For my Senior Capstone Project, I participated in Dejah’s Big Little Program; I mentored a 5th grader twice a week. The program was created so some 5th graders could have someone to look up to and guide them through whatever they needed. My mentee, Sophia, had perfect grades and many interests when I met her. Therefore, rather than focus on her schoolwork and grades, I taught her to use a planner for academic/personal reminders, a crucial skill for when she starts high school. I also gave her advice on managing difficult group projects, staying organized, and keeping her head up! She’s an extremely passionate girl who loves to learn; working with her was a lot of fun, and I learned from her, too. I learned that not every mentee needs “fixing”; they may just need someone to be there for them as a support system. I also learned how to put aside my own struggles to focus on her needs during our meetings. I wanted her to know I was present and there for whatever she needed. Over the course of the few months we worked together, I saw maturity and overall growth in Sophia as she maintained high grades. Now she has decided to mentor another 5th grader next year because she enjoyed working with me. This was rewarding for me to hear. Sophia and I plan to continue checking in via email after I graduate to keep guiding her and stay in touch.

This year for my capstone I decided to give Science Leadership Academy the recognition it deserved by creating a documentary of the school that will persuade graduating middle schoolers to come here. Me and my partner created the documentary based on the core values of the school and focused on interviewing the seniors since we have the highest high school experience. The process of creating the documentary was smooth at first and we hit a few bumps on the road considering that they were all due to technical difficulties. One difficulty we encountered was when we spent a whole day gathering people for interviews and recording them only to find out that the mics didn’t pick up any sound because of faulty hardware. What really messed up the whole process, in my opinion, was when we couldn’t find the footage we recorded because the clips were dumped into somewhere that we didn’t know the location of. Therefore, we had to re-record all of the footage that we had made including some of the teacher's interviews. However, by combining our talents and strengths, me and my partner were able to complete the job at a timely fashion. I learned that making a documentary is more than just interviewing people, but it is also about capturing “the big picture” that the audience can take in an analyze. For the big picture, we also recorded funny moments that happened in SLA that should be remembered by incoming freshmen. Overall, I would say that I am very pleased with the way that my Capstone came out at the end.

For my capstone, I wanted to know how does school affect teens and staff mental health. In order to go about this question, I had to send out a survey with various questions and then go off to interview students and staff throughout the school. This originally was not the plan, I had planned to just have google slides, but Ms. Aziz inspired me to do something more. It took Savannah and me a while to figure out what questions we wanted to include on our survey but we had already known what questions we would ask during the interviews. The final product of our capstone is the interview video with various students and staff. I concluded from listening to our student interviewees that school negatively impacts them more than positively. Personally, for me, the school also impacts my mental health negatively also. It's not common for me where it's always positive days that nothing bad has happened during the entire day. Whereas with the staff interviewees, school impacts their mental health more positively. If I were to do this again, I would want to interview more staff so it's close to an equal amount of people interviewed. Overall, I would say that I enjoyed completing this capstone and I wouldn't mind doing it once more.