My capstone evolved over the course of the year but it was always centered around art. freshman year I have always been a fan of the artwork the decorated the halls of SLA and I asked myself “What can I add to SLA’s creative and artistic environment?”. At the beginning of the year my plan was to paint on a large canvas that could be taken with the school if it ever found a new building. I contacted Al Gury, the Chair of the Painting Department at PAFA, but unfortunately my attempt to stay in contact with this him failed. Since I was unable to obtain a large canvas I decided to paint the walls on the third floor. I had previous experience with photoshop but I was not pro. I spent a lot of time tinkering with the many tools the program has to offer. When it came time to decide what it was I was going to paint I decided on a black and white theme. I used photoshop to created girds and rough drafts of my future artwork. My final products were a painting of a zebra and a silhouette-like body slice. This project taught me new skills but most importantly I learned that art takes patience, resources, and collaboration.

Trying to be original without repeating “For my capstone” or “This year…” is extremely difficult so i’ll let this serve as my introductory sentence in hopes that it might provide some type of variety for the students, staff and human beings on this blog today. One could say, my capstone, encompassed a plethora of topics and enterprises including, early child development, constructive community development, peer/ teacher mentoring and mindfulness skills and practices. Although, this list of subject matters may appear scattered and somewhat unrelated, it was my job during the time spent on my capstone to use all of these skills/tactics to guide and mentor students ranging anywhere from kindergarten to fifth grade.

The locale of my capstone activities took place at “The Common Place”, located on 58th and chester. Here, they provide empowering, enjoyable and impacting after school programs such as anger management, art therapy and general homework help and horse play. The purpose of these programs is to serve as a positive and productive outlet for children that, otherwise, may not be lucky enough to have. Although, to the kids, i may only be remembered as a double dutch champion but during the time not spent skipping, I worked hard on creating programs of my own to help them utilize some skills they may need in order to become more productive and effective adolescents and adults. My two largest projects during this time were the diary card and the hip-hop music therapy program.

The diary card was a mindfulness tool that the kids were to take home weekly. It’s function was to afford a more observant and advantageous way of expressing emotions and events that happened to them throughout the week. A list of mindfulness skills and stress tolerance practices were also included on the bottom of each sheet as a reference and reminder of more productive emotion regulation techniques. I also helped my super in the crafting of a hip-hop after school program that incorporated music therapy techniques. It did this by allowing the children to express themselves both lyrically, and rhythmically using music as an emotional and creative outlet making both of these projects an asset in the betterment of the kids emotional intelligence.

All in all, my time spent at The Common Place was anything but common, it was life changing, inspirational and everything else cliche. In truth, it was an amazing experience helping impact and guide these children’s lives and i'm excited to share my full experience in june. Thank you!

Disclaimer: Unfortunately the presentation/ visual aspect of this project is still underway. Due to privacy violations and possible confidentiality breaches parts of my visual are pending approval requests. You’re patience is appreciated! Thanks!

Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13iZKa-KZiMxT8l2bHFUR-7lKirl38Q7-kYil9oe0uOM/edit?usp=sharing

    Hi, my name is Chris Tran. Today I’m going to talk to you about my capstone that I have been working on over the past few months of the school year. A capstone is a graduation project that can be on any topic of your choice. I decided to choose something that I have been passionate about and that was to fundraise and donate money to Doctors Without Borders to specifically provide them money to help them on their mission of aiding the world. Also another reason why I donated to Doctors Without Borders because they were accepting donations to provide care for those who are ill with Ebola. I believed that all I could do is do my best to fundraise a specific amount of money to help them with their mission. I also dream that someday I could have an opportunity to do a fundraiser by myself. The process that I took to complete this project is really easy at times, but it can be difficult. The easy part is to make a website that provides the people on the web information about Ebola. I used information composed by research and compiled them into a website. Then I went out and went store-to-store asking for donations to support my capstone. When I ask them for donations, I give them a card that has all of my information as well as a link to my website. I ask them to read it and spread the information that they have learned about Ebola to people that they know. At times asking for donations is difficult because they aren’t as open to donating, but I later learned that there is a technique to talking to others and I used that to my advantage.

My name is Julian Makarechi, and I am a senior at SLA. For my senior capstone I decided to organize an Ultimate Frisbee tournament with my fellow SLA Varsity captain, Brian Birkmire. This tournament was held in Oaks, PA and Edgley Fields on April 25th & 26th. It was a no brainer for me to incorporate Ultimate in my capstone because it has played a major role in my life, since freshman year.". With the help of my coach/mentor/principal, Chris Lehmann, I was able connect with many vital contacts that helped make my tournament successful. One of the first major steps I took was to create a website that detailed information about my tournament and a spot to register. Once I finalized all the specifics, I was able to announce my tournament at a captains meeting in March. In total, 28 teams signed up,for the 4 available divisions. Throughout the whole project I must have sent hundreds of emails about checks, field layouts, schedules, and team registrations. The two weeks before my event were extremely hectic and stressful because of everything from getting teams registered to creating schedules and laying out the fields. I had to make sure everything was in place, everything from having the right amount of cones for every field, at both locations, to making sure we had parents that could volunteer to bring food to the fields early in the morning were in place. While this project was a stressful because of some setbacks and difficulties, I am very proud of the product that Brian and I came up with. Since I would like to go into sports management, I feel like this tournament taught me a lot and gave me some experience.

Pictures:

https://plus.google.com/photos/106372030699151663118/albums/6142512916749175985?authkey=CPDLp5-6taTO7wE

Bibliography:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x2NejGAFyj92NIVC09nAxrUqp8TnMWv13mSNpJJEOcE/edit?usp=sharing