Senior Projects
The 2010 Ashland High School graduating class has successfully completed their much-dreaded senior projects. These projects are an accumulation of a student’s high school career and incorporate four years of high school knowledge. Interesting projects include, dental screenings, shadowing doctors, building cars, and publishing books. Senior projects usually include some type of personal growth or community service. “There is a wide gamut of projects and the stuff people do is surprising,” Mr. Johnson, the Ashland High School senior project coordinator and educational assistant, said.
Senior projects require at least 20 hours of work and documentation. For upcoming seniors, below are the steps to completing a senior project:
1. Brainstorm what you would like to do
2. Write your project proposal
3. Contact a mentor
4. Have your parents sign the parent permission slip
5. If working with another student fill out the co-presentation form
6. Bring your proposal, mentor information, parent permission slip, and co-presentation form, if needed, to Mr. Johnson or the counselors office to be approved
7. Do project and journal/ log this experience
8. Get a mentor evaluation after you complete your project
9. Plan your presentation
10. Turn in all your work to Mr. Johnson or your Govenomics teacher (sometime in April)
11. Sign up for a room to present
12. Give your presentation
While this may seem like a lot, keep in mind that you cannot start your senior project until it has been approved. If you do start before it is approved you may get everything done to find out that your project doesn’t fit the requirements. It is recommended that students do their projects the summer before their senior year because “it allows students to have their best focus,” Johnson said. In order to start your project this summer, step six above needs to be done by June 10, 2010. For more information on senior projects, students can go to the Ashland High School website and click on the senior project tab on the left.
Finishing senior projects is a dubious amount of work so it is important for students to create goals for completing each part of the project to be completed. “Senioritis and not staying in contact with a mentor are the biggest reasons for seniors not getting their projects done in time,” Johnson said.
After all this work, it is important that you pass your senior project. A specific rubric is used to grade the presentations. Panelists from the community volunteer their time to grade projects. Each year there is a bucket full of recurring panelists, but this year the school opened up slots to the community. Ashland High School is “trying to refresh the pool of panelists,” Johnson said. Besides panelists grading presentations, other high school students in a room, which is usually four to six, also grade presentations. To help your chances at passing, it is “beneficial to have a visual aid for a multifaceted presentation,” Johnson said. These evaluations, adult and student, are then put into a students CIM folder. If a student doesn’t pass their senior project, he or she receives an Oregon standard diploma instead of an AHS diploma, which has greater requirements and looks better on a resume. Besides not receiving an AHS diploma non-passing students are exempt from walking at graduation. The consequences of not passing your senior project are not pretty, so students better start planning for success early.
Most schools have some sort of senior project, but they tend to all be formatted differently. “Senior projects incorporate skills learned throughout a student’s high school career,” Johnson said. All schools include some type of high school reflection done by students, but at AHS the intent of senior projects is to “learn about you as a student and what you did for your project,” Johnson said. Senior projects give a students’ perspective of high school and require a lot of work. So, soon-to-be seniors should start cracking down, now.
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