For my capstone project I taught a mini-course to freshmen at SLA about basic bicycle maintenance skills. We met once weekly for a total of seven classes, and over the duration of the course the students learned everything from the names of individual bike parts, to doing mechanical repairs or maintenance on complete bikes with industry tools. Each student is now capable of doing any basic maintenance they could need at home, like fixing flat tires, installing brake pads, or tuning their shifting.

I chose this project because it made valuable use of one of my most developed skillsets. I am very passionate about bikes - I donate kids bikes in my neighbourhood, I fix those bikes for free, and I’ve turned bikes into a means of entrepreneurship for myself selling and repairing bikes. To me, being able to help these students become more confident working on their bikes is an important part of continuing to use my abilities to help my community.

Example of lesson slideshow and pictures of demo-frames shown above.

See my Annotated Bibliography here - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MbPHnKCZSaiJzPaFViC6rMdwzfERfaWRRypNDX6keSg/edit?usp=sharing

Philadelphia is often defined by cold statistics rather than the vibrant and joyous nature of its people. While having and investigating data is essential for understanding our gun violence crisis, this lacks the “soul” required for true and change making advocacy. The CornerStone is a collaborative zine designed to bridge that gap, shifting the narrative from utter devastation, to youth driven agency and resistance. This ten month process involved extensive outreach to our communities, editorial strategy and intense formatting. Despite challenges in submission rates, persistence and grit resulted in a high quality, creative, impactful, and aesthetic end product. The final 34 page product is a meticulously curated collection of art of all mediums, journalism, and personal narratives. The CornerStone matters because we are more than the numbers on a headline. We are the story - and we are the solution.

Below is my Annotated Bibliography: