Support For The Senior Project
Some people feel a senior project is a far more useful investment of a students' time in a Language Arts classroom than the traditional literature approach. The expanded Graduation Project is centered in the English classroom but occurs across the four years of high school. This provides teachers of all disciplines the opportunity to incorporate the Graduation Project standards, defined by state constructed rubrics, into their classrooms. This division of labor will ultimately reduce the load upon the English faculty and allow for the re-introduction of literature.
The senior project provides students with an opportunity to explore career options through job shadowing, to see their mentors engaged in the day-to-day activities of their chosen careers. This allows students headed into the workforce a chance to observe how professionals handle their responsibilities, a lesson that many students do not learn in the forgiving and permissive atmosphere of a high school. The success of job shadowing, however, is dependent on specific mentor, many of who have been given little training or preparation in Senior Project mentoring, and the flexibility of the specific work force environment in which the student will be participating to accommodate an outside observer (e.g., privacy/confidentiality issues in healthcare or law).
By focusing on a student selected research component, the college-bound student is given his or her greatest opportunity to engage with a subject and topic related to his or her intended major. If properly developed with current information, the graduation project can provide a spring board for college term papers and undergraduate thesis. Utility of the Senior Project for non-college bound students has been less well articulated.
Perhaps most importantly, the senior project does force students to work beyond their anticipations; just as challenging courses like AP Calculus and Honors English can indicate to prospective schools and employers that the students take their academic responsibilities seriously, a high quality senior project should serve as the capstone to a rigorous high school career. Student complaints should never be marginalized or ridiculed, but educators would deserve to be charged with negligence if they capitulated to the students' demands for lower standards.
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