For my capstone, I decided to make three different videos or reels that help highlight three of the more important programs and events at Science Leadership Academy. The three things that are shown in the reels are the Ultimate Frisbee team’s season, Educon 2023, and the Engineering Career and Technical Education program. The three different reels required hours of acquiring footage over extended periods of time, interviewing people at the events or in the programs, and long periods of editing and creating multiple different versions before deciding what the final version should be. The order in which they were completed was the Educon reel first, the Ultimate Frisbee reel second, and the engineering reel being the final one completed. I believe throughout the watching of these videos ou can see the evolution of the interviewing and editing process with myself becoming much better at both as the year went on. Both interviewing and editing styles are both acquired by practice, and my capstone project allowed me to not just discover my own, but in my research discover others editing styles and how the overall video industry does their event reel filming and editing. For the overall process, I would say hitting all five of the core values makes the Capstone process different from other schools. Inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection are what education stands on at SLA, so the process of a capstone is really trying to make something that benefits your school community while making sure each of the core values is represented in your efforts.

Process Paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x0GlOwZMPqiNEBipivQ6YTPluL71xvEKMjd2RxCOKpA/edit?usp=sharing

Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XQF9XqIwv_SxbMlh5dBAqqeL0_5pHJsFRBaKBSaZ6Nk/edit?usp=sharing

Digitized Capstone: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aPmwCj-RGh9XBzoeMYDAansSaBCoIMxD?usp=share_link

Through the course of my capstone project, I went looking for things that reflected my passions and personal growth. After my experiences with My School Votes and diving into various resources and lessons on voter education, I felt it was important to bring these crucial topics to my school community. It took time and contemplation to find the perfect concept that resonated with me, but when I did, I knew it was worth the effort. Crafting a lesson plan that would not only educate but also engage my underclassmen became my mission. I wanted to make the learning experience fun and enlightening, so I incorporated activities that allowed everyone to participate and win incentives along the way. It was nice to see my peers get involved and witness the fun that some students experienced. As the lesson plan unfolded, I made sure to discuss the upcoming election and we worked to explore the candidates so they could cast their own ballots and reflect. To tie everything together, I continued work on a website I had created back in 2020, where I expanded on the significance of my capstone project. Through this platform, I aimed to convey the importance of voter education and how it could shape our future. This entire journey has been a visual to my growth and the realization that when we pursue things that align with our passions, meaningful ideas can take shape.

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Lw2hd1W4W5tZeClTF7nhkMXtrISI-G02rF5ZelLv68/edit?usp=sharing Website link: https://synaiharris.wixsite.com/everysynaibreae

For my capstone I chose to highlight Latine entrepreneurs in Philadelphia. I was able to reach out to around 5 different businesses to ask them for an interview. I recorded their stories and learned about their business. My goal was to share the places with others because they have played an important role in my community and directly impact our world’s economy. I grew up surrounded by these businesses and never realized the lack of attention they receive. I designed a website to showcase how special these places are. I took pictures of the shops and included them in the website alongside the best clips of the interviews. I cut down hour-long interviews into less than 10 minute clips.
The purpose of my capstone was to portray the strengths within my community and invite others to visit these shops. Most of the media I have been surrounded by has focused on highlighting the negatives and all of the obstacles the Latine community faces. I wanted my website to be different. I wanted to focus on our successes. In this capstone I met hardworking and humble business owners. I built connections and became a stronger filmmaker. I was able to merge my passion for my community with my film studies. In addition, I partnered up with another student who created a children’s book based on the interviews I acquired. Our goal was to inspire the next generation to become entrepreneurs. We wanted youth in our community to know that owning a business was attainable. This makes our message reach a broader audience, both adults and children.

WEBSITE:

https://sites.google.com/scienceleadership.org/latinxbusinessesphilly?usp=sharing

For my capstone, I created a digital magazine called “Sugar Snaps” and two original songs. The songs were created using the Digital Audio Workshops (DAW) Cakewalk and Logic Pro X. I chose this project because I want to be a musical artist professionally and photography, production, and songwriting are all skills that will be vital to my career path so it would be a strategic use of time to design a project that encompasses all of those skills. To complete my capstone, first I researched inspiration for “Sugar Snaps”. I wanted it to be somewhat bright like “Fruits Magazine” but also creatively realistic like “Nana” stills and manga covers. Separately, I worked on my music in the Digital Audio Workshops “Cakewalk” and “Logic Pro X.” The largest obstacle I encountered was overall inexperience with every skill involved in my project except for writing music. I did not know how to edit photos, mix or master music, and both were technical skills so my musical abilities did not help with getting through those. My schedule in high school has always been hectic so I’ve never had the ability to get involved in the music scene in Philadelphia which always made me feel stagnant and incompetent. This project allowed me to push myself away from the negativity I focused on and devote my time to music production skills, which were a lot more accessible and just as important in my opinion.

Link to Hold You: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RnfQpbvQekK2CyBO8057OucYFMVRydNM/view?usp=sharing

Link to Booboosoosa’s Lullaby: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zZ4jkYwJK1U3VBnKex9OuBBy8y6Cqivd/view?usp=sharing

For my capstone, I made a short stop motion film. The idea for this stemmed from the anxiety that I felt before my wisdom tooth surgery. The specific type of stop motion animation that I used was claymation and I made the sets from cardboard. As I was working, I thought deeply about how I could create something that reflects all of SLA’s core values as well as being something unique to me and what I wanted to create. My process had a lot of ups and downs, since I had never done claymation before. I ended up using animals as the characters instead of people because I could not figure out how to make a good looking clay human. I struggled a lot with my time management, but I ended up overcoming my obstacles and creating something that I am proud of. The end result is a short film that is supposed to show the audience that no matter what situation you are in, nothing is perfect and there will always be things to worry about, so make the most of your life.

Here is the link to my final video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXqQYJKIjbs

Here is the link to my annotated bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TY9kAE1liH1-7pS-PsYyO-zRmrQ7VEvjLmd_UiSAcyk/edit

Hard work always pays off, one way or another. Putting the time and effort into doing something, and seeing that be rewarded is a feeling everyone deserves to have. My capstone is a combination of the time I spent in Digital Video perfecting my camera skills, and learning how to use Premiere, along with the subtleties of interviewing people, and mixing it with the love for a sport that I never thought I’d be playing. Frisbee was the first sport at SLA that convinced kids to wake up at 5 AM to grind and work harder than anyone else. This is something that I sense is becoming lost amongst the next generation of SLA students, as more people are complaining about the early practices, or opting out because of them. I created this project to shed some more light on a community that is a core piece of SLA. I made the Ultimate Frisbee Reel to encourage others to give Frisbee a try, regardless of any initial judgments passed upon it. Because if everyone can apply a hard-working mindset to something like Frisbee, SLA will become a better place. There will be challenges and setbacks. There were challenges and setbacks in my capstone, as I struggled with the interviewing process, and finding Braskem funding. However, it will all be worth it in the end. Everything at SLA always is.

I made photographic content for my Capstone project for a local skateboard company called the Skateboard Academy of Philadelphia. There were three subparts to my project. I first took photos of all of the company’s new employees to update the website of the company. I took photos for the company’s Instagram. I finally took photos of academy students who skate professionally, so they could send the photos to promoters to help them get sponsored. Throughout my project, I had to deal with scheduling and lighting issues that made it difficult to produce quality work. This was a great experience because I was able to learn to skateboard on the side of doing my project, and I was able to immerse myself into the skateboard community and change it for the better.

Exported Photos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nKF4sYs3rkj-npzV1mNxv0FS4_GrAQ5Y?usp=share_link

Secure the Wastes

For my capstone project, I created my own tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) called Secure the Wastes. This was a primarily creative project, so after doing my initial research into how to make a TTRPG, the bulk of the process was thinking of fun and interesting game mechanics and balancing said mechanics. For anyone who doesn’t know, a TTRPG is a game in which most of the players take on the role of characters in a fictional world and play through a story set up by another player, the game master. The game works on a 2d6 system, meaning that whenever you want to accomplish a difficult task, you have to roll two six-sided dice and use the result to see how successful you were. A lot of the time spent on this project involved playing the game with friends and refining the existing mechanics after seeing what worked and what didn’t, so a huge thanks to everyone who helped with reading over the rules and playing the game. I’m extremely happy with how the game turned out, especially the combat system, which I consider to be the most interesting and creatively made part of the game. I learned a lot during this project, mostly concerning what makes fun and balanced game mechanics, but also things relating to statistics and document editing. Overall making this project was fun experienced which I really enjoyed, and I hope people enjoy my game!

The game rules can be found here.

And the Bibliography here.

For my capstone, I created baking videos and posted them on Instagram representing the five core values. For the first couple of months, I did research on a lot of different baking tips and I put it all together in a Google Document. I also did a lot of research to find the recipes I wanted to bake. For inquiry, I asked how can baking videos impact the SLA community. My reflection was that I should have researched how to get good angles for making baking videos for Instagram. Through this project, I learned how important it is to measure correctly and not miss any details when it comes to filming a video on baking. It’s also important to take your time when you are editing the videos so that it turns out well. That’s something that I learned from this project. When you slow down, you have a better outcome with anything that you do but it was really important for my project because you have to measure everything correctly and you have to film the videos right or else you would have to start all over again.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PithCDC7kjRAPfPb91GFixPNNFGhBvHe9SPSVoBQqi4/edit

For my capstone, I along with Nick Reed, another senior, created five murals in the SLA commons representing the five core values. The first four core values, inquiry, research, collaboration, and presentation, are represented on the four support columns and designed in collaboration with freshmen in the mini-course we ran. Reflection was designed and painted, primarily by me, on the wall alongside the steps leading up to the rest of the SLA building. Unlike the others reflection is intended to be continued by every future senior class. In order to complete this project Nick and I spent the first half of the year researching. We pitched to Braskem and received full funding. We ran a quarter-long mini-course. We spent the last quarter of the year completing what we began during the mini-course with a dedicated team of freshmen and a handful of volunteers. Through this project, I thought myself how to make murals and teach an art class two things I had never done before. I learned how to work very closely with someone equally passionate but with different ideas about what we were doing and how we should do it. I learned that even after the chaos of my high school experience I can still make a positive change to my community, and more importantly I taught the next generation of SLA students the same.