Mentors: Xinyi Zhang, Nyeema Martin

Capstone Summary:

Produced a fashion show and worked as documenter and videographer as well as create a backdrop & red carpet.

Project Abstract: 

For my senior capstone project, I produced a Fashion show. In the beginning of  the year, another student and I decided to do a combined senior capstone. Her part was making the clothes and the models and my part was the event. In the beginning of the school year, we got together SLA students who were interested in fashion to join our fashion club. I documented the fashion club from the beginning of the process and edited and created an introduction video for the audience. I also designed and created my own backdrop for the fashion show as well as a red carpet for hollywood effect. I handled the lighting, camera shots, and photography as well as the projector. I chose to do this capstone because it was combining two of my interests which is fashion and videographer and I thought it would be cool to do something that was close to a technical producer. Another reason I chose to do this capstone is because in the future I plan on working in the medical field and I know it takes plenty of collaboration and communication to be successful just as it does in a fashion show and to be exposed to the environment of a fashion would give off the same effect  as working in the medical field. I've been in digital video class since the beginning of my junior year and has worked with previous projects of RoughCut productions. RoughCut productions is a film organization that Mr.Herman, a teacher at SLA, runs. Being apart of that organization, we've worked on numerous amounts of projects which in turn has exposed me to video graphing and documenting. When creating a film, it also takes a lot of collaboration to make a film successful. With that being said, I was used to filming and never got a chance to actually learn how to edit and create final products. One of my main goals for this project was to have a successful show and to explore documenting and videographer.  

Student Name:
Kimberly Cayamcela

In school mentor’s name:
Mr. Kay

Out-of-school mentor’s name and affiliation:

Ignacio Cayamcela, experienced guitar player and performer


Topic Summary:

The goal of this project was to become more knowledgeable of event planning as well as differentiating genres of music from an original to a rendition.

   
Project Abstract:

The initial inspiration behind this project was building myself to open up to my true identity. I identify myself as Kimberly but not as a musician. I grew up in a musical well rounded family (my father’s side, that is) and have always sung in my bathroom and bedroom since age five. My father has been my inspiration, my drive, to some day become a professional musician. Perhaps sooner or later I will be on the Latin Grammy Awards. I’ve also always liked the idea of having hope towards the growth of humanity. Therefore, I decided to not only put together a talent show but make it a benefit show. Operation Smile caught my attention because it cared for children who were born with cleft lip and palette and other facial deformities. I aspire to be an elementary school teacher and so I thought music and children was the best fit for this project. I worked with my father to enhance my ability of breathing with my abdomen rather than my throat, projecting my voice, keeping eye contact with the audience, and strumming my guitar the correct way. I was able to successfully be on a stage without being nervous after many practices. As a result of this project, I have gained better knowledge of the different techniques there are in singing. I certainly plan on continuing a musical background through college by participating in theatre, choir, and acapella.  I hope to one day share my original songs with an audience and gain the courage to post videos on YouTube of my singing and playing guitar in my room. 

From a very young age, I became greatly aware of the power of great storytelling, and how it can truly resonate with me. As a person who considers his true passion to lie within the arts, I grew up with an amazing fascination for film, television, theatre, and music. However, age has taught me that the true reason for this fervid, passionate interest was because of the core element and common thread that unites all works of art: the story. All of these early experiences have taught me the power of the story, and have instill upon me the passion for creating and writing works that hold great power. I believe that a story can truly change the world.

One of the most durable and impactful mediums in which to express and tell a great story is the theatre. The incredible connection that can be made through live interactions is astounding. Ultimately, it is the staging not just of a show, but of an event.

Since childhood I have enjoyed dancing however I had never taken formal classes. As a preteen I would come up with dances for my friends and I, it became my number one hobby. As I got older I found myself drawn to any and everything that had to do with dance. I watched every reality dance show,award show performance, and I even started researching/watching young choreographers. This project is the result of putting my abilities to the test.

Abstract

This was more a learning and growing experience for myself and the young teenagers involved than a project. Over the duration of the time I spent mentoring the kids, I forgot about the fact that I was doing a project for a grade. I felt more like I was doing something that was helping me become a better person. At the shelter, I helped the young kids deal with their hard life situations by writing. Over the time,  I also chimed in on helping them better understand basic every day mannerisms, like being respectful, grateful and polite. In the beginning, everything didn’t start off as lovely as it ended. The kids were very unkind to me and they would clearly express that they did not want to be in my “program”. They would openly express their dislike for what I was trying to teach them. I thought that they didn’t respect me because we were only 4 or 5 years apart in age but soon I realized what it actually was that disinterested the kids. I realized that the kids were being rude for 2 reasons. Reason one was that they didn’t have much discipline in their lives, which explained why they were so rude and they also, like all other teenagers, didn’t  want to sit and write and listen to someone talk for an hour. After this realization. I decided to take a different route into getting them to like what we were doing, which was use active games instead of writing exercise  to start off with. They enjoyed that after a long day of school, then they didn’t mind the writing as much. In the end every went well and I just hope that the kids took a lot from this experience. 

Student Name:
 Mathew Walker

In school mentor’s name:
 Mark Miles

Topic Summary:

 The goal of this project was to help me develop a better understanding of my future major, and also to show my current knowledge on the topic of computer science to see where I am going to be when I enter college. What I did was I created a game via the program processing which is a coding program that codes on java. What I learned during this process is that it is not always easy to stick to your original idea. As I went through the project I was learning a bunch of new coding material that I did not know and trying to take all that and apply all in one year was a little difficult. So I created a game that was not like my original idea but I did this because the game that I was able to produce in the end took some of the new knowledge that I learned and apply it. My original idea was to make a side scrolling adventure game such as the game Zelda but a lot of things such as drawing the maps and writing different coding functions for changing the map were slightly difficult. So in my end product, which was a maze, I was able to take the drawing maps and apply it. I also learned that you do not need fancy graphics to make a game fun because when I let my friends test it out everybody surrounded my computer trying to beat the game, which I am proud of.

and Processing

Ruben Burenstein

Mentor: 

Mark Bey

Summary:

The goal of this project is to provide extra help for students who seemed to be having trouble in a Spanish 2 class. 

Abstract

 I was inspired to make this my capstone because wavering interest in education. Since I started learning Spanish I liked it, and decided that if I were to teach a subject it would be Spanish. During freshman and sophomore year I thought that I wanted to be a teacher, but then during junior year my opinion changed. After finding out that I would be the SAT for a Spanish 2 class I thought that this would be a good opportunity to see what teaching a small group of kids would be like. I soon realized that I would not just help the students on their work, but also help reinforce their core understanding. To do this I had to re acquaint myself with the topics that they were learning, as well as research teaching techniques. For the project I did small activities, and created worksheets with the intent of improving the understanding of the Spanish language. Researching how to be an effective teacher has given be a better understanding of what I should do in teaching situations, and given me methods on how to clearly display information to students. 

In the beginning of my senior year, with the help of a few teachers, I was matched up with a non-profit organization by the name of Palms Solutions. In the rectory of a small West Philadelphia community church, Palms Solutions hosts an after school program called TIMBA that caters to helping African American children connect back to their African roots while also helping the young students to practice and develop their math and reading skills. My connection with Palms Solutions consisted of volunteering as a tutor for TIMBA. In addition to tutoring in math, it was my intention to also bring science to the learning environment and even perform a few experiments with the children all the while incorporating the math that they were reviewing in their tutoring sessions. However, through a few scheduling difficulties I was unable to accomplish all of the goals that I had set for my partnership with the program. Despite this, I did manage to perform one experiment with the children that worked petri plates and culturing bacteria. Overall, over the course of my capstone I gained volunteer, tutoring, teaching, and coordinating experience that I had not previously had.