Bridgewater-Raritan High School students currently enrolled in AP Psychology organized their own psychologically stimulating booths open to the entire student body to explore, learn and engage in during Unit Lunch on January 22 and 23.
The annual Psych Fair is a way for students in AP Psychology to earn extra credit while developing and implementing interactive workshops with a connection to the course. Various booths were organized by these students and often included an experiment to either demonstrate or build on the aspect that the students organizing the booth focused on.
Open to all Bridgewater-Raritan High School students, the Psychology Fair is a great way for all students to explore topics they may have never thought of or may even be curious about or interested in, which encourages further investigation into the human mind and why we act the way we do. Additionally, the fair is a promotion for students to take the psychology course offered at our school.
Ms. Katherine Holt, one of two AP Psychology teachers at BRHS, the other one being Mr. Alben Fischer, shared her input on the impact and idea behind the Psych Fair.
“The purpose for our annual psychology fair is to allow our psychology students to gain a better understanding of psychological concepts by actually coming up with creative ways to apply and test them,” she said. “Our hope is for them to develop skill sets in analytical thinking and scientific research through actually testing out their projects, and have fun doing it. This year, we received over 1,300 responses from students who attended the psychology fair. The numbers have been incredible, but the most rewarding part has been seeing how genuinely excited the students are at the psych fair and talking about it afterward.”
Holt went on to explain the impact the Psych Fair has on the student body.
“The Psych Fair helps the entire student body at BRHS in a few ways. First and foremost, it allows students to interact with unique psychological phenomena, which makes learning about different topics a personal experience and therefore far more memorable,” she said.
She explained that students get to choose two topics from a list provided and then create demonstrations of these topics. Students are able to research and focus on a psychology topics that interests them and they want to learn more about, “which tends to lead to more creative outcomes and enthusiastic participation,” Holt said.
For those students who attended the Pysch Fair that do not take AP Psychology, it helped them understand more about the course and often leads them to taking it.
The Psychology Fair gave students the chance to collaborate on topics related to the mind, learn new ideas from students currently in the course and organize a school-wide event recognizing the realm of psychology and all that it has to offer.
