by Annabelle Dibrell (Posted on February 16, 2026 @ 12:57 p.m.)

For many students, school can feel like a never-ending cycle of the mundane. Valyn Mendoza, however, is a standout teacher who makes learning fun and efficient in her classroom through different projects that are intertwined with the current learning topics. Her latest brilliant idea is a Westward Expansion project. It’s a project that pushes students to fully immerse themselves in history while they team up to create a magazine about various types of people alive during the age of expansion.

The Westward Expansion project was started several years ago because the unit “Westward Expansion” had a reputation for being one of the drier topics in the curriculum. It features less engaging topics, like the types of trails settlers took during this expansion. Mendoza noticed that students weren’t paying attention and had trouble remembering the material on major tests like the STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness). So, she decided to do something about it.

At first, students were overwhelmed with the amount of work they were expected to put into the project. “It was so much, I couldn’t handle it at first,” Hayden Hartman, a dedicated, straight-A, multi-sport athlete at Alamo Heights, says. But later, students learned to balance the work, and they started to get into a steady momentum while working on the project. “They are beautifully done,” Mendoza states.

From micro-projects that can be completed in a single day to major projects that span several weeks, Mendoza’s class will forever keep you on the edge of your seat, eagerly waiting for your next assignment. Mendoza’s Westward Expansion project is no exception. It will bring you through the highs and the lows over the span of a couple of weeks, making everything worthwhile when you step back and look at the finished product. At the end of the day, students didn’t just memorize facts; they experienced history as though they lived it.