Click to see the full image, courtesy of Cognitive Media, RSA Animate, and Ken Robinson.
Senior Talk 🠊 Final Project
We started our year with Ken Robinson’s “Changing Education Paradigms” TED Talk, with plans to end the year with your own senior talks — a chance to experience what Robinson describes in the following excerpt:
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.
During this period of distance learning, the spirit of our second-semester projects remains the same: to wake up the part of you that you’ll need next year, no matter the path you’ve chosen. The more authentic and personally meaningful the work is, the better.
In the wake of COVID-19, of course, we must make some changes. First, the formal presentation outlined in February is no longer required. It is still possible, and if you wish, you can produce and record a Senior Talk that is virtually identical to what you would have done.
The second change is that you can choose from a wide range of possible final projects. You will be given a week just to think divergently about what this final project can be.
In the same TED Talk quoted above, Robinson defines divergent thinking like this:
This is why you’ll be instructed to use as much of your other second-semester projects as possible as part of this Final Project. You are not required to start over. In fact, you are strongly encouraged to use whatever you can from the work you’ve already done to help you.
The third and final change is that you’ll be given the project steps by week, with dates for May and June of 2020 detailed for each part of the final project. Your project should be finished and submitted between May 25 and June 5. See the new calendar posted here: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4157.
The icons for each step are used with permission from the Noun Project. Details here.
Assessment & Grades
Please be sure you have read the following:
- April 14 Course Update: Senior Projects Redux
- April 16 District Notice: Grading Letter to Staff and Community
The April 14 update explains where we were at the end of Q3, how to navigate leveled instruction like these posts, and where to find information about every original second-semester project. On April 16, the district posted an update about the adoption of a Pass/Incomplete option for Q4.
All assessment and feedback will continue exactly as it always has in here, with the silver lining of not having to convert grade abatement profiles into a 100-point score. The profiles, skills, and traits are universal and universally useful, so we’ll stick with them:
- Profiles: tinyurl.com/grade-abatement-profiles
- Skills and traits: tinyurl.com/universal-skills-traits
Even the usual GAP protocol can be used without any changes. There will be regular Google Forms sent to students to collect evidence of their work, which will provide all the fuel for feedback we need. The daily requirements will be the same, as well:
- Check Google Classroom once a day.
- Check in and set a goal each day.
- Advocate for individual help and feedback as necessary.
Most importantly, the idea of individualizing these projects remains at the center of the process. It was that way in February, and it’s that way now. We’ll work together to do what is right by each of you.
Ask questions about the overall project below.