It is final project time at the school where I work, at least among the high school second year students, and several blank papers may spell doom for several of my students.

I’ve talked about the final project before, but what makes it hard for the students is they generally aren’t keen on anything involving imagination and they have too much time and too many people working on the project. This creates a lot of down time for all but the most dedicated students and gives them a false sense that there’s plenty of time. I also suspect they think I won’t fail them.

Whatever their logic, this is the third day they’ve worked on the project and they should all have something resembling a script so that they can start the artwork/visual aid part of the project.

However, a third of the groups had nothing written at all and they reacted to my warnings in different ways. One was writing in Japanese whilst one student sketched something and the third pretended to be doing research on his phone. In another group two students stared at pieces of paper whilst the third had a chat with a different group. I surprised them all by saying I was glad to see they were finished and it was time to do the final performance.

Note: my rule is that if you are talking to someone who is not in your group you are announcing you are finished and ready to do the final project. 

They now have one more day of prep and practice before the final filming next Monday. I feel a great many of them are doomed and that a lot of low scores are about to be earned.