David Greene, WISE Staff
Sunday morning and The New York Times in Sunday Dialogue.
“A cure for Senioritis?” Terrific. That’s exactly what WISE is. Imagine my reaction when I read this in the opening paragraph of author, Marc Bernstein,
“Most students in the United States spend four years in high school, grades 9 through 12, whether they benefit from the fourth year or not. Individualizing the high school experience by permitting students, parents and educators to jointly decide, student by student, if three years, three and a half years or a full four years are required to meet that student’s educational needs is an imperative, especially given how unproductive the senior year – the infamous senioritis – can be for so many students.” That immediate prompted me to write the following letter to the editor appearing in The New York Times on Sunday, March 3rd, 2013:
“As a former teacher of seniors for 38 years, I find we still need to answer the question,
‘What do we do about the senior year?’
The best answer is a program now in over 60 schools across the nation called WISE (Wise Individualized Senior Experience). In it, 2nd semester seniors do a senior project for academic credit to explore the passion they have chosen to investigate whether it is a career search, hobby pursuit, or scientific experiment. We call it an “infinite set of senior electives”. Isn’t that a great way to help seniors move forward to the next part of their life, college or not?”
The Writer’s response:
“Though many of the suggestions expressed in these letters are meritorious and would most certainly improve the 12th-grade experience, it is doubtful that they can be expanded to incorporate all of the nation’s 12th-graders. The WISE program described by Mr. Greene, unfortunately, is offered in only 60 of the nation’s 15,000 high schools….”
That Mr. Bernstein, is the problem.
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