What is the senior defense and what are the expectations?
By Leo H.
What is the senior defense? Why is it important? Here are the major things you need to know about it and also some seniors’ opinions on this matter.
In order to graduate, seniors now have to prepare a senior defense presentation.
The senior defense is a presentation in which students have to choose an artifact that demonstrates their learning and how those skills you learned will help you after high school.
Albert Mandujano, Testing coordinator, said “Our [senior] defense here at CATS is a compilation of what students here at CATS learned since they were a freshman or if they joined late, but in general it is a presentation in front of a panel in which it is about the struggles they had or what they learned.”
He added, “They are also given a rubric which they have to follow and what this is for is it helps them be prepared for a job interview, meeting with a counselor for college so that is some of the main reasons why we do it.”
This year, seniors had to present their defenses in their advisories. The seniors were notified about the presentations at the end of April.
Some students were unhappy with the timing.
Christopher M. said, “I think they should’ve given us more time. It feels very unorganized. I think they should give us more time and be more prepared for this project.”
Fellow senior Justin C. agreed.
“I feel like this is unfair because they give us a small time to do this monumental project in a short period of time, especially with the seniors who want this to get over with,” he said. “It is poor timing, too, since seniors will be completing their AP exams.”
Chris shared a few details about his senior defense.
The artifact, or evidence of learning he chose, was from a project in Ms. Haagen’s class around mental health disorders, with a connection to his English class, taught by Mr. Dominguez.
“My senior defense is [focused on] a presentation for Sociology in which we did get the Borderline Personality Disorder and had to connect it to the main character Holden from the book ‘Catcher in the Rye,'” he said.
“I chose this because it taught me effective communication among peers so we can reach the deadline and taught me how to do proper research, which I will use later on in my career.”
Some advice for the upcoming seniors: start practicing your presentation skills and start gathering your evidence, or artifacts, so you can pass this presentation with flying colors.
