Tuesday, March 25:
As we move into the last twelve weeks of the school year, the seniors (and I)still face the last two components of the Senior Project: the Presentation and the Portfolio. For the last year, I've had rebellious thoughts about ways to modify the Project. But one of the veteran teachers of the English Department helped to create the guidelines for the Senior Project, and got it approved by the School Board four years ago. She is adament that we should leave the Project in place as it is. If I haven't described it before, let me summarize: The Senior Project is a semester-long assignment for 12th graders. They must choose a topic of interest, write a research paper, do 20-30 hours of community service related to the topic, give a power point presentation, and submit a professsional portfolio.
But after teaching six senior classes last year, and four this year, I have begun to see some flaws in its concept.
1. Many students lie about doing the 20-30 hour community project component, but I can't prove it. Oh, those students are so crafty---having had 12 years of practice in the school system. They give the required power point Presentation, re-hashing the material in their research paper, but become vague when they get to the part about the community service. Even though the slide show is supposed to include photos of themselves doing the community service, a number of presentations don't have any photos. Others include photos of the place where they claimed to have done their service, but none of themselves in action, and I think we know why. Still others go down to Greenbriar for one hour, get a photo done, and call it a day. In the time I've supervised this project, I can think of only a few students who I was 100% convinced had done the community service for the required length of time. All the students are supposed to fill out a timesheet to document their 20-30 hours of community service and get signatures from an on-site supervisor, but many of those signatures look very suspicious to me. However, I can't prove they're forged, because I don't have time to be chasing down 100 different mentors to ask if Bubba really helped repair an elderly person's home. According to Department rubric, they lose 25 or 40 points out of 300 if the power point doesn't contain photos as proof, but they can still pass the presentation without any evidence of having completed any service at all. My feeling now gravitates towards,why pretend?
2) The Senior Portfolio is a professional portfolio. It contains three college applications and financial aid forms, a college application essay, the research paper which has already been done, print-out of a power point presentation which has been done for a previous class, timesheet for the community service, journal of the community service experience, a letter from the mentor, various writings which have already been done in class, three letters of reference from teachers, and a transcript. We've already established the fact that many students don't do the community service, so we understand that that section is bogus. College applications? Many students have already been accepted at the college of their choice by the time the portfolio is due. Isn't it sort of an exercise in busywork for them to fill out applications for three colleges to put into the portfolio? Or write a college admission essay? Furthermore, of the remaining students, many are going into the military, or to work after high school. College applications and FAFSA forms seem like a waste of time. Mostly, it's compiling a lot of paper into a notebook, all of which I have to go through.
I am an advocate of the senior project concept. I even gave a presentation on it at Georgia Southern's SSFYCC Conference last year. But I have begun to believe, after sitting through many a fake senior power point presentation, that we needed to liven up the concept. Thus, I came up with an idea for an alternative type of presentation and an alternative portfolio. The students get to choose between the traditional or the alternative. I'm sure my colleagues would disapprove, thinking that the Alternative Assignments are not tough enough or don't uphold standards, but I disagree. We comp theorists already know that autobiographical writing is just as challenging as expository.
More important, why should we, teachers and students alike, subject ourselves to power point after power point of research highlights, statistics, and fake community projects when students could have a choice? My alternative presentation is an autobiographical power point, which must answer specific personal questions, such as describing three major turning points in their lives, the most influential book, song or movie; accomplishments and honors during high school, and much more. When I distributed the guidelines for this alternative presentation, many of the students indicated they would enjoy doing this one instead of the traditional one. A few, probably those who recycled a research paper used by another senior last year, will choose the traditional one because it will seem easier to copy and paste the facts into a power point show. Am I copping out, I'm asking myself, to allow students to do the autobiographical slide show? I don't think so. The justification for doing the presentation at all is so students can gain practice in delivering an oral presentation before an audience, in creating an effective slide show, speaking well publicly, projecting, enunciating, engaging. Why should it matter what the subject is?
My other idea, the alternative Senior Portfolio, requires more writing than the traditional one and more reflection, so it's not a lowering of standards, I don't feel. The completed research paper must be contained in it, just as it is in the professional portfolio, so my alternative portfolio is not an invitation for students to escape that component. The rest of the assignments are personal writings, which range from an interview with an older relative, a poem, a technology autobiographical history, paragraph-long mini-stories of the three best and worst memories of high school, and so on. I assured the students that right now, high school is the center of their universes, but that in five, ten, thirty years, they won't remember the day to day details and might value this creative portfolio in the future. But in offering some choices, I've probably risked offending colleagues who see the original Project as the tough one and would see mine as the gut version.
Today at a department meeting, we got into a discussion about the importance of sticking to our guns about the Senior project. Either the students do it and do it on time, or they fail the course. It's supposed to count 60%. Recently, the principal told us via email that the Senior Project counts too much and causes too many seniors to fail, and deep in my heart, I agree with her. But at the meeting, several teachers did the sermon about personal responsibility and choices; if a student doesn't finish the project, then he deserves his F because how will he ever survive in college or in life if he doesn't know how to meet deadlines, yada yada? Yes, that's true, but a part of me believes that the end of senior year is not the time and place be Ms. Tough Guy to the extreme. I don't believe the prediction that students who are losers or slack-offs in high school won't necessarily do well in college or the workplace. That whole new world of opportunities will awaken them to become a person they've never been before. They're not fully formed in 12th grade! Many students, once launched out of the prison-like atmosphere of high school with its ringing bells and detention forms, will blossom.
But my biggest concern is, what purpose could possibly be served by adding more 12th graders to the pool of 5th-year seniors who inhabit the school, caught in a depressing limbo where they're not eligible to attend college, join the military, or get a job because they don't have that diploma, but who are only a few points short of passing one course or one of the graduation tests? I'm not saying we need to pass the seniors who screw off and do nothing all year, and I've had a few of those, but if a senior is close to passing, I'd be inclined to do whatever I could to push him or her over the passing mark. I'm sure my colleagues would consider this a sign of weakness, but I see the bigger picture.
And if the Senior Project is, according to the Principal, causing too many seniors to fail their 12th grade comp/lit, then maybe it's time for a little more differentiation in the course---let them choose the type of power point and portfolio that's best suited to their tastes and learning styles.
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