Philadelphia's class divide is very noticeable. Its neighborhoods range from single home mansions, to townhouses, to some of the country's most dangerous communities. This capstone focuses on the life history behind the people living in these areas, their stories. People from these different communities have very different experiences and opinions of Philadelphia. Some think that the politicians are not doing enough to help strengthen the relationships between the police and the communities they serve. While others don’t believe that there is a problem at all.

Data collection involved a survey delivered in person. In an attempt  to assert some control of the survey the same 10 questions were asked by the same surveyor. The questions were asked at the same time of day on the same day of the week over a 5 week period.

The survey was created by giving the respondent yes or no questions. The result were compiled by taking the result of each neighborhood and tabulting the most recurring answers to give a percentage. For example: did you participate in the last presidential election? If No do you think that you vote counts?

What some of the result show is that people from the most dangerous communities are not voting because they don’t think that their vote counts or that it will make a difference. While people from wealthy neighborhoods believe in voting and that the system fair and just.

I interview someone named john, John was from north philadelphia and was downtown because of an internship at the comcast center as a salesman. He is 23 years old and he does not like catching the broad street line every morning to work and said he wishes there was a better way to get there  it seemed to me he didn’t like his job or the way he’s living right know.

Later I interviewed a young lady named Sarah, she worked downtown also as a government official and she takes regional rail every morning. Regional Rail in mostly a quiet train above ground for what it might seem like only privileged people take  because it takes 6 dollars way . Sarah is 25.

As seniors eager to walk across the stage in June at graduation, we often look at Capstones as another mandatory project that we need in order to get there. For what I look at as the most important project of my senior year, I wanted to be able to put forth a product that would be beneficial for my personal growth as well as the potential growth of my peers.

Initially, I did not know what exactly I wanted my final product to be, but I knew that i wanted my target group to be young females in high school. After pondering I came up with a concept of helping build self-esteem and unity among the girls in your community. Growing up I was bullied by some of the girls that I was surrounded by, but me being young and naive, I confused it with it being apart of the process of becoming cool. Coming into SLA allowed me to find genuine girls that cared, loved, and supported one another. My capstone was targeting the underclassman and attempting to get them to take part in like behaviors for the greater good of their community. Along with having special lunch dates with 9th and 10th grade students where we created a safe and non- judgemental space to talk freely to one another, I also put on a Ladies Who Lunch event where myself and about 15 other girls got together, enjoyed sweet treats, and got in tune with our inner selves to build each other up. My final product is a video documentation of my event followed by a Girl's Guide To Surviving High School. Although graduation is rapidly approaching, I was able to take away lessons from my events and hope to implement them into my college life.

For my capstone, I wanted to do something not only for students and teachers as well. So I decided to clean up Room 500 up on the fifth floor. Room 500 is a room where students hang out, teachers take students for quizzes and studying, or both students and teachers go to so they can use the printer there. The room was in a bad state, the walls were a pale green covered in graffiti and there were books and trash all over the floor.  I took it upon myself to take some time to clean up the room before I got to painting the walls to cover up the graffiti and moving shelves in for teachers. However, before I got to doing physical work, I collected data from students and teachers in order to get the result both parties wanted, as well as doing research. When it came to painting walls, light and dark colors worked best for ficus and prevented headaches and such. Bright colors that have an extra pop tend to strain the eyes and gives people headaches, which is what I was trying to avoid for students. Teachers wanted space to organize things as well as a space that is clean in order to hold tests and such. As soon as I got what I needed, I moved straight to the physical work which was finished in no time and the result came out really nice.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1il6lWFdozwLtbGNKL2g4-9DxshwRYwrFTi1jjhecyZ4/edit?usp=sharing

For my capstone, I wanted to learn more about music than I already had. I’ve been involved with music since I was 7, and have always been trying to immerse myself in it. What I originally wanted to do for my capstone was to be an intern at a recording studio. After learning I had to be 18 to become an intern, I waited before kickstarting my capstone. Once I turned 18, all the good internship spots were gone. So I had to create a new capstone.

Ultimate frisbee

For my capstone I held an ultimate frisbee clinic. I thought this would fit  my interest because after high school I want to continue to play ultimate frisbee and be able to make it to nationals. Everything leading up to the event was prep work for the event. I wanted to bring awareness to the athletic department at Science Leadership Academy. I focused on Ultimate Frisbee because I have been play for fours year and I thought it would be cool to teach others how to either get better at playing or learn how to play in general.  By doing this project I learned to be the leader. It was a challenge to keep my patience because not everyone would pay attention to what was being shown. Doing the prep work was probably the best part of this project. I was looking up drills to run and of course there are so many skill levels and it was hard to chose each drill because I wasn’t sure the skill level that would attend. Overall I think my capstone was a success because everyone who showed up had a lot of fun and as each day came to an end it was like a weight got lifted off of my shoulders.