DENVER — Usually, screams would echo throughout a haunted house, but Erik Krickbaum loves spooky season. On a visit to 5280 High School, he couldn't stop cackling as students jumped out at him from hiding places in their on campus house of horrors.
Krickbaum was visiting from the Developmental Disabilities Resource Center in Lakewood.
"I like the people that hop up and scare everyone," he said. "That's my most favorite part."
Students built the accessible haunted house as their biology class project.
"We want to be of service to the community," said Santiago Caquias, a student at the school.
He loves the tight-knit community at 5280, and says bigger schools never focused enough on that for him.
"It seems like we get to connect a lot more with each other and learn more about each other and come together," said Caquias.
Instead of tests and pop quizzes, everything here is project-based.
"We’re learning about the neuroscience of fear, what parts of the brain are triggered, what creates fear," said Nick Harris, the director of the science department. "So our demonstration of learning is creating a house of horrors."
When the kids are working on projects, they're encouraged to find ways they can benefit the community.
"They try to have service embedded in to everything they do, so that’s a big piece of why we created this haunted house for people who may not have access in other places," said Director of Special Education Hannah Kramer.
Along with the haunted house, there was cookie decorating, karaoke, face painting and dancing.
Some of the other projects students are working on at 5280 right now include children's books for elementary school kids and a pilot for a docu-series about recovery high schools.
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