Students at École Airdrie Middle School were pushed outside their limits throughout the academic school year with a new option class, Community Matters.

In it's inaugural year, the option class introduced the grade 8 students to the community, had guest speakers come in, and encouraged the students to go out into the city and talk with different people.

Jennifer Yersh, a grade 8 teacher at the school, said this option class worked very well at getting the students more comfortable with interviewing people.

"We said, 'This class is going to make you uncomfortable.' But if you're never uncomfortable, you're never going to grow, you're never going to push yourself outside of your limits. And they were, and they came back and they said, 'We were so nervous when we interviewed our first person but by the third it was great.'"

Projects included the importance of composting, advocating for a new basketball court in Airdrie's north east, and one pushing towards bridging the gap between age groups.

According to Amanda Russell, also a grade 8 teacher with the school, the students were able to choose their own topics.

"Their first project was doing a video, called 'What is Community,' so they had to go out, they had to speak with people in the community and that was their real first jumping point for the project."

With Community Matters being an option class, Russell and Yersh are hoping enough students are interested next year to keep the class going.

"We have our students that have helped us out with that now, promoting and just talking about what they've done, so really it's just a matter of students being interested and we're hoping it'll run for as long as the students want it to run," said Yersh.

The students were able to showcase their hard work at the Bethany Care Centre on Saturday, June 4, to residents and their parents.