By Sydney Lewark
I have gone to the Denver Waldorf School since preschool. From elementary school onward, senior projects have always been a fabled event. Every spring, the Waldorf community comes together to see the individual projects each senior has been working on for the entire school year. My fellow seniors and I will be presenting our projects at the Denver Waldorf School, 2100 S. Pennsylvania St., on March 31 and April 1 at 7:00p.m.
A senior project at the Denver Waldorf School is much like a college thesis. “An admirable and daunting task,” as explained by English teacher John Reinhart, “A senior project is a moment when the students can take on an independent project that is really meaningful to them. A student who has practiced and explored all the academic avenues throughout the Waldorf curriculum, takes that, goes out into the world and sees what they can make of it on their own.”
For the first time, each student is asked to stand alone. A senior project is climbing a mountain that you have to build yourself. This mountain can take on many forms, such as stand-up comedy, salsa dancing, painting murals, learning American Sign Language, opera or building drones.
Reinhart, a Denver Waldorf alumnus as well as senior project adviser, has a unique perspective. He remembers the process of recording a fiddle album as a senior. He knows that each individual's journey to find their project is one filled with trial and error. Almost every person changes their endeavor at least two or three times. Adreanna Thompson-Paschetto, whose project is comic book design, said, “The commitment to one project is quite a struggle. Do I choose something I'm already good at to ensure my project turns out well, or choose something new and risk the chance that it's actually awful?”
Many students dive deeper into current activities, while others brave the unknown and start from scratch. This flexible opportunity gives students the time and space to broaden their horizons or explore new skies entirely.
Sometimes, it feels you don't even choose your project, but your project chooses you. Many students find they have stumbled upon their project without realizing it. Bella Martin, whose project is designing green buildings, explained, “I have been sketching building plans in my notebook margins for the last three years. I didn't realize what seed I was planting until now.”
Other seniors look to their distant past. Reinhart recalls a student who learned to play the violin in the third grade and picked it up again in the 12th grade for his project, “recognizing he had some unfinished business with the violin, so he wanted to give it another try.”
There will be 22 presentations by the largest senior class in the history of the Denver Waldorf School. My project is underwater photography. After spending a year-and-a-half as an underwater model and performer, I decided to get behind the camera and see what I could make of that world. The pinnacle of my project has been taking underwater pictures of my classmates and teachers. This has allowed me to grow my photography skills and preserve this time I have spent at Waldorf and with my classmates.
Once I found my project direction, what followed was a test of time. In the storm of college and scholarship applications, rigorous school work, ACT testing, multiple trips during the fall for underwater performing and trying to find time to enjoy this last year at home, my senior project was just another bolt of lightning. But it was an illuminating lesson, teaching me what it meant to live a complex adult life. We will always have activities and experiences we wish to give time to, but we must learn how to find space for them and understand time won't stop for us to pursue our dreams.
After 12 years of learning every day with many of my classmates, these last few months are precious and fleeting. Each of us are holding onto the last moments of this Waldorf life we have lived, while simultaneously eyeing our near and promising futures. Senior projects allow each student to encapsulate and reinvent themselves.
When we present our projects, we will stand alone and stand together for the last time. This culmination of our life at Waldorf and as a class is an immaculate representation of what Waldorf teaches its students, and what its students carry with them into the world.
Sydney Lewark is in the 12th grade at the Denver Waldorf School.
