Are Some Senior Project® 'Ships' Listing?

Not too long ago, I was listening to a team of Senior Project® educators discussing the things they could do to increase the program’s rigor. During the brainstorming of possibilities, one of the Senior Project teachers suggested creating a list of unacceptable topics. The idea caught hold and some folks were quite taken with it. A positive that was pointed out was that such

a list would cut down on wasted time and would also force students to ‘dig deeper.’ One of the teachers asked what types of topics might be placed on such a list and was told, “Oh, things like skateboarding, medical marijuana, snow boarding, famous people, abortion, drugs, gambling and anything else offensive, edgy or lightweight.”

In response, a quieter team member asked what criteria would determine the topics placed on the “No Can Do List”, and who would be the deciding party. After much discussion, it seemed that the topics selected for the list would be topics that the Senior Project® teachers considered inappropriate, lacking rigor, or were just too ‘controversial.’ Rather than rejecting a student’s proposal and allowing the student to defend his choices if he had some ideas that he felt had merit, he would be simply handed ‘the list.’ (Whoops, was a teachable moment and an actively engaged student just added to the “No Can Do List?”)

Skateboarding was added to the list because it was thought to be too lightweight. Yet, skateboarding reflects a multi-billion dollar industry representing graphic designers, engineers, customer service experts, clothing lines, classes, world class sporting events, skateboarding parks, movies, art, marketers, advertising, research and development, and so on. Clearly, one of these areas of focus could harbor a significant research topic or an amazing project.

Gambling was placed on the list because it was considered an “unnecessary” topic. Plus, it was asked what could a student do for a relevant gambling project because he/ she would not be allowed to gamble. Yet, the gambling industry is another multi-billion dollar industry that not only employs thousands of individuals worldwide but also impacts school revenue, addresses anti-addiction causes, contributes to some Native Americans tribes… the list goes on.

Senior Project is about students exploring, thinking, deciding, defending, reaching approval, researching, producing, and presenting. Why is it that some schools want to curtail the learning by cutting the students’ decision-making process short by simply handing out lists of approved and disapproved topics? Effective Senior Project programs are not comfortable, nor easy. There remains a bit of uncertainty, ambiguity, and lack of clarity and loss of a predictable, traditional comfort zone. The program is not about static lists but about active learning.

Good programs push the edges. The processes actively involve the students as well as the staff. While it is certainly true that a senior might select a research topic or project that is not acceptable, it remains the senior’s responsibility to build a case to defend his/her proposal or select another topic. Of course, such a student’s defense involves learning, preparation, and debate. It involves passion, common sense, and the reality of decision-making and proposal validity. Senior Project programs of merit require the responsibility and accountability of the senior. Student learning is foremost in each Senior Project process. Clearly, the more decisions we make, the more lists we create, the fewer real decisions a student needs to make. Providing too many examples, too many rules, too much control creates ‘listing.’

Posted by Carleen Osher, Executive Director, Senior Project Center at P4DL, Inc.

Reflections as the 2008-09 School Year Winds Down....

Most educators spent the year working hard, beyond the forty- hour workweek and well into the weekends. They have wrestled with budgets, engaged students, helped the disenfranchised, provided encouragement, wisdom, discipline, support, insight and vision. For all of this energy and all of the good work, it has been a tougher and longer year than most. For many, the end of this school year closes with financial turmoil, stress and uncertainty.

Of course, the history books will define this year as the year that the first African American president was sworn in. Others will mark the year by the wars in which we are engaged. Some will personally define the year as the one in which homes, jobs or entire savings were lost. Yet, in spite of all the distress and concerns, across the nation thousands of high school seniors are graduating, and, for them, this year will be remembered as the year they graduated from high school. (Five years from now when these young adults gather at reunions, what will they remember about their high school experience? The unit on the romantic poets? The last test given in a science class? A challenging math assignment? A history unit? State testing?)

Graduation punctuates the end of attending high school. For some students and parents, participation in this ceremony has become more important than what the ceremony was designed to honor and recognize: learning and the completion of 11-13 years of formal education. Receiving a diploma means: Courses taken and passed. Struggles encountered and met successfully. Personal experiences that added to one’s understanding of life. An education about systems and relationships. Teamwork and independence. And, of course, a leaving that signifies the graduate is more learned, wiser, more educated, more capable, a young adult becoming, one who hopefully will make our planet a better place.

In my mind’s eye, meaningful graduations signal a ceremony representing a powerful and earned tradition set within grace and dignity, a ceremony of pride and reflection. I do not believe a graduation should be framed in the expectation of a ‘right’ of passage deserved by anyone. Creating an occasion that simply addresses time served, the pain and all the hassles framed in beach balls, loud crowds and limited dignity is not a message of worth but one of disregard.

In my book, graduation should be about beginnings, respect, personal growth, and the best future for each graduate awarded a diploma. Call me old fashioned, but I think graduations should be about celebrating learning, dignity, responsibility, and the promise of making a worthy difference.

If the senior year ends with a carefully designed, challenging, culminating, and transitional learning experience i.e., Senior Project®, and that experience folds into a graduation ceremony designed to honor learning and personal accomplishment, the last vision of high school is sustained with pride in a meaningful rite of passage.

Posted by: Carleen Osher, Senior Project® Center Executive Director

“How I Spent My Spring Break”

UGH! The sun is shinning in the car window. It is so bright and exciting. And here I sit reading research papers! When we get to vacation, guess where I’ll be? And when we get home from vacation, guess where I will be? It is this moment when I am sure that I don’t buy into all this Senior Project® mess! Each one of my 85 students has written a 7 to 9 page research paper with 7 sources and internal
notations that I have to read, respond to, grade, and understand in enough time to make sure that the grades get added to their report cards. And this year, by some strange stroke of genius, the school has forced all core classes to give comprehensive midterms. My senior English midterm, not created by me, includes an essay of considerable length for each student. So my Spring Break just gets better by the minute!

There are ways around this, you know. Papers should not be graded by an English teacher! Let’s be honest. I am a smart and educated person, but I can’t possibly know all there is to know about the hyperbaric chamber, HVAC certification, and development of home designs, to mention only a few of the 85 topics staring at me. I’m pretty sure that there are none written on the importance of rhythm in poetry. The truth of the matter is that I am simply checking their organization, citation, and grammar and praying that they are correct on the validity of their information. I really would like to see the participation of the mentor or academic advisor in this process. Someone familiar with the content should read through the paper to evaluate the information. There is a huge benefit to having the paper read twice or even three times and then averaging the scores for a grade. I find myself begging those around me, like my poor husband and friends, to read something to see if it makes sense.

It seems to make more sense to have one person read 4 papers written by their advisees or mentees than one person read 85 research papers, no matter who those students are! I make it my job to be careful and fair, but I’m sure things slip through the cracks as my eyes will inevitably glaze over at topics that I couldn’t understand in college biology much less explained by a 17-year-old student. The student put so much hard work into this creation that it seems unfair for me to read it and still not understand their point. This sharing of the Senior Project® responsibility would make the project itself much more cohesive and connected to the school. We have all made attempts at writing across the curriculum and, I would wager, few say it is unimportant. Imagine the students' surprise to know that a physical education teacher knows how to write and grade a research paper! As educators, we have all written our fair share of research papers and, though it may have been longer ago for some, a simple refresher course would be enough to get us back on the right path. It’s like riding a bike, right?

So here is my question to the readers...How does your school handle the grading of papers? How does your institution value the content of the paper as much as the form? Is there any way to salvage my Spring Break, or do I simply have to include a clause in my contract forfeiting all of my rights to the enjoyment of sunshine simply because I teach seniors?!

Posted by Mary Magee, Mooresville High School

Using Data

For the first time, our Senior Project® proposals are being submitted using electronic form software. This is allowing us to track some information regarding the type of projects our students are doing and keeping track of how many proposals need to be resubmitted. See the slides below for our data and how projects break out by type (you can toggle them to a large screen).

The first thing that strikes me about this data is the low numbers for math and science related projects. It is my hope that this will generate discussions with the Math and Science departments in order to draw on student talents within our school. The ability to share all the content-specific projects with the different academic departments will allow more staff to become invested in the Senior Project. We will be asking the departments to brainstorm project ideas for their discipline, and we hope this will translate into classroom conversations in the next school year.

Secondly, it is interesting to note how the product type breaks down. It is exciting to see most students engaging in a project that follows a passion, but we are happy that students can also learn more about a career or engage in a service project. In many projects, passion was combined with their career or service project.

Finally, the number of proposals that need to be resubmitted gives us some information on how well we are teaching how to write the proposal, but we also have to ask why proposals are not being accepted the first time. The top 3 areas that need improvement include the following: 1) the specifics of the product itself, which include timelines and estimated hours; 2) mentor information, which ranges from mentor contact information to having the best mentor for the product; and 3) project deliverable, or what evidence will be shown to indicate the product is completed.

This data should help us broaden the Senior Project conversation at our school and, more importantly, improve the quality of the projects overall. As always, I am interested in what type of data other schools might collect and how they use this data. Feel free to comment and share your thoughts and ideas.

Posted by Dave Waltman, Webster Schroeder High School

Spreading the Wealth

The 12th grade English Department in our school owns most of the responsibility for carrying out Senior Project® components. Unless implemented during the start-up of a Senior Project program, it is very difficult to get more faculty involved with Senior Project. This year our school has taken some baby steps that I hope will lead to wider support.

When our school established the Senior Project program, the 12th grade English course was the only course that met with every senior. Involving other departments was logistically impossible. While talk of senior seminars and advisement periods came up, our school was not ready to change schedules. One piece of advice I would give to anyone who is beginning a Senior Project program would be to think school-wide involvement from the very beginning. Once the English Department takes on the responsibility, others are very reluctant to offer their help.

Now, six years later, our 12th grade English course is gone. The course has been replaced with a selection of semester electives. It is sometimes difficult to embed Senior Project components in a one semester elective titled Media Literacy or Page to Screen. So more than ever, as coordinator, I hear the question, “How can we involve other departments in the Senior Project process?” This year, our answer has been to involve our k-12 Curriculum Supervisors in the role as an Advisory Board member.

As part of the project proposal, students select the academic area that is connected to their project. Students select from Social Studies, Science, Music, Health, Physical Education, English, Art, Technology, and Math. These selections indicate which curriculum supervisor will be reading their proposal. Now, our top level content-area administrators have a firm grasp as to the kind of projects that are being done relative to their departments. In January, our Curriculum Supervisors will be able to share what they’ve learned from reading the proposals with their respective departments. Each department will then be able to reflect on the quality of work being done by our senior class and become involved in the process of improving Senior Project work. Our hope is that departments will get excited about what students are doing within their specialties and our non-English teachers will want to become more involved in helping students research and develop their ideas (in addition to mentoring and becoming judges). In the coming years, we hope to see students writing proposals with the help of their Math or Science teacher instead of their English teacher.

Senior Project Certified Schools require over 90% of the staff be involved with Senior Project. We have a long way to go before we reach this mark but are optimistic that by involving our Curriculum Supervisors we are headed in the right direction. I would be very interested in hearing how your faculty is involved with Senior Project and ideas you have to increase the percentage of stakeholders.

Posted by Dave Waltman, Webster Schroeder High School

Change

Change. Loose change. Change we can believe in. Change is coming. If there is one thing for certain, it’s change (except from a vending machine).

As our school’s Senior Project Coordinator, changes to our project can be exhausting. Sometimes it’s change I can believe in. Sometimes it’s not. Since 2002 we have made changes to our project every year.

We spent an incredible amount of time trying to improve the writing and research skills of our students. We created higher level rubrics, embedded research tasks in grades 9-12 to improve vertical alignment, and came together to align the grading and scoring of papers. Then we wanted our students to have more meaningful products. Community benefit was a required element to every single project. Our students were doing something worthwhile, whether they believed it or not. Our community was always impressed during our May presentations. Our community judges were well trained and our speech rubrics continue to be fine-tuned. All of this change reflected many hours of summer work, online and offline discussions, and many people being willing to be extremely flexible.

Two years ago, our 12th grade year-long English course went wayside in favor of several half-year elective choices. This one decision to make senior year more relevant by offering courses like Media Literacy, Rebels with a Cause, and Page to Screen threw a wrench into how Senior Project was taught and how teachers and students perceived it. In a semester course, teaching the laborious task of writing a research paper became so disconnected with the course that teachers were not comfortable with the fit, both in terms of time and student attitude. Tracking students over two semesters with two different teachers challenged our ability to provide timely support for students over the course of the year. These challenges led to a series of changes for the 2008-09 school calendar.

It is important to our English department to maintain a research strand in the 9-12 curriculums. It was decided to have the 12th grade research paper connect to the English elective rather Senior Project. What writing task did that leave for Senior Project? This year the writing task is being described as a workplace document in the form of a proposal. This proposal includes a 500-word background essay where a student develops and answers a research question related to their project area. The proposal could also be described as a more detailed “letter of intent.” We are asking for information regarding inspiration, mentors, logistics, calendars, dates, timing and costs. We are also asking students to submit their proposals on-line, one of two areas where we are trying to integrate more technology. This will also allow us to track students more efficiently in order to provide support and parent communication.

A second area of technology integration will take place with the portfolio. A binder was required in previous years and this year we are going digital. Each senior will receive a free Google Apps for Education account. Google Sites will allow students to create their own ePortfolio based on a basic template. An ePortfolio will give students, teachers, judges, and the community to have broader access to student projects.

Where will these changes lead us? Will our students be better prepared for the workplace and college? Will projects become more meaningful for our students? Will our teachers be more excited and dedicated to the project? Will technology enhance the process or will technology fail us?

How has your Senior Project changed over time? Did your school make positive changes? Unsuccessful changes? What is your process for change? Who gets to make these decisions? Are they top-down? Are they bottom-up? Let us know! And as Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing wrong with change, as long as it is in the right direction.”

NOTE: The Senior Project® Tracker™ is a web-based management tool for schools to use to facilitate their Senior Project® programs. Utilizing cutting edge technology, the Tracker™ provides a dedicated, secure place for all student work, feedback, grades, and communications for all program stakeholders to access. In addition, it has a digital portfolio component for students to present their SP journey utilizing 21st century tools.

Posted by Dave Waltman, Webster Schroeder High School

Looking Back

The teacher with whom I student taught instilled in me the importance of being a reflective practitioner. Every time I taught a lesson during that semester she and I would sit down immediately afterwards and discuss what went well and what I could have done better. This process of reflection and evaluation, which I have continued throughout my career, has been influential in shaping me professionally, and I apply that same practice to my work as a Senior Seminar teacher. I feel it is especially crucial for a Senior Project® program to reflect on and assess how things go each year in order to continually improve the program. We ask our students to do reflections and self-evaluations for each component of the project, and I think it is equally important for us to assess how we did leading them through each of those components.

Throughout the year I record notes in a document divided into two simple columns: things that went well and things to improve for next year. I update that document as often as I think of something, and then once the school year is over I sit down and try to brainstorm anything and everything I can about how the process went. Last year (as a first year Senior Seminar teacher), the things-to-improve column was significantly longer than the things-that-went-well column, but I am pleased to report that this year there is a little more balance to the ledger.

I’d like to share some of the highlights from this year that topped the things-that-went-well column. One of my favorite new activities from this year occurred when I was preparing my students to make phone calls during the research phase. Each student is required to conduct an in-person interview with an expert on his/her research topic; this generally involves making several phone calls to identify an interviewee and set up a time and place for the interview. Since students are often terrified of calling people they don’t know, I walked them through what to say in various scenarios, and the students created a basic script for their phone calls. Then I invited my assistant principal in to role play with the students. She was so fun with them, playing parts ranging from the rude secretary to the ideal interviewee. It was great to watch them have to react and think on their feet, and it was the perfect preparation for making their actual phone calls. I felt like the exercise was extremely useful, and the students agreed. Many of them referenced their ability to make professional phone calls as the most beneficial skill obtained during Senior Project®.

Hands down the best part of this year occurred at the end of the school year. The final activity of Senior Project® for us is a school-wide display of the seniors’ trifold boards and portfolios. All of the underclassmen have an opportunity to walk through and look at all of the projects, so that the seniors can show off what they’ve done and the underclassmen can get some ideas about what they might do for their own Senior Projects. We’ve been doing this for years, and it has been good, but after last year, I sensed that it could be better. I felt like the students walking through were overwhelmed by over a hundred trifold boards that all started to look the same after a while, and the seniors were more likely to talk to each other than the underclassmen walking by. So this year I decided to make some changes.

I wanted to step up the displays and include some of the physical products rather than just trifold boards and portfolios, but I recognized that we were limited with space. So I decided to focus on the best projects. In order to do this I had all of the seniors nominate what they felt like were the best projects in five different categories, and we narrowed it down to five nominees in each category. This allowed us to spotlight 25 of our best projects on the gym floor during the all-school display, while the remainder of the students set up their trifolds and portfolios in the commons.

The morning of the all-school display, the vibe on the gym floor felt like a great party, and that energy seemed to be contagious. Underclassmen eagerly snaked through a diverse representation of projects. The soundtrack of the event was Holly playing her bagpipes while Dustin was inviting students over to witness his juggling and other playful antics that he learned for his street performances. From time to time Devin would rev up his motorcycle that he had beautifully redone. And there was always a line to look inside the peephole of the giant tree that was Katelyn’s piece of installation art. Then there were students like Megan and Lori who drew students in with their pictures and stories of helping others, one organizing a number of events for the Ronald McDonald House and the other heading up a mission trip to Mexico where they built a house for a family. And in the career category there was Becca’s work as a news anchor playing on a large screen and evidence from Gabe’s efforts in starting his own moving company.

All in all, the new and improved all-school display was a great success! After viewing the nominated projects, students voted for the best in each category and an overall winner for our first round of Senior Project Excellence Awards. We closed the morning with a party for the seniors where we enjoyed cake and punch and recognized the winners. In addition, a local news channel did a glowing story on Senior Project® with outstanding footage from the event. The celebration was a fitting end to another great year of Senior Project, and hopefully next year will be even better!

Posted by Tobi McMillan, Lubbuck-Cooper High School