Concordia High School
Concordia, Kansas

Teacher: Timothy Berger

 

 

Rite of Passage

By Emily Hubert
Grade 12

 

 

A rite of passage is an event or project that shows the world that a teenager is ready for the responsibilities of being an adult and for the adult world.  A senior project would do this by demonstrating that the teenager is ready to be a responsible citizen.  “The senior project is designed as a means of motivating seniors and as a way of providing authentic assessment of students’ skills” (Senior Project).  The student would have to demonstrate to the adult world that they can use the knowledge they have learned in twelve years of schooling to benefit the community.  The senior project would help the student gain the respect of the adult world along with giving the student the confidence and self-esteem needed to survive in the adult world. 

           

Many other schools already have senior project requirements for graduation.  These schools give a list of reasons as to why a senior project benefits students.  They include “demonstrating mastery of learning outcomes, to explore a topic of personal interest, and to serve as role models for younger students.”  Other reasons for a senior project include “to allow students to make choices of their own, to showcase skills and accomplishments to the public, to explore a career, and to prepare students for the rigors of post-high school work

 

Every high school senior would be required to complete a senior project during his or her senior year in order to graduate from high school.  The project must meet certain guidelines.  First, the project must benefit the community in some way.  The student must give of their time and talents in some way to help the community.  Next, the project should help the student be more successful in the adult world.  For example the project could help the student develop his or her communication skills.  Lastly, the project should show that the student can work with an adult.  The student would be graded on three things.  First, the student would be required to keep a journal of his or her activities and turn in this journal to the grading panel, a panel of faculty and administration.  Next, the student must write a 1,000 word essay over his senior project.  This would include the plan of action, a resource list, and a reflection.  The reflection should include what the student learned, how the project will help him in the future, and why it was a good rite of passage.  Lastly, the student would be required to give an oral.  This could be an interview or an oral presentation given to the grading panel.

           

An example of a senior project could be to train a dog and give it to CARES.  This would be a rite of passage because it would help the student gain self-confidence and help the student learn more about and interact with the adult world.  The student would have to write letters, ask for help from the adult community, and have a lot of patience.  The student’s goal would be to train a dog to be a Seeing Eye dog and donate the dog to CARES, an organization that would give the dog to a blind person.  Other goals would be to help the student relate and work with the adult world and gain self-esteem and patience needed to survive in the world.  This project would also help the student learn to manage time.  The student would also use his or her time and talents to show the adult world that teenagers can be positive.  The project would help the student improve his or her communication skills because he or she would have to write letters and communicate with adults to reach the goal. 

           

This project will impact others because the adult community will see that teenagers can do good.  Training a Seeing Eye dog is problem solving because the student would need to find a dog to be donated and find a mentor.  Seeing Eye dogs are needed by the blind people in the community to get around safely and many people can’t afford one.  This project will teach the student to take pride in his or her work.  Lastly training a Seeing Eye dog would teach the student that waiting for gratification is worth it.

 

To accomplish the goal of training a dog for CARES the student would first have to find a breeder willing to donate a dog.  This would take writing letters and talking to people until a dog is found.  Next, the student would have to find a mentor to help him know how to train a Seeing Eye dog.  An example of a good mentor is Danny McRenolds because he has trained many dogs for CARES, but if he says no the student would have to again write many letters and talk to many people until he finds a person willing to be a mentor.  Next, the student would have to manage time.  The student would have to know when the dog needs to be trained by and plan training sessions accordingly. 

 

The student would immediately have to start a journal that must be handed in to the grading panel.  The journal would need to include what was accomplished in each training session, meetings with the mentor, things learned, and problems overcome.  The student would have to write the essay and would include the plan of action, successes and failures, how the project influenced the student, why it was a good rite of passage, and an evaluation of the final project.  The oral presentation would be presenting the dog to a handicapped person and showing how the dog works with the person.

A senior project is a good rite of passage because it teaches the student many important lessons and will help the student be successful in the adult world.  Because students can choose their own project and help the community, it gives them a great sense of self worth, and in the world today self worth is very important.

 

Works Cited 

Senior Project Description. El Monte High School. Online. Internet. 12 Nov.1999.

            Available Internet: http://www.emhs.emuhsd.k.12.ca.us/EMHS/SENIOR

/WEBPAGE/SP%20DESCRIPTION.

 

Why Has NHS Created A Senior Project?  Nogales High School. Online. Internet. 12     

Nov. 1999. Available Internet: http://nusd.k12.az.us/nhs/seniorprojest/why.SP.html.

 

 

Questions

 

 

1.  What dose Margaret Mead say at the start of her 1961 Preface to Coming Of Age In Samoa that is reminiscent of a current Army recruiting commercial?

           

She says that young people “in the United States were becoming less then they might be.”  A current Army recruiting commercial is “Be all you can be.”  Mead doesn’t think teenagers today are trying to be all they can be.

 

2.  Which of the following issues of the 1920’s are no longer issues today?

The importance of the language spoken in the home.

Familial pressures on children

Misconceptions about race and color

The effects of artificially separating children from a knowledge of birth, love and death

 

1. The importance of the language spoken in the home.

 

3.  Do you agree with Margaret Mead that “culture is man-made and that man is free to design it closer to the desires of his own heart”?  What definition of “culture” do you find in your dictionary?

           

I don’t agree with Mead’s quote about culture.  Culture is made by human nature and instinct.  My definition of culture is that it is made through time by thousands of people in a group.  Through that group they derive their way of living or culture.

 

4.  In her writings Margaret Mead was advocating:

a return to primitive ways

greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process

an integration of the primitive and civilized

none of the above

 

2. greater knowledge and control over the civilizing process

 

5.  Comment on Susan’s speech (page 60 A Tribe Apart).  Do you and your peers really want adults to recognize what is going on and to enforce “boundaries and structure”?

           

All children want support from an adult figure.  You can see this through broken families.  When a child loses an adult figure in their life, they lose some of their self-worth and have troubling learning and growing.  Children need boundaries and structure to know their limits.  Without those limits they would make their own.  When they make their own limits it’s usually pretty bad.

 

 

6.  Write three things that you “absolutely, positively know, saw or experienced concerning drugs and alcohol among” students at your school.

           

Parties in Concordia get busted by the cops and far to often alcohol or drugs are found.  I know for sure students drink and do drugs at parties.  Often students gather at old, abandoned farmhouses and drink.  Parties in town have been busted and drugs were found.  One day at work a man in his twenties, without even knowing me, came through  the drive through and asked me if I wanted to go to a party.  He said if I came he would supply the pot.

 

7.  Do you have a solution for the “plight of the black teenager”?  (page 88 A Tribe Apart)

           

No, there is no solution to change a person’s racist attitudes.  It’s too late to try to teach a forty year old store owner that not all blacks steal.  The only solution to this is that the black kids are going to have to deal with it for now.  We need to stop racist behavior in children so in the future there will be less racist people.

 

8.  Would it be a relief of all you had to do was “go to class and learn”?  Would you be happy if you were home-schooled or attending a single-sex private school where academics were presented in an exciting way and learning was admired even by peers?

           

I like to be around my peers so I wouldn’t like to be home schooled.  I wouldn’t like to attend a single-sex private school because I believe you can learn a lot from the opposite sex.  I believe if you want to learn in a public school you can.  The only thing that keeps you from learning is yourself.

 

9.  Comment on the line from Pete Seeger: “Schools are like prisons because they don’t teach you how to live.” and Jonathan’s comment “People in school are dulled by the remoteness to the real world.”  Would more classes incorporating community-based learning be helpful? (incorporating activities with relevance to actual life situations)

           

I think school should incorporate community-based learning in our schools because students need to be ready for the real world.  Schools should prepare students for the rest of their lives.  They can do this by teaching students how to handle real life situations.

 

10.  Comment on the “bottom line” (page 364 A Tribe Apart)

           

The article on the “bottom line” is very true and is going on today.  Children will not listen to adults if they don’t have a good relationship with them.  The more respect and time an adult gives a child, the more a child will be willing to listen and obey the adult.