Wednesday early dismissal and we meet with our staff. It’s the end of the year. Everyone is exhausted. This is the activity I cooked up, which is aimed at the frustrations that studentshumans feel as they come to the end of a project. After describing a project successfully completed, I want folks to write about the dumb things they said and did as they finished as well as the supports they leaned on as they concluded. Then we’ll describe some of the crazy things students we’ve seen lately, and, most importantly, the ways we can support our students as we finish the year (and the big projects) together. There’s also a “let it go” box for the stuff the battles that simply can’t be fought at the end of the year.

I think about various projects where I’ve struggled mightily at the end; the night before I defended my dissertation I declared that I had nothing, that it was all shit. I had all sorts of supports to get things done. Many of my students have never had an emotion they can’t handle inappropriately. For better or worse, we are modeling and providing the support systems one needs to finish strong.

In the end of the year fadeaway (something I can’t stand and resolve to get in front of every year) we’re continuing to sharpen up our graduation plans. Today we wrote about the biggest obstacles we see for ourselves and our group. Then we passed papers and proposed solutions.

As always, I wrote about how most humans are wired with a “I’ll turn it on when I need to switch”, which is rarely as easy as it seems.

Some clusters of themes:

1. I won’t really have any obstacles if I work hard.
2. My obstacles are mostly about paperwork or bureaucracy and if I just handle those, I’ll be fine.
3. I need to worry about my grades. For some kids, this emerged from an understanding of the quality of their work; for others, it was about grades as if they had nothing to do with the work.

This is an excerpt from a tenth grader. This is a first draft — some polishing still needed — but it demonstrates the breadth and depth of project work occurring over a year.

For the “Statement of Readiness” our assignment is to explain our strengths, interests, and success in setting and achieving goals here at The Workshop School. So far in the tenth grade we did a lot of project such as the Digital U project (when we had to make a “wevideo” about a story in our lives. It could be any story you want.), Cardboard Boat project (when the class got put into groups our three (and it was me, Qadir and Kairi) and our assignment was to make a boat out of cardboard and tape.), Solar Panel project (when we had to make a working solar panel. We were given a rechargeable battery and a solar panel and we had to make it be able to charge a cell phone.), Open Mic Night project (we were originally supposed to make a “Poetry Slam” but we added dancing, singing, rapping and also poetry. We were going to make a play but we didn’t want to do the same thing over again. Our assignment was to make an “Open Mic Night” because we thought it would be a great idea.), Kid Science Kit project (where we had to teach children about about a different science topic every week. For example on the first week we each had a planet that we had to teach them. I had Saturn.), Oral History project (where we had to first find two interviewees and interview them on what our two topics were about. It didn’t matter what the topic was about. Mine was on the history of sports. After we were done with that we then had to make three 500 word essays on what we interviewed our interviewees about.), Radio Story project (when in we were in english class we then pick a topic that was a world problem. So I chose to do raising minimum wage. We had to record at least four people and make that into a radio story.) and the Math Trebuchet project (where we had to make a trebuchet in math class.).

Continuing our work on the graduation plan, we circled today around the question of the relationship between project work and their transcripts. Somewhat thrillingly, given my unease about student connection between the quality of their work and their grades, nearly ever student talked about the connection between their work and their grades. Elated, I probably didn’t process as much as I could have…

“If my project work wasn’t good, then it would show on my transcript.” JR

“The projects I do connect to my transcript because it show my academic grades.” HG

“If I do well on project work, it will reflect well on my transcript.” TC

“The project work is important to my future plans. Those are important because projects we do here are actually helping the real world.” TJC

“The way our school is set up makes it difficult to focus on one grade. Grades that I get on my projects reflect on my transcript.” JG

Talking graduation plan and moving towards some of the more nuts and bolts type of stuff. While we don’t emphasize traditional academic subjects — much of the work here is interdisciplinary — I wanted to ask if they retained some of the traditional notions of subjects and how they might serve them in the future.

Picture of three bits of work coming here. The SDP has blocked flickr again. Sigh.