Crossing The Stage: Redesigning Senior Year

Crossing the Stage: Redesigning Senior Year

"Study shows senior year is wasted." "Senioritis impacts college students, Stanford report says." "Senior slump a nationwide problem." These are among recent headlines attesting to the apathy, absenteeism, and lost opportunity that are widespread among high school seniors-so much so that a National Commission was founded in 2000 to investigate. Nancy Faust Sizer was a prominent member and knows from her twenty-five years of teaching how the quality of the senior year has declined, especially its purpose. She decided to interview a variety of seniors from diverse schools across the country to get their side of the story. Their observations form the core of this book. As it turns out, senior year is harder than most of us remember. Themes of dishonesty, irony, tradition, expectations, and disillusionment recur throughout these interviews. Yet Sizer sees this period as an opportunity-a time when seniors could devote all or part of their last year to a new kind of study, a serious investigation of a topic of personal interest that could shape short- and long-range habits and future plans. She also sees how schools could adapt seniors' programs to highlight variety and promote a sense of purpose and growth. Using her own and her colleagues' work as a basis, she offers plentiful suggestions for changes both large and small, all of which are adjustable to the reform climate in different schools. We can't abdicate senior year; we need to redesign it. We need new, more authentic, more impressive academic hurdles and rituals. And we need to bring about a more graceful transition between high school and what follows. Sizer shows how. About the AuthorNancy Faust Sizer is a career teacher who has worked in public and private high schools, including Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Phillips Academy, and the Wheeler School. With her husband, Theodore R. Sizer, she has taught at Brown University and currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Both Nancy and Ted recently served as Acting Co-Principals at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School where Nancy also was Transition Counselor, helping to lead its first graduating class through the transition to postsecondary education. The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract (Beacon Press, 1999) is her most recent book, written with her husband Ted.