What's the right way to do the capstone project?

 What is the right way to do the capstone project? This is a question that we have been considering for a few years now since the state of Connecticut put this requirement in place beginning with the Class of 2023. A small group of my colleagues and I started this when we were fortunate enough to be part of a pilot program when we first began having every student in our class have a device. Now it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine a high school classroom without devices. It also happened to be my last year in the classroom. 

    Our team, that was made up of a group of core subject area teachers for the ninth grade and myself as the computer class teacher and technology instructional leader that co-taught with our Library Media Specialist (LMS). We piloted, as part of the pilot program, a student portfolio system where we provided students with the choice of developing their own Google site or using a template that we developed and shared with students using a Google add-on. What was great about this, is that the students all had the same teachers so we were able to help them find showcase pieces to upload to the portfolio as we progressed through the pilot program in each of our classes. Our goal was to have them reflect on these pieces and to ultimately see growth over their time in high school. We also shared this pilot with our staff in a PD session and had them build their own portfolio's either using the template we provided or develop their own. At the time, much of this work was focused on NEASC work. Our pilot team, however, being a powerhouse of forward thinkers wanted to take this work beyond a requirement of our accreditation committee. 

    We continued the work in our little group after this school year, six years ago now, in stops and starts, particularly as Connecticut put this new graduation requirement on each school. Many schools are just doing a check-list of sorts based on their Student Success Plans. We, however, wanted to do more and believed in doing more and showing that our students are more than the test scores that have become so important in education today. None of this is to say that I don't believe that test scores and standardized testing does not have a place in education today. I do believe that it does. I just also believe that we need to have a comprehensive suite of assessments where each student can see their growth beyond a test score in just a few core areas. For me, and I believe for this amazing team that I have been so blessed to work with, we want students to see their growth towards becoming the graduates from our school that will go out and make the world a better place through more than traditional tests. As I wrote about in my previous post, I believe the Portrait of the Graduate is the lens which drives this work and ultimately the students we want to help launch into the world when they graduate from high school after 13 years in our school system. 

    As we have gone through many iterations and had just started having our students put display or showcase pieces into their portfolios before our school shut down in 2020, this past week, we re-launched this exciting work with our juniors. They began the work in our FLIGHT program which a school counselor and LMS co-teach. In this class, students develop their portfolio's as a Google site that they design and must include a few requirements. These requirements have changed over the evolution in our thinking about the portfolio or capstone that we want to ultimately support leading students to choosing a senior internship site or project through the development of their own Portrait of the Graduate. Students will select showcase pieces around each of the districts approved characteristics or traits of the POG. These include: 

    Our launch this week included sharing with students the state 1 credit graduation requirement for the capstone, sharing with them the superintendents vision of the POG, an outline of what we accomplish each month during our dedicated advisory time and having students locate their portfolio's that some have not looked at since freshman year FLIGHT class. We also have new students that entered our school and we will work to get them caught up by having our LMS's work with them during advisory since I asked that they not be assigned to groups to support the effort in getting these kiddo's to start the portfolio. Starting in November, we have mapped out for each month an opportunity to focus on selecting display pieces for each of these characteristics or traits that each student feels best demonstrate their ability to meet this strand. Our committee felt it was important to provide open ended opportunities to students to select these pieces that can be related to core academics and/or not. Some examples may include class projects, five paragraph essays, podcasts or newscasts students develop, video's of them playing music pieces or footage from an athletics game. In November students will begin by redesigning their homepages and updating them to resemble who they are now, versus who they were as freshman just starting high school. Students may choose to do this by writing, creating a video, podcast, developing an app, etc. Each of the following months we plan to go more in-depth on each of the characteristics by having our video team develop pieces that explain each of the characteristics/traits in student friendly ways and then having students complete reflections on their growth and why they selected their showcase piece to best demonstrate themselves as a future graduate of Wilton High School. 

    One example, might be having our awesome superintendent sit down to a taped dinner conversation with his twins that are currently in one of our elementary schools to explain to them what a self navigating learner is, along with their older siblings which are in our middle and high school. By having each of the Smith's talk through this as a family, our video crew will display different ways that students may choose to show how they navigate the complex learning environment of today to become self navigating learners either for class projects, athletics, music, video games or any other passions that Dr. Smith's children have. We will then ask students in advisory to reflect on this and select their showcase pieces that they will upload into their portfolio along with a reflection. Our team also built scaffolds for this, including sentence starters for the reflections to support the range of learners we have in our school. 

    This work truly excites me and the team I am working with is truly amazing! I can't wait to see how we continue to iterate and support our students to develop their own POG to help them launch into the world and display their learning in ways that are meaningful to them.