Owning It: Co-designing the Senior Year Experience

How can we invigorate the senior year? Can this year serve as an opportunity for students to assume deeper ownership over what and how they learn? Can it change the way they view school, and the way they understand their own potential? These questions shaped my thinking as my two twelfth-grade English classes and I co-designed a semester-long class experience together in our project-based classroom at High Tech High International in San Diego, California. Together, we established a community of writers that worked to uncover the strengths of each member in order to design a project customized to our unique group. We encountered the challenges and uncovered the deeper learning that comes from engaging in such an ambitious endeavor. This study traces the outcomes of this effort, advocating for allowing seniors an increased level of control over their learning in the company of adults who can help them actualize their ideas.