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Seniors Get Their Chance To Shine

By: Article Brain Editor

Gavitt is one of six seniors who volunteered to do a senior project under an existing program called WISE (Wheeler Individualized Senior Experience). WISE has served this year as a trial run for the senior project program, which starting next year will become a mandatory graduation requirement at the school.

Several years ago Principal Stephen Bickford pitched the idea for a senior project requirement at Wheeler after learning of a similar requirement in the North Providence, R.I., school system.

“Around here, at least, the junior year's the toughest year, and senior year is often less productive,” Bickford said. “We wanted to make the senior year more challenging and more worthwhile. But we wanted to give seniors a more authentic way to apply learning.”

Bickford formed a volunteer committee comprised of teachers, who worked for two years to devise the requirement. The Board of Education approved the senior project requirement in March.

The new requirement won't incur additional expenses for the school district, Bickford said. While North Providence has a senior project coordinator on staff, Bickford said Wheeler is small enough that the teachers who have volunteered to serve as mentors will provide enough guidance.

The 65 students who make up the incoming senior class will be able to pick almost any topic they want for their project. Suggestions range from career-based projects, such as crime analysis, to simply topics that may interest students, such as automobile repair or dog training.

The idea is to have seniors apply and incorporate research, writing, technology and oral presentation skills that they have learned in school and will need in both college and in the real world.

The project requirements include writing a topic proposal, finding both in-school and community mentors, writing a research paper, compiling a portfolio of the year-long work, going out in the field, and giving an oral presentation at the end of the year.

“I think students should be outside the class as much as possible,” said business teacher Linda Farinha, who is the current WISE coordinator and a member of the senior project committee.

She said it was important for students to learn to make and build contacts outside of school, a vital skill they will need to succeed after school. And if a student chooses a career-oriented project, exposure to the selected career could help shed the glamour of the job and show them the reality of it, Farinha said.

English teacher Jessica Sullivan, who was also part of the senior project committee, said the project requirement was a more fitting “culminating senior exiting exam than a formal sit-down exam.”

“The main reason we're going with it is, it's an authentic assessment of students' interests,” Sullivan said. “All students ... can have a chance to be successful and prove what they know at the end of their high school career.”

Gavitt, meanwhile, is working to establish that “there is a point” to studying parapsychology. She said the subject fascinates her at both a philosophical and scientific level and moves beyond “things you'd associate with Halloween or something.”

Gavitt is putting together a portfolio of her research and will also be giving a presentation on her topic in late May. She said she enjoyed the control she had in guiding her own project work. While she has Sullivan as her school mentor, Gavitt has given herself deadlines, assigned herself homework and essentially served as her own teacher.

“Which I think is good for seniors, because before you go to college, you definitely have to learn time management on your own,” she said.

While Gavitt enjoyed the opportunity to pursue a personal interest in an academic setting, she lamented that the senior project is becoming mandated.

“Talking to the juniors who are going to have to do it next year, they don't seem enthused by it,” said Gavitt. “... I just think that the more requirements you give students, the more testing ... it just puts them in the mindset of, just, like, do what you have to do to get a good grade, rather than actually learning.”

But, she said, “If the students take it seriously, they really can get a lot out of it.”