set number of hours for the student who was their lead, as she was involved in the escape room project for the class as well.

“We also had to come up with ways to make the props we needed in the movie,” Morris said.

In the end, the students made a two and a half minute short film they were able to present to the school board and other class members.