I have been hearing stories about Senior Project,
and some of them are really bad. Not having a child or grandchild in high school,
it is all new to me and I’ve had to research it. Senior Project has been a pet project of the
Superintendent in Bossier Parish high schools for about four years now; it was
a pilot program at Parkway the first year, then rolled out to every high school
in the parish. Caddo does not do Senior
Project.
On the surface, to me at least, the goal seems
worthy but the thing itself is over-complicated, very subjective, and in some
cases, counter-productive.
After twelve years of education, passing course
work, years of standardized testing are all for naught if a senior does not
pass Senior Project.
If you are unfamiliar with Senior Project, here’s a
quick primer: it is taught alongside
English IV, so while the student is trying to tease out the finer points of The Canterbury Tales and Hamlet, he is also writing an eight to
ten page research paper on a topic related to his Senior Project. That could be anything from carpentry to
baking cakes. The student is also
working with a mentor on a product. The
guidelines say that the student must document twenty hours on the product and a
minimum of five contacts with the mentor.
The student will compile all of this into a portfolio, along with at
least ten required forms, and will make a PowerPoint presentation to go along
with the speech he must give to an objective, outside panel. The speech is supposed to be from eight to
ten minutes.
This is where it gets subjective. Apparently at some schools a student can
speak four to six minutes while at others the student must speak eight
minutes. At another, ten minutes. The product requirements vary, too, from
school to school. If baking is your
topic, apparently one school requires three different samples for the judges to
evaluate while at other schools a simple cake is fine.
Bottom line – it’s very subjective and very
stressful for the student.
Now, let’s deal with a hypothetical. What if a
student passes all of his classes, including the literature portion of English
IV, and a teacher arbitrarily decides that they are lying about the work they
have done on Project? Suppose that student has documentation and assurances
from the mentor that this work was done according to the guidelines. Suppose the teacher has accepted all the
forms and documents all semester long, and then at the end of the process the
speech isn’t quite long enough or the product board isn’t detailed enough. Is
it fair that the student cannot graduate?
I’m aware of at least two instances this year where
students were accused of lying about their project by a teacher without any
real proof by the teacher in either case.
In one of those cases the parent threatened lawsuit and the student was
allowed to pass.
This is happening in our parish right now. Right now there are kids who have ordered
graduation invitations who will not be walking; these kids are considering new
options – summer school, returning for another semester and graduating mid-term
next year, or just going for the GED.
All because of Senior Project.
I have talked to lots of people over the last few
days either personally or via Facebook (where I got a lot of interesting
comments) as I’ve researched this. I’m
sure there are two sides to this, but I haven’t heard from one soul so far who
supports it.
I won’t name schools – it’s a parish-wide problem so
no need to single out individual schools – and from what I’ve heard, the
teachers are not fans of Senior Project either for the most part. But, what I’ve heard is this:
Each school supposedly has a Senior Project
committee. This committee secures the
judges for the final panel. The judges
are supposed to be professionals in the community qualified to assess a
portfolio and a speech. At one school
this year the committee charged parents of seniors to find judges. I wonder what guaranteed that these judges
were qualified or even literate. I was
told that some judges in those presentations realized that a student might be
short on time so they drew them out with questions, thus helping the student
make the time limit while other panels did not and students fell short.
Is that fair?
In another case, I’ve heard that a kid was penalized
for not taking enough pictures of his product; he had elected to do auto-body
repair and found a mentor in an illegal chop shop. He didn’t realize it was illegal, of course,
but when a kid has to have a mentor, and there is maybe no attentive parent to
guide him, this sort of thing is going to happen. A student cannot use a family member as a
mentor.
Is that fair?
In yet another case, a student did cooking for her
Senior Project. In order to make the
required food for the judges to demonstrate her product, she used her family’s
food stamp money.
Is that fair?
Another student’s project got docked an entire
letter grade because his speech didn’t open with an attention getting “hook”
before he introduced himself to the judges.
That’s ridiculous.
One student had such a severe panic attack before
her presentation that her nose started to bleed profusely and 911 had to be
called.
Is this the kind of stress we want to subject kids
to? Is it necessary?
One student was called a liar by the teacher who
just didn’t believe the student had done the project, despite guarantees by the
mentor and plenty of documentation along the way. That student will not be graduating this
year.
I’ve heard that some students actually do lie about
their Project; they may lie about a step-parent being a mentor, or an aunt;
they may lie about working with a certain mentor (what teacher has time to
follow up on 35 mentors?). Some students
feel such stress and are so overwhelmed by the whole process, they feel this is
their only option.
There is an appeals process for those kids, but it
is practically never successful. In the
wide majority of cases it seems that the principal backs up the teacher and the
superintendent backs up the principal. The
appeal process is intimidating and stressful for the student who might be
hesitant to call out a teacher like that.
I’d like to know how many seniors won’t be
graduating this year due strictly to Senior Project. Someone left me a comment on Facebook that
suggested this is just a vehicle to parade our kids out before the community
and media. It doesn’t seem to serve the same educational purpose that a full
course of English IV would. I have real
concerns that our students aren’t reaching college truly prepared because
Senior Project consumed their entire English IV semester.
I hear rumors that the parish is considering
modifications to Senior Project for next year but that does nothing for the
seniors this year who will be sitting on the sidelines as their friends walk
across the stage to receive their diploma.
