Photos courtesy of New Albany Plain Local Schools
Senioritis. The notorious “disease” that affects students all over the U.S. when they enter their senior year of high school. Symptoms include lack of motivation, laziness and an incredibly strong urge to just drop everything and move on to the next stage of their life.
However, for New Albany High School seniors, throwing in the towel before graduation day is just not an option.
The NAHS senior seminar project began during the 1993-1994 school year. The course provides students with an opportunity to pursue a large project on a topic or field of interest.“While changes to the curriculum have occurred throughout the years, the foundation of the project is the same,” says NAHS Principal Ken Kraemer. “It still serves as a capstone project, but has grown to be much more than just a requirement for graduation.”
After picking a topic, students get it approved by a teacher. Students are then required to find a mentor within the New Albany community, document a total of 100 hours of work, write a professional abstract and, finally, present their project at the end of the year in the school auditorium.
But completing these projects wouldn’t be possible without the help of the group of teachers dubbed the senior team.
“This couldn’t be successful without the support of our teachers, specifically our senior team,” says Kraemer. “Teachers from all disciplines work together to make this program a success year after year. It’s an amazing thing.”
Paving a Path
The senior team is an ever-evolving group that supports all senior students, whether that’s ordering caps and gowns, hosting festive quarterly diners, providing apprenticeships programs and U.S. Military information, or, of course, helping them with their senior seminar course.
Lori Cheney, the senior team leader, intervention specialist and the department chair for special education, and Karen Morlan, senior seminar coordinator department chair for mathematics, are just two of ten teachers on the senior team.
“I enjoy working with seniors because they are on the cusp of adulthood, and we can have real conversations and friendships,” says Cheney. “The students want to learn ‘to adult,’ and senior seminar allows them to explore their world outside of NAHS.”
“The growth that I have seen in my students from the beginning to end of the senior seminar course is inspiring and is unique from any other course I have taught in the past twenty-six years,” Morlan says.
Cheney joined the senior team in 1996 to make sure students with disabilities were given the accommodations needed to showcase their talents and strengths. Morlan joined the team about a decade ago because of her interest in the innovative, creativity and interdisciplinary learning that seniors experience. The whole senior team is a force to reckon with, and the students prove the importance of this team.
Senior Evan Waite helped develop hardware and software for virtual reality products as part of an internship at Magnopus in Los Angeles. Senior Ellie Zhang completed an engineering internship at The Ohio State University, and senior Evan Bernard participated in a program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and worked on biomedical research with a cardiologist. He was granted future research opportunities for summer 2020; all before his freshman year of college.
The group knows that the senior team is unique and many high schools do not have this resource. Morlan, Cheney and their colleagues never take it for granted though, but do realize that the team is vital to the success of its students.
“Without the senior team, the senior seminar course would cease to exist,” says Morlan. “Seniors know they can talk to their senior seminar advisor about any matter related to college applications, service learning, graduation requirements and future plans.”
“You have to really love seniors in order to work with them in May,” Cheney says jokingly, “so having a sense of humor, and a sense of teamwork is critical to being on the team. We rely on each other's insight, expertise and dedication to help all students succeed.”
Juggling lessons plans, extracurricular activities and seniors can be overwhelming, but Morlan, Cheney and the team love every moment of guiding and inspiring the next generation.
“I think every teacher should have the opportunity to teach senior seminar in order to enrich their professional lives and experience working closely with other amazing teachers in our building,” Morlan says.
“We do all we can to… keep the team together and to include new people who share our philosophy about wanting to be supports and guides for the seniors,” Cheney adds.
At the end of the day though, it’s all about the helping the students succeed.
“The whole point of the project is to create collaborative alliances between the school, community and businesses to help students,” Morlan says. “With the support of the school and the wider community, we believe students become articulate critical thinkers, thoughtfully focused citizens, academically-competitive learners and reflective problem solvers."
Emily Real is a contributing writer and Lydia Freudenberg is an editor. Feedback welcome at lfreudenberg@cityscenemediagroup.com.
