This year’s Senior Project is nearing the end! Next Friday marks the end of Senior Project 2014. By far, this has been the most successful project in my eight years as principal because, instead of encouraging internships for each member of the senior project, we refocused the project to answer the following question:
You have seven weeks to pursue your passion. What will you do?
Through many meetings with the Senior Project Committee last spring and this fall, we were able to determine that “…senior project is, at heart, a passion project. Each senior project should be rooted in that senior’s passions, whether they be academic, personal, creative, or otherwise.”
Senior project takes the values and academics of LREI and allows students to explore these areas in the real world. There are three major components: experiential (an internship or an independent project); written (this can take many forms; all students will start with a detailed proposal and end with a written reflection); and intellectual/inquiry-based (including connection to the outside world, self-led learning in an area of passion, and demonstration of that connection and learning).
Every Senior Project this year includes the following four aspects:
1. Experiential Learning
Experiential learning can take many forms. One form, which has often been a part of the Senior Project, is the internship or apprenticeship, but experiential learning allows for almost any experience. The most powerful Senior Projects generally have no internship, although they include an apprenticeship or practical work experience.
2. Intellectual Engagement
Intellectual engagement is demonstrated by an awareness of the field or topic each senior is exploring, participation in the conversations relevant to the field, wide consumption of media related to the field, and the ability to discuss, write about, and communicate within the field.
3. Interdisciplinary Thinking
People outside of progressive education settings often think of classes as specific, separate things, but information gathering and thinking doesn’t stop at a classroom door. Senior projects demonstrate an understanding of multiple disciplines, ranging across content areas and skills. The ability to articulate how each intended project pulls together multiple aspects of progressive education thus far is key.
4. Documentation & Demonstration
All projects are documented. Documentation must be sharable, transparent, and continuous, and in most cases will have a reflective element as well as a product element. Documentation of the process provides a basis for the demonstration.
While the Senior Project class, which met this winter, helped craft each passion project, helping to bring dream projects to life, Senior Project culminates in Senior Project Presentation Evening, when all seniors present for family, faculty, and students. On this special evening, coming up in a few weeks, we hope that the answers to the following questions for each senior become clear to our audience.
What has been your most meaningful academic experience?
What has been your most meaningful extracurricular experience?
What was left to explore for you?