Capstone Project: Ellie

“Every child deserves a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best they can possibly be.” Rita F. Pierson

Through a series of Google forms, Ellie collected data from the families: address, food preferences, number of family members and any dietary restrictions, as well as a volunteer form to coordinate donations and timing of work. Winter storms delayed the original date, but a week later students and faculty met at the high school to prepare and deliver six nutritious meals. Volunteers also made care packages that included hand decorated cards, state park passes, family board games and healthy sides and desserts.

Not only did this project impact local families, but it also planted the seed of serving others with her peers. Ellie plans to help underclassmen coordinate a meal train next year to serve foster families in Noble County while she is home for winter break. What was her take away from this project? “It was amazing to see everyone come together and put so much time and effort into meals for people they don’t even know, just out of the goodness of their hearts. It was an amazing experience that neither my volunteers nor I will ever forget.”

I know that if I saw someone doing a project like this as a middle schooler, it would have meant the absolute world to me.”

Mirrors and windows....while most of us think of parts of our homes when we hear these terms, to the LGBTQIA+ community, it has a more far reaching meaning. The mirrors are the opportunites to see themselves reflected back in media; print, photographs or video. The term window refers to the ability to see others who may not look or act the same way as themselves. As a queer young adult, Alanna Woitalla, felt isolated and foreign when she read her favorite books. Where were the characters who struggled with sexual identity or questioned their gender? The mainstream media is not always welcoming to people who do not fit a certain mold or lifestyle. And there it was, the catalyst for her senior Capstone project; creating a collection of queer representation in literature. This was no small undertaking. Alanna can generally read a 300400 page novel in a few hours, but painstakingly documenting each of her established critera meant an individual book could take weeks to pour over. Using content analysis that included areas such as: Instances of flirtatous thought, instances of discussions of queer identities and instances of homophobia were just a few of the twelve criteria Alanna created. While her original goal was much more ambitious than the four books she completed, she shared that the process was much more complicated