Too Much to Do
June 17th, 2008So it’s Doc week again, which is something that I value and something I look forward to. In addition, three of my students are gatewaying onto the next phase, which adds to the work—though it’s a very good reason.
So I haven’t been keeping up with the blog. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been plenty going on.
For the first time in my memory, Project Graduation¹ was going to need to charge students in order to take part in the event. Fortunately, the article run in the Keene Sentinel generated enough interest and effort in the community that by graduation the funds were present.
I have to hand it to the Keene Sentinel as well the community. The people cared enough to donate money for the kids, and the Sentinel’s coverage of the issue generated the attention needed and contributed to the solution. I’m grateful to both—every kid deserves to go and be safe, and not just the ones with the spare cash to pay for it.
The same is true of everything else in education.
So kudos to my (former) editor, who not only graduated on Saturday, but much more importantly, passed her senior project presentation Tuesday night. She blew not only the panel away, but also her family (perhaps the one educational event that the high school allows parents to see) and from what I understand, she astounded her class as well.
Managing to excel in front of a group of teenagers is probably the toughest challenge humanity has managed to devise.
She passed her senior project panel with a perfect score², which I’m (obviously) pleased about. She worked hard for it—several hours of practice, and many, many more hours actually doing the work. It was obvious to a panel that included an administrator and a professional photographer—a graduate of the Hallmark Institute—that she knew her stuff.
She also got past me. I’m proud, and she should be as well—she worked hard, and among so many other students who choose to blow-off the senior project and do it at the last minute (or fake it) she didn’t—and she can walk away knowing she did it right, and she has something to stand on.
Speaking of the Keene Sentinel, I appreciate the articles they’ve been running on seniors in the various school districts. Allie Shaw was featured this past Saturday, and I was glad to see it—she’s overcome a great deal, and more importantly, managed to remain a decent human being. There are many who have suffered far less and become far worse.
Graduation is tough—I’ll miss my kids. Watching them walk is always an indictment of what we haven’t done for kids and an affirmation of the good…there are too many good kids who didn’t get recognized, and too many kids who needed more than we could give them.
I know that in September I’ll be missing them. The halls are always empty, filled by ghosts of people who used to stand in this corner, or who spent a year in that locker, or who would walk by that period. Monadnock is filled with ghosts.
But that’s okay. I’ll keep vague memories, the reminders of the past and the things that didn’t go quite right, and use them as spurs to better things. I’ll say the things those kids have said,³ just to remind me that everything done for a student today is really something done for an adult who will need it tomorrow.
Okay, enough of that. Photos! I have 167 high-res photos I plan to make available online as soon as I can figure out how to upload (and arrange to download) a 50MB zip file. But in the meantime, a prelude:
Speaking of graduation…props to Mrs. Susan Oerman, Mr. Gene White, and Mrs. Colline Dreyfuss, who were all present at graduation (and any other school board member who was present in the crowd). There is no doubt that there are many school board members who are working very hard to make sure that what happened to some of our seniors (not getting into first choice colleges due to the lack of accreditation—either real or imagined, there were a number of families and students who were quite angry this year) doesn’t happen again in the future.
The flip side, of course, is that there are those who aren’t helping at all—among them some of the selectmen in Sullivan, as well as the Monadnock Taxpayers Association, who are busy fighting the special election in superior court this past week.
It takes a great deal of hypocrisy to fight, lie, and snarl to get rid of early retirement, and then to oppose the contract which ends it. I can’t say I’m surprised.
Yesterday was the eighth graduation Gateway for MC2 this year, and we’re hoping to see one more on Friday. Fairly impressive to graduate 1/4 of the school in a single year.
1 Project Graduation is one of the better ideas to float around in the last few decades. Designed to make sure the kids stay off the roads—especially with the high rates of drugs and alcohol in the area—it’s an all-expense paid trip for graduation night. I’m sure it’s kept a lot of kids alive in the last decade or so, something I’m in favor of. ↺
2 I footnote this only because I have strong reservations about the senior project rubric and the senior project in general. For now, the rubric: There are only four categories (one of which is time; if they last any longer than 10 minutes, they get a perfect score) and the scale is only from 1–4. A student needs to score at least a 12 to pass—but from 1–4 is not a huge range, and even worse, there are no indicators. There’s nothing saying that, “a score of 3 means that the student will have done…” so it’s entirely up to the panel to decide what a 4 is and what a 3 is—it takes a lot of guts to put down a 1 or 2 knowing that the student may not graduate because of it. Combined with the fact that the student gets to pick both the mentor and the community member (who are going to be strongly biased in favor of the student) it’s amazing anyone fails at all—and only 1-2 do per year. It’s not a tough assessment, and not the culminating project that it’s meant to be. Compare the senior project with an MC2 gateway portfolio, and the difference is clear. The part I really like about the gateway rubric is that it’s progressive. The “Expert” category for a freshman student is only competent for a senior—they need to advance and improve every year. ↺
3 Including, but not limited to, “epic!” “cool beans!” “fuh shuh” “yargh!” “right” “woot!” “mel-lank-kolee” “When does this become fun?” and “So and so, your mouth is open and sound is coming from it. This is never good”. ↺
