• Given the chance, students will shine

  • One by one they came in, dressed in fine clothes and trying their best to hide their nerves.
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    The seniors of Bear Creek High School, some 350 strong, each spent seven to 10 minutes telling judges - mostly strangers - about their Capstone Project, a yearlong assignment that remains a graduation requirement at the school in north Stockton.
    The Lodi Unified School District has done away with requirement at its high schools because of budget constraints, but English teachers at Bear Creek fought to keep the Capstone Project in play. They've won the battle the last two years, but know they will have to continue their crusade every year. They'll do so for the sake of future students.
    It's a worthy fight against an ever-demanding structure in which schools are beholden to decisions made by bureaucrats and politicians who, for the most part, haven't spent a day in a K-12 classroom since they graduated. Teachers must have a more prominent say in what happens in the classroom, which makes winning the right to keep the Capstone Project in place vital. It is much more than a moral victory.
    It's a chance to teach morals. And self awareness. And discipline. And community involvement. And time management. And writing. And public speaking.
    The project requires seniors to research a subject of their own choosing and find a way to interact with that subject. They log a required number of hours devoted to their cause. They write a report with specific guidelines about its length and even the size of the paper's margins, and turn in a complete notebook of their activities. They complete the project with an oral presentation about what they did and what they learned.
    Once they were done, when they'd all stood in a classroom and told their tales to volunteers like me and my colleague, Keith Reid, they celebrated in the cafeteria with cake and punch, high fives and hugs.
    English teacher Laura Brooke, who solicited volunteer judges for Wednesday's oral presentations, gets teary-eyed talking about the day.
    "One student came to me and said, 'Now I know why we did this,' " Brooke said.
    More beautiful words were never spoken to a teacher.
    For the graduating seniors, the Capstone is a challenge. It requires planning and thought. It asks them to step beyond the usual homework, to give something of themselves. It results in a senior year with something more meaningful to look back on than cool autumn nights at Podesto Field and dances in the gym.
    Some students, obviously, will take much more from the project than others. Some of them produced projects on the self-serving side: a boy who chronicled his weight lifting, another who trained his puppy. Others reflected genuine interest in a given subject: a wonderfully researched report on Auguste Rodin by a young woman who created a hand - out of baling wire - that was inspired by the master sculptor's "Burghers of Calais." Two other girls turned their own love of music into studies on the impact music can have on healing. One of them volunteered to teach music classes to elementary school students.
    One girl's love of her dog prompted her to study the laws against animal fighting and to volunteer at local animal shelters. During her time she saw some of the dogs she'd cared for adopted by families.
    In another room, judges saw a student who wanted to solve the crisis of rising gas prices, so he built an engine that runs on hydrogen fuel. He used a combination of propane and hydrogen with carbon dioxide in an impressive generator.
    Another focused on art in public places, building a Styrofoam and stucco bear - a Bear Creek Bruin - around a cannon made in the school's engineering academy. The cannon shoots T-shirts. The project is an impressive display of what creative art and engineering can do when put together.
    Another student researched historically black colleges, and has chosen to attend Tuskegee University in Alabama. This student learned about the top historically black colleges, visited several of them on her own time, and reported back to three different high schools in the region about what she learned.
    There were other students who also reached out to local schools. One student created a club at a local middle school for biracial students.
    Their level of commitment varied, as did the quality of their work. That's to be expected. They could not, though, successfully complete this project without learning something about themselves. Some might have uncovered a compassion and interest in others they'd never before explored. Or, they were able to act upon that capacity for kindness in a way that before was unavailable to them.
    My colleague told me of a student who raised $2,000 for a girl she'd met in the intensive care unit of a local hospital who is in need of a liver transplant.
    "What started as a look into the nursing profession turned into a heartwarming human interest project that helped a family face the huge financial burden of a complicated medical procedure," Reid said.
    It also served as an inspiration, a reminder of the great things young people can do if they're asked to try, or merely given the opportunity to take a chance.
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