Souhegan students have had to do it for 10 years. New tch high students for about 5. Now evanston high students will have to do it as well. What "it" is , is a senior project.
Mr. Eric Stemle, a teacher at EHS, described the senior project as "a culmination of a students learning from the past 13 years. This project shows us what you learned."
Jordan Morris, a senior at Evanston high, echoed that sentiment, "a senior project is a way to show our success." Unlike most students, Jordan is not pessimistic about the project and doesn't view it as a bad thing. He is currently looking into three possible themes for his project: philosophy, poetry, or a combination of the two.
To help him complete his senior project is his mentor, Mr. Boyle. Mentors are chosen by students to help them along with this new graduation requirement and give them pointers and direction. Jordan hopes that Mr.Boyle can help him with his project because, “he is probably the smartest teacher when it comes to philosophy in the school."
Jordan is willing to do his part in completing this new requirement, but he's not sure if it will be around for long "I have no idea if they will keep these projects in future years, they have made bad decisions from what I see."
Whether EHS decides to keep the senior project requirement or not, the success of similar programs has been proven in many other schools. Teachers from Evanston high have visited schools such as New Tech High in California, Souhagen in New Hampshire and others across the nation. In these schools they saw that students have gotten many skills from the projects that they complete and have learned many things from them. The projects help students learn 21st century skills that are important to their success in life.
Seniors completing projects will have the opportunity to benefit more than just themselves as they complete this process. Many student projects could be designed to benefit the community in many ways. Project ideas such as organizing a city wide clean up, reporting on the effects of global warming and finding safer alternatives to fossil fuels have been discussed.
At first glance many seniors see this project as another way to hold them back in form of a graduation requirement, but as they dig deeper and look harder they see it is not all that bad. It's a way to express yourself and show off everything you have learned in and out of school in the last 12 or 13 years.
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2 comments:
umm I thought I already left a comment, but I guess it didn't go through. I like your blog, and I think you're a great writer. How many articles do they have you writing? And, if you want my opinion, senior project stink. Why can't they just let you graduate for goodness sakes?
Nate, nice article and nice blog. Here's some feedback on your writing.
First, I'm impressed with your vocabulary and word choice. There are several point in the article where you've chosen just the right language to express an idea. You also do a very good job of forming your paragraphs, splitting them at the right spots.
The chief thing I would suggest you work on has to do with adding more variety and specificity to your language; the word "many," for example, is pretty vague and could be replaced by phrases like "A variety of" and "several." There's also some thorough editing, espeically with punctutation. But this is generally pretty mild stuff. Overall, this is a shade better than much of what I see from my students...
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