What is the Senior Project?
The Senior Project is designed to be the culmination of each student’s academic experience at the Parker School. It is a genuine opportunity for Seniors to merge their various interests, passions, and curiosities with their academic lives at school. Similarly, the project is a vehicle for seniors to demonstrate autonomy, complexity, and awareness .The Six Tenets of the Senior Project:
The
Essential Question: Because
a successful and meaningful Senior Project necessarily involves genuine
inquiry around a topic of the student’s choosing, each senior will focus their
work around a complex, interesting, and sustainable essential question.
Benefit to
the Larger Community: Because we are all members of a broader community,
each Senior Project must incorporate some aspect of “giving back” to others.
In this regard, each senior’s work, time, and energy will result in a lasting
contribution that is bigger than the project itself.
Multi-Faceted Approach:
Because of the complex nature of each Senior Project, seniors must incorporate
a variety of modes of thinking in the planning, implementation, and exhibiting
of their projects.
Research Component: No Senior Project will be successful without a
substantial element of new learning. This learning can take place in many
ways, one of which must be research. Research must be both experiential
(interviews, internships, surveys, etc.) and text-based (library, internet,
etc.), although the degree to which each form is emphasized will vary from
student to student.
Collaboration: One of the most important skills in life is the ability to
work with and learn from other people. Each Senior Project must incorporate
some element of collaboration with individuals outside the immediate Parker
community. In many cases, these “outsiders” will serve as secondary mentors
for the Senior Project.
Academic Rigor: Each Senior Project must be conceived in a way that challenges the student to think deeply and critically beyond what he/she already knows and is able to do. The topic must be big enough for the student to consider multiple perspectives but not so big that it will lead only to superficial understanding.
There are four assessed components of the project: the research, the process, the product, and the exhibition. Each of these components is described in detail in the pages that follow. Each component is assessed individually. Upon completion of the project, those assessments are combined for an overall course assessment of meets minimum requirements, satisfactory or exceptional.
The Senior Project Handbook (click here for web document)