Many educators complain that the blight of senioritis and the absence of rigor and relevance prevent the final year of high school from being the capstone year it should be. Helping seniors focus on the life-changing transition they are about to experience is an effective strategy for engaging seniors and infusing relevance and rigor in a profound…

Many educators consider the final year of high school to be a "vast wasteland," an epidemic of disengagement. Although high schools across the country have struggled with senioritis, their approaches to the problem have largely fallen into one of three types of responses: vertical acceleration; remediation; and structured containment.…