For my Capstone, I did workshops at my old school with one of my closest friends that I grew up with Vaughn Matthews who attend Center City campus, A. B. Day Elementary School is where I first met him. Realizing now that I'm a senior I often think, "What if I knew some of the things I do now before entering school?" I believe that just somethings would be better and could avoid unnecessary problems, that is what inspired me to work with kids in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade my definition of collaboration. In the process of completing my capstone, It included weeks of research, planning, and communication. I did research on the learning styles of each grade group. I also researched what things they were interested in, so I knew what topic I would do for each workshop, and ideas for icebreakers to do before the workshop. With planning, in my calendar, I marked the topics of each workshop in each day, and the class room number that I would visit. I did workshops like high school expectations for 8th graders, and music for 6th graders. Communication was a thing that was a challenge with my capstone. The principal and vice principal of A. B. Day were very busy, and they had trouble replying back to my emails about what days I would go in.

Overall, I had fun doing my capstone. One thing that I learned is how to handle kids that misbehave. One of the 8th grade classes that I visited, was full of kids that were really bad, and I was able to do calm them down and get them to talk. It seem like the deeper I got into the lesson the more kids became involved, especially when I took the time to share new experiences and stories. I believe Here are some pictures of the high school expectations workshop with the 8th graders.

Bibliography:

The first source I found was an article called “Teaching Choreography - 4Dancers”  The citation can be found below. The article started by comparing a dance choreographer to a teacher.  This article is helpful to us because it explains the difference between choreographers and teachers.  It helped me to understand how although Serenity and I may be good dancers/choreographers teaching it to another group of kids is totally different. The article helped us out by explaining some techniques that can be used while teaching a dance.

"Teaching Choreography - 4Dancers." 2 Apr. 2013, http://www.4dancers.org/2013/04/teaching-choreography/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2017.

For my capstone project I decided to teach an art mini course after school on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday I prepared a lesson plan for the freshman and taught them, not how to draw, but how to appreciate the art they made. I bought basic supplies like markers and paper and we would sit down and free draw on most days. This gave the students an opportunity to express themselves and share that with the rest of the class without being judged.

There were two reasons why I decided to teach a mini course. The first one was because I wanted to learn about teaching and get the experience of what it would be like to teach a class. Secondly I wanted to design an art class that wasn't traditional. Instead of teaching students basic techniques like how to shade a circle, my goal was to teach them how to appreciate the work that they created.

For my capstone I chose to do a presentation on Autism awareness. What is Autism? a mental condition, present from early childhood, characterized by difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and in using language and abstract concepts. I chose to do a presentation on Autism awareness because I wanted to define Autism in a more human way and I became interested in learning more about Autism because during my junior year I was a intern at The Center for Autism and I had a wonderful experience. Before I started my internship there I was a little nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. I thought the kids were going to be nerve-racking. I got to build relationships with the students and in a way I felt so happy being around them. As I learned more about Autism I realized not enough people are aware about it and a lot of people have this stereotype about autistic children which is not true. While doing this project I learned so much more about Autism. I also aquired healthy relationships with amazing people I met. So here is a presentation about what Autism is and the different myths that there are and a mother sharing how passionate she is about her son who has Autism. I went through the process of interviewing people and sitting down with the Founder and CEO of Digitability a software to help people with cognitive disabilities such as Autism to help with social development.

Bibliography

https://docs.google.com/a/slabeeber.org/document/d/1GcS4qxOiDtHzkTsbiuNvEtS7eeXFjuKtUyTdj9v4gVk/edit?usp=sharing