Senior Projects: A Cure for Senioritis
In the early 1990s, two epiphanies changed my ideas about my teaching. First, I realized that I taught students, not English, so they should be the focus of my teaching. Second, I recognized the intellectual deaths of our seniors at the end of the first semester. When Macbeth died, they died, and the rest of the year involved what I like to think of as "gurney learning"—pushing them from one class to the next. With frustration, I realized that teachers were working much harder than the students. While the seniors were lying on the gurneys, we were struggling to push them up and down the hallways!
About this same time, I attended a professional training about the Senior Project, a concept designed by Carleen Osher in the late 1980s in Medford, Ore. My students had been writing research papers about British authors and then presenting their findings to the class, but the Senior Project idea seemed more relevant. This authentic assessment potentially had more rigor, could strengthen community connections, and best of all, was a student-driven rite of passage for all seniors, not just those in upper-level classes.
In 1993, my school (Mooresville Senior High in Mooresville, N.C.) implemented Senior Projects, and then the district adopted them. Here's how they work. In the early weeks of their senior year, students select a topic of their choice, but it must involve a personal learning stretch that they articulate in a letter to a committee. Topic choices vary from genetics to cake decorating, from race-car aerodynamics to homelessness in Mooresville. One student built a model locomotive powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, while another held a fundraiser for breast cancer. One student studied ballroom dancing and took classes with her father, while another studied learning styles and tutored...
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