SENIOR ENGLISH: ADVICE FROM ALUMNI PART III: THE SENIOR PROJECT

Another question I asked the DHS alumni was “If you did a year end Senior Project in Senior English, how did that help prepare you for your post-high school experience? What thoughts do you have about the fourth quarter projects in Senior”  Here is a representative sample of their answers:

The thing I remember about Senior Projects is we were essentially given a blank slate. "Do some research, write a paper, and present it".  This was useful and relevant.

The Senior Project taught me a lot about analyzing different sources and synthesizing material and ideas. I think this piece is the most valuable part of the whole Senior English experience. I went to Chicago to look at the AIDS quilt (one of the most powerful experiences in for me in high school).

I believe I did my 4th quarter project on Fashion Design, and since I never looked in to doing fashion design again after that....it's hard to say. Maybe doing the project steered me clear making a bad choice but more so I think I tried to pick a fun topic rather than actually learn about something I might do. Then again, I think everyone goes into college thinking they want the "fun" major...mine turned out to be sociology and economics.

The senior English project helped me to prepare as well as execute a long term plan that I had laid out for myself.  I also started to learn how to be critical of what I was doing and then make adjustments as I needed to.

 For my Senior Project, I decided that I would think about cultural diversity in high schools. I attended and observed Maine East HS and Evanston HS, each for a day, and reflected upon the diversity. I still talk about that experience today. It was amazing and now, as a sociology student I understand that foreshadowing experience. I think that it was the first step in my formal sociological thinking. It was awesome! 

I wrote a research paper, I think.  It prepared me well enough, though I don't think I was doing anything unorthodox.  I wish I had.  Something less academic would have been wonderful, and I think independent work in itself is important.  I had friends who took a month-long internship/job in a field that would have no place in their future--sometimes for only that reason.  That's some of what I missed by continually hitting the books my senior year.

I hope that your students will just pick a topic that is meaningful to them and hopefully don't half-heartly approach it. If they don't know what they're passionate about, I hope
they utilize the project to find out.

It did not help me at all.  The end of senior year is one of the most stressful times for students.  I didn’t have enough time to complete it to my highest ability.

I did my senior project on a possible career choice I considered for a brief period of time after I did a service trip.  It helped me because I figured out that it wasn't the appropriate career for me.

My Senior Project was extremely beneficial. We were assigned to read a book of our choice and then "pitch" the book to a high school curriculum committee. I read Arthur Miller's All My Sons, which is perfect for me considering the venue I am pursuing next year. The whole project was very independent. It really helped me get a perspective on what college paper-writing will be like and that I need to shift my traditional work ethic a bit.

Any projects that involve original research (not just summarizing secondary sources) and longer papers (15-20 pages) would help in preparing for the university deluge!

Well, as I said, I loved my project. I got the chance to learn more about the administration of Spanish teaching and had a GREAT time. That obviously helped me in creating my general opinion for where I want to work as a teacher and for what grades, etc. As for my thoughts, I’d say just keep doing the Senior Project. Even though many don’t care and don’t put in effort or worse FAKE an effort, the projects DO help those that want to take their learning into their own hands and soar.

Students should research a field that they are planning to study in college to make the best use of their time.  I researched law, which allowed me to learn about different fields of law and clarify a lot of questions I had.

The research project was a total joke in my English class. The teacher did not require that much of us and let us pick whatever topic we wanted. There was a lot of flexibility, but I wish we would have been required to do more "serious" things that there was research about rather than "things we liked" (ie, different types of guitars). Finding the information and writing a research paper is much different in high school than college.

My college has integrated comprehensive exercises in our majors senior year which are similar to the senior project in some of the requirements and the timeline of the project. I am also now comfortable writing very long papers, like the cumulative paper of the senior project, and asking people outside my classes for help and expert advice in their fields.

My fourth quarter project for Senior English involved reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," and learning about the year 1968. Our group improvised and instigated a "real" protest to an unfair assignment in an attempt to capture the essence of the era.  It was an incredible experience. We involved the security guards.  We had students crying.  It was a big deal.  I don't know if you could really articulate what I took away from it, other than I recognized the infinite opportunities to explore the human condition in the classroom and through literature. 

I worked very hard on my year-end project, but my teacher didn't appreciate it very much, or didn't comprehend what I was attempting to do, so I don't have any good memories of that project at all.  However, the idea of a year-end project is good and I think the flexibility we were allowed in designing our topic and what we drew from ourselves was very liberating, and a good preparation for courses in college which have vaguer guidelines than high school students are used to.

Truthfully, I cannot remember exactly what my projects were towards the end of Senior English.  Regardless of what projects you do, don’t allow students to “take it easy.” While you want it to be interesting and engaging, the worst thing that students can do is slack off towards the end of high school. Inevitably, it will happen and there’s probably
nothing anyone can do to stop it.  The thing I noticed was that once getting to college, those who “took it easy” senior year struggled a lot.  Those who still maintained the effort that they had all throughout high school (slackers will always be slackers though) found the transition to be easy. 

It unfortunately didnt help me either way. However it was a nice way to end off high school and it was good for research practice.

My senior project was more fun than preparational. It was a culmination of everything we had done that year. It was a nice low-stress way to end high school though. I love what I made.

I am really proud of my Senior English project; it had forced me to go beyond researching a book, but I got the chance to go to a reading that Amy Tan had held in the Chicagoland area.  I was able to dictate what went into the paper, taking material from both literature and my own life.