The Project
About the Project
There were a few different reasons I chose my Senior Project. At the time when I had decided on it, around August, it had only been a few months since the state of Hawaii entered quarantine, and especially with summer break, students had had very little time to get accumulated to online learning, and I knew for a fact that there would be students who struggled because of it. Because of my Junior Project which involved assisting a teacher with an SAT prep class and offering tutoring to the students in it, I also had previous experience with tutoring middle school and high school students. I wanted to focus on middle schoolers for this project for a reason closely linked to my first reason; student's were going to struggle because of the pandemic. Out of all grade levels, middle school would be the worst place to miss out on the understanding of concepts, because those are the years where you learn the basics of the skills that you will continue to use for the rest of your educational career. My goal for this project was to try and help prevent that, at however small of a scale.
As it turned out, I ended up helping more middle school students than high school students, but this wasn't an absolute deviation from the project goal. I believe I was still able to help a select few students understand topics that they may have been eternally stuck on without outside interference. In total, I helped one student in middle school, three students in algebra I, and one student in geometry, where I met four of those students on multiple occasions. Once again, this doesn't seem like much, but perhaps if I can help those students, they in turn can help the people around them, and my small bit of assistance could create a butterfly effect that helps many people.
21st Century Skills
In this project, I used a huge amount of self-driving skills, communication skills, and interpersonal skills. Due to the fact that I completed an internship over the summer, I was not required to have a mentor for this project, so I did not. This entire project was orchestrated by myself with very little outside assistance. Only in finding students to tutor did I receive help from some of my teachers, but scheduling, communicating with students and parents, and of course, the act of tutoring itself, was all completed on my own. This project also involved a large amount of communication skills. Throughout the project, I encountered many instances were student's would simply not show up to our scheduled meetings, and I would not find out until several hours later that they never intended to show up. To prevent this, I started contacting students the morning before we were supposed to meet to confirm that we were still in fact meeting. Occasionally, the answer would be "no, we are not", but this only meant I would not have to sit in an empty zoom meeting, wondering if the student would arrive. Interpersonal skills were also a large part of this project, as I had to work together with students and parents to schedule our sessions, and of course, tutor the student. A big thing I've noticed involving this skill is there are many times where a student will not understand a concept not because it's particularly difficult, but because they were told that it is, not why it is that way. Once I was able to break down more difficult concepts into smaller pieces that the student could easily understand, almost always immediately they would come to understand the bigger concept itself. The reason I believe this falls under interpersonal skills is because it's a two part action; the student must convey that they do not understand the topic, and then I must explain that topic in a way which makes sense to them.
There were a few different reasons I chose my Senior Project. At the time when I had decided on it, around August, it had only been a few months since the state of Hawaii entered quarantine, and especially with summer break, students had had very little time to get accumulated to online learning, and I knew for a fact that there would be students who struggled because of it. Because of my Junior Project which involved assisting a teacher with an SAT prep class and offering tutoring to the students in it, I also had previous experience with tutoring middle school and high school students. I wanted to focus on middle schoolers for this project for a reason closely linked to my first reason; student's were going to struggle because of the pandemic. Out of all grade levels, middle school would be the worst place to miss out on the understanding of concepts, because those are the years where you learn the basics of the skills that you will continue to use for the rest of your educational career. My goal for this project was to try and help prevent that, at however small of a scale.
As it turned out, I ended up helping more middle school students than high school students, but this wasn't an absolute deviation from the project goal. I believe I was still able to help a select few students understand topics that they may have been eternally stuck on without outside interference. In total, I helped one student in middle school, three students in algebra I, and one student in geometry, where I met four of those students on multiple occasions. Once again, this doesn't seem like much, but perhaps if I can help those students, they in turn can help the people around them, and my small bit of assistance could create a butterfly effect that helps many people.
21st Century Skills
In this project, I used a huge amount of self-driving skills, communication skills, and interpersonal skills. Due to the fact that I completed an internship over the summer, I was not required to have a mentor for this project, so I did not. This entire project was orchestrated by myself with very little outside assistance. Only in finding students to tutor did I receive help from some of my teachers, but scheduling, communicating with students and parents, and of course, the act of tutoring itself, was all completed on my own. This project also involved a large amount of communication skills. Throughout the project, I encountered many instances were student's would simply not show up to our scheduled meetings, and I would not find out until several hours later that they never intended to show up. To prevent this, I started contacting students the morning before we were supposed to meet to confirm that we were still in fact meeting. Occasionally, the answer would be "no, we are not", but this only meant I would not have to sit in an empty zoom meeting, wondering if the student would arrive. Interpersonal skills were also a large part of this project, as I had to work together with students and parents to schedule our sessions, and of course, tutor the student. A big thing I've noticed involving this skill is there are many times where a student will not understand a concept not because it's particularly difficult, but because they were told that it is, not why it is that way. Once I was able to break down more difficult concepts into smaller pieces that the student could easily understand, almost always immediately they would come to understand the bigger concept itself. The reason I believe this falls under interpersonal skills is because it's a two part action; the student must convey that they do not understand the topic, and then I must explain that topic in a way which makes sense to them.
Evidence of Project
Final Presentation
Argumentative Essay
Argumentative Essay