At Jackson High School’s graduation ceremony on Thursday, the best lesson we can learn won’t come from any speaker — it will come from the roughly 270 students who successfully completed their senior projects. The fact that 51 of their peers won’t be with them illustrates this lesson: Students should pick a senior project topic that will captivate their interests for an entire year.
Fifty-one students who completed all the necessary criteria for a diploma didn’t hear this advice, and failed to jump the last hurdle. These students failed the Everett School District’s version of the senior project, the "culminating exhibition," and they have been called lazy, lethargic and apathetic for doing so. It’s true that these students dropped the ball when it came to meeting deadlines or requirements, but this episode can be the context for more than fingerpointing and pinning blame.
The concept of a senior project is centered around students channeling their own interests into their education, creating a framework for involved, creative work. The point of the project is to give students complete freedom of choice when choosing a topic in order to ensure that students stay passionate and interested with their project in the long term and feel comfortable enough with their topic to more easily meet the strict deadlines.
These 51 Jackson students appear to have done exactly the opposite, choosing a topic that didn’t captivate them over the course of a year. Students learn better when they are involved and interested in the material they are learning. When they are bored or disinterested, their learning suffers.
The freedom of choice within the senior project is intended to circumvent this. It’s a way to ensure educational accountability without sacrificing individualism. In an academic world that has become more focused on standards and accountability, the senior project stands as a refuge for individual academic experimentation. Students should take advantage of this opportunity and enjoy the benefits.
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