The High School and Beyond plan is a well-known aspect of senior year, alongside what has now become the “senior video.”
Last year, the district began to transition from Xello to SchooLinks, bringing along with it the replacement of the senior interview.
Erin Montoya, AP Government and AP Macroeconomics teacher, is just one of the staff members affected by this change, along with all the current seniors.
“Before, the district had to pay for Xello. SchooLinks is a service that’s provided to us through the Washington Department of Education people,” Montoya said. “The OSPI is who makes graduation requirements and they make the requirement to have a high school and beyond plan. Since we are trying to save money, we went with the free option of SchooLinks.”
The senior video was included with the SchooLinks program and therefore a part of the High School and Beyond Plan.
According to the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, “The HSBP is a graduation requirement designed to help students annually reflect on three guiding questions: Who am I?, What can I Become? and How do I Become That?…The HSBP is a state graduation requirement designed to help students explore careers or college pathways starting in 7th grade. Throughout the year, students update their HSBP goals to reflect their changing interests and goals, connecting what they learn and the skills they develop to future career pathways.”
In May 2024, SchooLinks was officially introduced as the new and universal platform for Washington state. This program replaced the traditional senior interview, in which students would meet with a teacher to be questioned about their plans for the future, with a video in similar fashion.
“This is my fifth year, and we’ve been doing them as long as I’ve been here. We usually get a list of people that we’re supposed to interview, anywhere from five to ten students. Sometimes we will have had the students before in class, and sometimes we will have not,” Montoya said. “The coordination was probably the hardest part of that, getting the kids to respond to you and then make an appointment and then stick to that appointment.”
Former student Miriam Lee graduated in 2025 and was a member of the last senior class to undertake the interviews.
“The interview definitely did benefit me and a lot of other seniors. It was good experience and practice for the future when we’re getting interviewed for jobs or like volunteer things, or even for college club interviews. Interviews are literally everywhere, and so it’s definitely good exposure before you get into college [or] other fields in life,” Lee said.
Though neither system is perfect, the interview had its pros and cons.
“It was definitely stressful. They gave us a sheet of paper with possible interview questions, or topics to be familiar with. Preparing for the interview and preparing with those topics help me, in a way, understand myself,” Lee said. “It helped me to understand what my opinions were on those uncertain topics.”
For Lee, however, the senior interview was a valuable enterprise.
“Video or no video, I feel like interviews are a really good experience to have. The video will offer a lot of valuable skills, I just don’t know how relevant it is to all the students. It’s kind of hard to see making videos for something like being super relevant,” Lee said.
As a student of Kalles Junior High, which fosters their unique Ignite the Future program, senior Shyann Lovelace was already familiar with business-like interviews. That was why she was somewhat unprepared when she discovered an interview was no longer a part of the graduation requirements.
“I don’t really like the videos this year, just because it doesn’t really hold the students accountable. We have to do it on our own time, whereas last year, when we had the interviews, the teachers were holding [seniors] accountable to actually prepare for it during school hours,” Lovelace said. “It’s more about accountability.”
Lovelace does, however, see some benefit to SchooLinks video program.
“I think it benefits [students] because you can go through the trial-and-error process,” Lovelace said. “It took me a while, because I had everything I wanted to say but it still wasn’t meeting a time mark, so I had to really elaborate and pronunciate my words.”
In today’s modern world, being able to document a personal video is a common requirement for many colleges and high-end programs.
“The video isn’t a terrible idea. There are pros and cons,” Lee said. “Today making videos is a lot more like relevant than a few years back. A lot of college applications require videos.”
Even including a time limit, according to Lovelace, can assist students with accomplishing their task to the fullest.
“I think the time limit helps make sure that I wasn’t cutting myself short, actually elaborating on what I want to do and putting a lot of detail into it. But it also made it really stressful, because I felt like I had so many ideas in there, yet it still wasn’t meeting the requirement,” Lovelace said.
The interviews had their time at Puyallup, and though things have changed, the seniors excellence doesn’t have to.
“I think people always get upset at change, but it doesn’t always mean it’s bad. Sometimes there’s things out of our control,” Montoya said. “It’s better to just get on board, even though it might not be, quote on quote, ‘better.’”
