How to Implement a Powerful High School Senior Project Experience

Observing high school senior project experiences and their outcomes has been one of the highlights of my career as an educator. The benefits of high school senior project experiences are out of this world.

I have witnessed and been a part of implementing a variety of senior project styles, so through a lot of trial and error, have developed a comprehensive senior experience that incorporates the best parts of each of those senior project varieties.

Last week I went over ideas for senior project experiences and what the specific components are and entail, so this post will not go into detail about each project or piece of the experience. 

This blog post is a how-to-guide that goes over my senior experience implementation process; how I put those senior project ideas together to coordinate and manage a comprehensive college career ready senior experience that prepares and excites students for life after high school. 

Before reading on, I highly recommend grabbing my free senior experience implementation spreadsheet that offers a system for managing the senior experience that I describe in this post.

The spreadsheet is already formatted so that you do not have to spend your own time doing so, and it follows the steps included in my senior experience resource. 

Grab Your Free Copy Now

It's important to note that implementation of my senior experience resource will vary widely among you. You might be working with one homeschooled senior, while someone else reading this is working with a senior advisory of 30+ students. One of you might have an hour a day for the entire year to work on senior projects, while another is on a block schedule.

That is another important benefit of having the senior experience implementation spreadsheet mentioned above. It is editable, so you can modify it to fit your needs.

How to Implement High School Senior Project Experiences

Step 1: Introduce the Senior Experience

I gather my seniors the first week of school to introduce the experience. Remember, this is a long-term adventure, so making students aware and getting them excited about the experience early on is important.

My introduction often includes:
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• A rundown of the experience as whole
• A summary of the different components involved 
• The distribution of a syllabus or Google Calendar that includes deadlines and important check points. Consider creating a calendar using the checkpoints included on the implementation spreadsheet mentioned above as your guide.
• In the past I have shown students examples of senior projects to inspire them and get them thinking. If you have never implemented a senior experience before and do not have examples to draw from, please reach out! I can share some examples. 

Step 2: Develop Personal Learning Plans

This senior experience is very personal, meaning each student will go on their own journey. They will follow their own interests and develop goals that are unique to them. Therefore, you need to personalize learning.

My senior experience includes a senior-specific personal learning plan. Developing their personal learning plans will be the first action taken in the senior experience process after the project introduction.

You might dive into this immediately after the intro, or wait a week or so. It depends on your schedule. But the personal learning plan should be filled out before moving onto the other senior experience components such as the career exploration project-based learning experience.

These are the steps I take:

• Distribute a copy of the digital Google Slides senior-year personal learning plan via Google Classroom to each student.
• Set aside several hours for students to work on their personal learning plans. The first several slides are dedicated to personal awareness where students identify their interests, future aspirations, personal strengths and challenges, write college and career goals, etc. 
• As students work on their PLP's, I walk the room answering questions, checking in, helping them write their goals, etc.
• Eventually, students will arrive at a slide that asks them to write in their senior experience plan for the year. I meet with students one-on-one to help them write their senior experience plan.
• The senior experience plan slide is a work in progress. Their plans and goals will evolve as they work through the experience. Throughout the course of the session, then, I schedule in PLP meetings with each student to review their senior experience plans, modify their goals, and adjust the experience moving forward. I try to meet with them one-on-one every couple of weeks, but once per quarter at a minimum.

Step 3: Introducing 21st-Century Skills

In my personal opinion, 21st-century skills are just as essential as hard skills or content knowledge. Yes, to be a nurse you need to have a clear understanding of human anatomy, but you also need to be able to work well with others, communicate effectively with patients, problem-solve, and critically think.

So an important piece of my senior experience is building 21st-century skills. Your seniors will build these skills through authentic learning experiences and then reflect on and showcase those skill-building experiences using a 21st-century skills portfolio/journal.

The senior experience resource includes this 21st-century skill-building portfolio. I distribute this portfolio around the same time as the personal learning plan because building this portfolio is a long-term experience. Students build it over the course of the session. 

How I implement my 21st-century skills portfolio:

• Distribute copies of the portfolio to students at the beginning of the senior experience, around or soon after they start writing their PLP's.
• This 21st-century skill-building portfolio includes planning templates. So the first task is for students to identify skills they would like to build, ideally those that are relevant to their career interests, and develop a plan to build those skills.  Students will build these skills through their career exploration project, their community action project, resume building experiences, and more. 
• After they have identified skills to improve, they will write a plan (plans included in the portfolio) for building those skills over the course of the session.
• I set aside one day per week for students to write skill-building journal entires (included in the portfolio). You may not find it necessary to work on this once per week. How often they work on the portfolio depends on your population and your schedule. The point is to have a designated number of skill-building entries by the end of the year or session. 

Step 4: Career Exploration

Once students have identified their interests, strengths, challenges, goals, etc. using their personal learning plan resource, they can begin their career exploration experience. I do this through self-directed project-based learning, and my senior experience resource includes the templates for this PBL project.

You can expect this project-based learning experience to take anywhere from 1-2 weeks. 

This is my process:

• Students go through the career discussion questions and brainstorming activities included in the resource to identify careers of interest.
• Each student chooses one career option to examine and explore further using the tools provided in the PBL resource.
• Students research the career using the research questions provided and connect with experts in the chosen field to interview and/or shadow.
• Each student demonstrates learning and showcases their learning experiences by creating an innovative final product of their choosing.
• Students share their final products and new information with each other and an authentic audience.

This project will help students identify suitable careers to work toward. They may determine from this experience that the career they chose to explore is not for them. That is the one of the most important reasons for doing this project at all. 

​If you have a student that is not interested in the career they chose to study for this project, they can try again as many times as they would like. The idea is to get students working with professionals in their career of interest to determine if that career is a good fit.

Step 5: Senior Community Action Project

The most powerful and important part of my students' senior experience in my opinion is the career-based community action project. A community action project is a self-directed project-based learning experience with a service-learning twist; the perfect resume builder for high school students. 

This experience helps students build a variety of 21st-century skills and provides an impressive volunteer experience to add to their resumes and/or career portfolios. 

These projects take anywhere from 6-12 weeks. They are deep learning experiences that involve sustained inquiry. So we dive into this project right after students have completed their career exploration projects. 

This is my facilitation process:

• Introduce the project
• How you distribute the resource is up to you. I distribute sections at a time rather than give them the entire project at once. For example, the first part of the process is identifying community issues that need attention or action. So I would distribute that brainstorming activity first.
  
• Once students have identified a community issue of focus, they will study that issue using the research templates included in the resource.
• Next I would give the students the exploring solutions template.
• Once they have identified solutions, they will develop an action plan using the template included. 
• Students then begin working on their projects. I give them time each day to work on their projects at their own pace. 
• Throughout the process I incorporate a variety of checkins and feedback opportunities in order to keep my students moving along and making progress, as well as to identify the personal needs of each student. For example, every Monday my students share their progress with the group and offer each other feedback. My students know that this happens Mondays, so they are prepared for it.

Step 6: Building Career Portfolios

All of the steps of the senior experience up to this point have led you and your students right here; to building a career portfolio that they can carry with them beyond high school. 

You can have students utilize this portfolio at different times and in different ways. Here are some options:

1. Introduce this portfolio at the beginning of the session and allow students to fill it in as they go. For example, they may add a shadowing experience from their career exploration project to the portfolio right when they complete it.
   
2. Leave this portfolio until the end and have students bring it out and fill it all in at the same time, once the other components of the senior experience are complete.

There is not one way to use the career portfolio. Do what works well for you and your students.

Step 7: Senior Presentations

Our students share their senior experiences at a senior project night at the end of the year. Students invite their friends, families, and community experts to see presentations of their senior experiences. You can make the event as formal or informal as you'd like, in-person or virtual, a small intimate group or the entire community.

Do what works for you and your students! That has become a theme throughout this post, and many of my posts for that matter! 

Implementing and facilitating senior experiences is not easy to nail down in a blog post because the experiences will vary between teachers and students. I wish I could be in each of your classrooms and homeschools walking you along. But trust me when I say, you don't need that from me.

There will be some trial, and error, yes. But you and your students will get it in time, especially with the senior experience templates and implementation spreadsheet to help guide you through the process.

You will figure out what works well for you and your students, and you won't regret trying. Senior projects are incredible. You got this! 

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