Students soar with 'essential questions'
Freedom inspires senior projects
It wasn't exactly a traditional lineup of senior projects.
One student tried to restore a vintage motorcycle; another explored how the circus has changed over the years. A third analyzed the role of shamans in rain forest communities.
Carolena Sefton, for her part, just wanted to classify and create lowbrow art.
Her final product? A painting of a melting rainbow holding a giant apple against an all-black sky; beside it, a blue jalapeno spouts off its own dirty rainbow of orange, green, and brown.
"I'm still not sure exactly how I feel about it," said the petite 18-year-old senior at Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School in Devens. "I want people to take away what they see, whatever comes to them."
At the Parker School, there are no mid-terms, final papers, or traditional letter grades.
Instead, for a final project, students pose, research, and attempt to answer an "essential question" on any subject of their choosing. Months later, they present their findings in an "exhibition" attended by fellow students, teachers, counselors, and parents.
Fifteen students performed their exhibitions at the school last Tuesday in an event kicking off the Coalition of Essential Schools' National Exhibition Month.
"They can focus on almost anything - but they have to be able to defend what they're doing," said Ted Sizer, founder of CES and former coprincipal of Parker.
Caleb Mayerson posed the question: "What is the process of making skis?"
To an audience of roughly 30 fellow students and teachers, Mayerson explained his process of ski-building from start to finish. "I thought it was going to be much easier than it actually is," said the 18-year-old Harvard resident.
The room smelled of epoxy; long pieces of wood depicting the stages of ski-building leaned against the blackboard behind him.
Over the course of his 45-minute presentation, he covered the process and the materials (strips of poplar wood layered with fiberglass and held together with epoxy), cost (roughly $1,000), and the challenges in collaborating with other ski builders.
Finally, Mayerson unveiled two 182-centimeter-long skis -- one red, one green. "I'm really psyched about these," he said. "I'm definitely going to ski on them."
He said he will never use a store-bought ski again. "I'll keep producing these skis," he said. "I want to get into the business."
Roughly 55 students will present exhibitions this year before graduating from the school, which was established in 1995 and is open by lottery to roughly 375 students from 40 towns across north central Massachusetts.
In many ways, exhibitions are similar to doctoral dissertations: Students pick a subject, perform extensive research over their senior year, and work with mentors to complete a final project.
A panel of jurors assesses them on their mastery of the material, applied critical thinking skills, and competency in presented data and research. The grading system: JB (just beginning), A (approaching), M (meets expectations), and E (exceeds expectations).
The goal of exhibitions is to move beyond standardized testing to get students to speak authoritatively on a subject, said principal Teri Schrader.
"It should enlarge a student's world," she said, "and encourage them to think beyond the walls of the school."
Essential questions -- which are generally large, enduring, and unanswerable -- are paramount to Parker's mission.
Every year, students vote on a question that will craft the following year's curriculum in four areas: arts and humanities; math, science, and technology; Spanish; and wellness.
In the past, EQs, as they are referred to, have ranged from "What is change?" to "What really matters?"
In many cases, students get even more broad and creative with their questions.
How, for instance, do you define "lowbrow art?"
Standing in a dark classroom slung with the banner "Untie the knot of your mind," Sefton explained that lowbrow art is "still very underground."
Filled with often crude, cartoonish, and surrealistic symbolism, its godfather is Robert Williams, with other notable disciples being Mark Ryden and Jeff Soto.
The Stow resident explained that in addition to researching the subject extensively, she took a five-week painting class and experimented with both high- and low-end materials before completing her own lowbrow painting.
"You can't just decide to create an art style," she said, adding that painting is much harder than it looks. "Let your art come naturally to you and it'll fall into whatever genre it does." 