Senior Project Process:
The Senior Project requires students who have at least 30 credits to complete a 300+ hour independent study in order to graduate from Avalon School. A senior writes a formal proposal that is approved by a committee of two advisors, parent(s), a community expert and a junior student. Meant as a culmination of their experience at Avalon, seniors demonstrate “walk across the stage skills”: skills that prepare students for life after Avalon School. They demonstrate these skills by articulating goals they wish to achieve and thus the area in which they want to study, developing questions they wish to answer, finding resources, developing and sticking to a timeline to achieve their goals, and presenting their findings and products to their committee and the larger community in a 30-minute formal presentation at the end of the school year.
Many seniors use the senior project as a springboard to develop interests and skills they will go on to study at a post-secondary level. For example, one student designed and made a guitar he will use when he goes on to study at McNally Smith College of Music. Another student so impressed Franklin College Switzerland with her website on the Sensory Exploration of Peru that she landed herself a generous college scholarship. Students use the senior project to bridge their experience between high school and college. Due to the intensity of the senior project, seniors often complain that they do not get to experience the “senior slide.” While they lament that their friends from other schools “do nothing in their second semesters,” Avalon’s seniors acknowledge that they create a special class bond around the hard work they individually produce at the end of their Avalon careers. During their senior presentations, the Avalon community not only evaluates seniors’ individual performances but also celebrates these individual performances. Despite being an individual endeavor, the class recognizes their accomplishments as a whole community. Senior Ben Hoffman described it best in his commencement address on June 9, 2009 at Hamline’s Sundin Music Hall:
The Avalon senior project has been the biggest task I have ever even attempted. After investing so much of yourself in this kind of project, to see it completed makes you notice things about yourself. At least I did. Through the senior project, I’ve seen how I deal with things I label as huge problems. Almost every senior hits a point in their senior project when things seem hopeless. Making it through these times is when you realize what matters most. The best way to get through something is to find what you love about it and just go with it. And when you do just go with what you love, you will always produce something great. The Avalon senior project is proof. We studied philosophy, made art, researched police brutality, and wrote a book about war just name a few. We all got the chance to let our passions show through in our education. Very few high school students in the world get to know what that feels like. And for that we have to thank Avalon. The staff, students, and parents have done so much to make sure that we actually get something meaningful out of education.
In order to support seniors in this intense process, three staff members are assigned to act as senior advisors. Their biggest role is to organize and deliver a three-day senior retreat that is held off-site. Seniors and the senior advisors travel to Camp Friendship in Andover, Minnesota for an intense retreat that outlines the steps to the senior project, allows students to develop their proposals, builds a camaraderie among the seniors, and helps students address their own personal challenges through team challenges (a high ropes initiative hosted by Camp Friendship) and Avalon’s circle process. Over the six years Avalon has implemented the senior project, seniors note the Senior Retreat as being the most helpful experience to prepare them for the demands of the senior year. Rebecca Drobinski noted in her 2009 commencement address:
One of my favorite memories this year had to have been the senior retreat. We really had the opportunity to get to know each other better, to see what we were capable of. There was an enormous rope wall there, and we all took turns attempting to climb it. No one was told they should stop or come down. The encouragement pouring from everyone nearly brought me to tears.