It’s not your ordinary research paper or presentation.
Graduation exhibitions at Anzar High School require students to
link research and learning to thinking through a paper,
presentation and question-and-answer period.
It’s not your ordinary research paper or presentation.
Graduation exhibitions at Anzar High School require students to link research and learning to thinking through a paper, presentation and question-and-answer period.
The last round of exhibition presentations for the school year was held Friday, and students were glad to be done with them.
Senior Nicole Root presented her third exhibition Wednesday afternoon, covering math, art and language arts. Her topic centered on teen pregnancy and the effectiveness of certain condoms.
“It can be really stressful since it determines if you graduate,” she said. “My first two, I was really scared. Now, I’m comfortable.”
Root graphed pregnancy statistics for the math requirement, read the novel “Where the Heart Is” by Billie Letts for language arts and showed pictures she’s taken for art. Root, who wants to be a photographer, said she spent at least 40 hours on her exhibition.
Anzar had six rounds of exhibitions this school year. An hour is allotted for each presentation and three community members judge the exhibition. Students spend about 20 minutes on their presentations, after which judges ask about the students’ report and presentation.
Alone, the judges determine a grade on the spot, based on a 1, 2 or 3. A 2 or higher means the student passed their exhibition. In many cases, judges give the student a conditional pass, which requires the student to resubmit a portion of the exhibition with changes.
Junior Nick Heath covered history and language arts in presenting his first exhibition, titled “Can Alternative Fuels Lead America Out of Its Dependency on Oil?”
“I’m shy when it comes to presentations,” Heath said. “It’ll be painful to do eight. Exhibitions serve to expand your mind, helps develop you more and develop character. It’s supposed to teach you to be prepared. They want to see if you learned from this experience.”
For the history segment, Heath researched the history of fossil fuels and where the oil industry is headed. He read the book “Greenheat Redheat” by Dick Holt and wrote a poem called “Time For a Change” for the language arts requirement. Heath said he put in about 70 hours working on his exhibition.
Both Root and Heath said they were glad to have their presentations over with.
To graduate, students take four semesters of graduation exhibition in which their teacher serves as a coach. They can do as many exhibitions as necessary to cover six content areas – math, language arts, science, social science, service learning and a post-graduate plan – and two components – art and world language. Most students cover all eight in two or three exhibitions.
Exhibitions go beyond a typical school report, which usually requires a simple regurgitation of research. Exhibitions are issue-based instead of topic-based, said Wayne Norton, Anzar site manager and exhibition judge.
“There are a lot of benefits with exhibitions – the most important is the way they give a student an opportunity to put the skills they developed in high school to use,” Norton said. “Students demonstrate that they’ve learned how to gather, process and use information.”
Root and Heath agreed that exhibitions serve valuable purposes, but Root thinks they should be optional.
“Students have to pass all their classes, pass the exit exam and pass their exhibitions. There’s all this other stuff that determines if they graduate,” she said. Â
During recent district board meetings, parents have brought up a connection between exhibitions and declining enrollment at Anzar. Many students leave the school at the end of their sophomore year to avoid the requirement out of fear of presenting and answering questions, or not wanting to do the extra work.
Parents have asked if decreasing the number of required exhibitions would help the school keep more students.
“I don’t think it’s expecting too much,” said district trustee Sylvia Rios Metcalf. “I think we already do that. Some students include all six (content areas) in one exhibition. It’s not that hard. I think the exhibition program is evolving. I think we’re developing it and making it easier for students to do their best. … As the high school gets larger, I think it’s bound to evolve or change.”
Anzar staff does look at the exhibition program at the end of every year, Norton said, but the group can never decide which of the six areas to cut out or to “deem less important.”
When students do leave Anzar because of exhibitions, most decide to do so with support from their parents, Norton said.
“I think it has more to do with parents not sure kids are capable of doing exhibitions than the students thinking that,” he said. “We do have higher expectations for our students. … Kids can’t graduate here without working hard.”
Metcalf agreed, saying many students don’t have support at home because many parents didn’t have to do exhibitions when they went to school.
“When given support, students come back and do (exhibitions),” she said. “It means something to graduate from Anzar. With support, students know they can do it. They need to get support from home.”
Some students will do their exhibitions on their own time without taking the four semesters of graduation exhibition to free up space in their schedule for electives.
Sophomore Brittany Conrad is thinking of leaving the district next year, but is thinking about doing her exhibitions on her own if she does stay, she said. Root said the graduation exhibition class can “hog up” a student’s opportunity to take other classes like electives.
