Senior Talks

  By Project Resources

Download a copy of the complete guide here: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-senior-talk. Download an updated copy of the final guide to presentations here: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-final-guide. For a combined and collated copy of all materials, use this: https://tinyurl.com/senior-talks-full-serif.

More resource links are embedded below in this interstitial instructional post. Review all directions and requirements. Up-to-date information and feedback will be posted to Google Classroom.

Waking Them Up

Click to see the full image, courtesy of Cognitive Media, RSA Animate, and Ken Robinson.

An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak, when you are present in the current moment, when you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing, when you are fully alive. An anesthetic is when you shut your senses off and deaden yourself to what’s happening…

We are getting our children through education by anesthetizing them. And I think we should be doing the exact opposite. We shouldn’t be putting them to sleep. We should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves.

We started our year with Ken Robinson’s “Changing Education Paradigms” TED Talk, and we will end with your own senior talks — a chance for you to experience a bit of what Robinson describes in the excerpt above.

Part of the process has been your Humanities passion projects. These Pareto Projects have been weekly opportunities to design your own projects, and through them, you’ve had a chance to explore what you love. The senior talk is a chance to share that passion.

That said, the two projects — the Pareto Project and the BHS Senior Talk — are not necessarily connected. For many students, they will be; the passion projects have been (ostensibly) ongoing since September, and enough time and energy has gone into them to justify the connection. That was the intention: Your passion project leads into a presentation about that passion, which we tailor to the Senior Talk.

Regardless, the goal of project-based work like this is to share what you love, what you’ve created, and what it means to you. It gives you a chance to have the aesthetic experience Robinson describes.

In this post, we’ll talk about how the Senior Talk serves as a capstone for your final semester. We’ll go over the required artifacts and presentation schedule. Keep in mind that these projects, like every other second-semester project, can be modified and individualized.

Updated Resources

Essential Reading: As You Get Started
Choosing the Right Topic
Designing the Project
  • Final Presentation Guide: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-final-guide | Covers every possible final project format, including non-traditional ones. Includes necessary and new instruction on crafting the final presentation.
  • On Statements of Purpose: https://tinyurl.com/gf-statements-purpose | Based on student work submitted for previous projects.
  • Sign-Up Sheet — Presentation Time Slots: TBD | Required step. Wait for this to be formally assigned.

Senior Talks

BHS Senior Talks
What is your idea worth spreading?

The seven steps outlined below will take you from the start of this project to its conclusion. After the outline are sections listing each required artifact and explaining the final exam (when a final exam is required).

Note: All icons used with permission from the Noun Project. Details here.

Step #1 | Choosing a Topic

Option A: Pareto Projects | One intention of your Pareto Project was to generate a topic for the Senior Talk. This applies whether you maintained the same passion project for the entire year or rebooted it.

To connect your Pareto work to the Senior Talk, your best approach is to brainstorm in class. The connection may be obvious, or it may take some divergent thinking.

Option B: Self-Prescribed Book | Your self-prescribed book project is another option for the Senior Talk. The book project itself may even fit into the final presentation. Again, the best approach is to brainstorm in class about the connections between your book, your project, and the Senior Talk.

Option C: Research-Driven Essay | The research-driven essay may also lead directly into the Senior Talk. The research portion can serve a kind of double duty, since two of the seven steps outlined for the Senior Talk involve research. Like Options A and B, this is by design.

Option D: New Focus |If you like, you can develop a new Senior Talk topic. Start by reading this entire set of directions. Then bring your ideas to class for workshopping.

Step #2 | Initial Research and Development

In this step, you’re going to use the same methodology outlined for the research-driven essay to explore your topic. The goal, however, is to generate a statement of purpose, which is explained in Step #3. You will conduct further research in Step #4.

This is a step best done collaboratively and through individual, student-initiated conferences. You are shaping the crux or thesis of your Senior Talk.

Step #3 | Statement of Purpose

You can call this a thesis, too, which has Greek roots meaning “a setting down, a placing, an arranging; position, situation.” A thesis is the central staging or placement of a work.

This statement of purpose governs and organizes your entire Senior Talk, from your research through the final presentation. It is the problem you’re addressing, the question you’re answering, the resolution you’ve reached, etc. — and while it will change as you complete the project, it should begin strongly.

This is best determined, again, through in-class collaboration and one-on-one conferencing. Your use of feedback is essential. For more information and instructions, revisit this post:

Statements of Purpose

Step #4 | Further Research and Discussion

Use your statement of purpose to drive further research into the crux of your Senior Talk. You should continue to use the skills outlined for your research paper and the resources of the iLC, but you can also create new information in this step — through interviews, reflections, surveys, and so on.

You must collect and collate these. You are gathering the different data that will inform your Senior Talk, and you are beginning to decide which data will be in the final project itself.

Note that you will likely revise the statement of purpose from Step #3 as you complete more research, ask new questions, and begin shaping the project itself.

Step #5 | Designing the Talk and Writing the Script

For this step, you actually build the “talk” itself. Overall, this is probably the most time-intensive step, and you are encouraged to lean again on the “stuff of growth” — the collaborative energy and efforts of your peers. You should rehearse with them, invite critiques from them, and return the favor as much as possible.

The presentation will most likely be based on the structure and style of a TED Talk, which means you will most likely require these resources:

Your Senior Talk, if it emulates a TED Talk, should be 8–10 minutes long. TED Talks are just one kind of presentation, however. If you think you might benefit from more structure, consider an Ignite presentation:

These presentations use exactly 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. If your presentation uses this format, it will be exactly five minutes long.

Ignite is a much more performative structure, since it eliminates any extemporaneous elements. Use their site to find examples and guides.

There are other models for presentations, as well. Here are the keys:

  1. Your talk does not have to be filled solely with you speaking to the class. There can be multimedia elements, interactive elements, and much more.
  2. You must, however introduce, explain, and conclude the presentation.

You must get feedback and approval for your presentation as you move closer to that step. You may submit a verbatim script, but it might also be an outline or draft. It must be precise, however, and you must stick to what is approved when you give your final presentation.

You will also need to decide where and how to submit this showcase or presentation. The default option is our makerspace in Room 210, where we have access to an interactive TV screen, flexible seating, whiteboards, and more. You can also choose any space in the building available for presentations and showcases.

See the updated presentation guide for more information: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-final-guide.

Step #6 | Giving the Talk

Again, the “talk” may take several forms, and it may be formatted differently from a TED or Ignite presentation. As long as you have been given approval for your project’s final product, you will focus during this step on where, when, and how to present.

You will be required to submit this talk during Q4. The particulars will be determined as the shape of each student’s presentation or showcase becomes clear. We may, for instance, need to book spaces that are only available for limited times.

To book presentation times, you will be given a spreadsheet and editing access. A backup will be kept offline. Here is a sample of what that spreadsheet might look like, where you can see the statement of purpose is included:

We will discuss and experiment with other options, including filmed presentations, multimedia showcases, roundtable discussions, and more. The goal is for the shape of the final presentation to match the purpose of the work — for form to match function, in other words. See the updated presentation guide for more information: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-final-guide.

Step #7 | Reflection

After completing the project and sharing it, you must reflect on the process. This is a written response that must follow the philosophy of our universal writing work — that is, it should seek out interesting and surprising insights into your learning and the artifacts you’ve created.

To that end, this response should incorporate metacognitive elements. You can consider the rest of the reflection a kind of process analysis — a review of your process, an analysis of its efficacy, and above all else, an exploration of what you learned about how you learn. One of this course’s guiding philosophies should be in the front of your mind:.

We may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in Experience and Education: “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes… may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history… For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” In other words, the most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do.

~Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

The importance of your final reflection will be repeated many times, but you should know, in advance, that this reflective writing is the most important element of the entire project. It is an essential step; when there is a final exam, it is the final exam.

You can read more about reflection and metacognition through this instructional post. You will have time in class after you present or otherwise share your final project to focus on this work. Planning in advance will aid the process, and you may be given guided questions to help you further.

That’s It!

After you’ve gleaned some insight into what you learned from the process, you can continue to share your work in class and through social media in order to receive additional feedback. Your work, if done as authentically as possible, will have meaning for you long after your profile scores have been determined and your graduation has passed.

Required Artifacts

This list will be reposted and reprinted mas often as necessary.

Senior Talk Artifacts | Required Elements
  • Statement of Purpose | Workshopped in class and submitted online.
  • Script/Outline | Workshopped in class and attached to the appropriate Google Classroom assignment.
  • Presentation | The actual presentation.
    • TED: 8–10 min.
    • Ignite: 5 min.
    • Other: Student-dependent
  • Reflection | Due after the actual presentation.

Anything that can be submitted through the appropriate Google Classroom assignment should be submitted there. Within two days of presenting, you must submit everything. That includes the option elements below.

Senior Talk Artifacts | Optional Elements
  • Research Notes | Any notes you take online or offline can be attached as evidence of your process. You can also include interviews, survey data, and any other information you create.
  • Drafts | Any working drafts of your statement of purpose, script, reflection, etc, can be submitted as evidence of your process and progress.
  • Peer Feedback | Your collaborative work will be evaluated on a rolling basis as part of the GAP process, but you still benefit from submitted copies of any peer editing, rehearsal notes, and so on.
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