Written by Andrew Butler, Upper School English Department Chair; Capstone Teacher
What an exciting day for some of our oldest and youngest Scheck Hillel students! After completing a unit on success for their Capstone Senior Writing Seminar, seniors completed a creative summative assessment by writing an original children's book that teaches one key to success. Seniors studied various examples of self-help literature, including Dale Carnegie's classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Ben Franklin's The Art of Virtue. After revising and illustrating their book, the seniors visited several Juda and Maria Diener Lower School classes to read their story and ask the kids what lessons they learned.
As our seniors near the end of their Scheck Hillel careers, they took a powerful moment to reflect on where they came from and how much they have grown and matured over their time at Hillel. At the same time, our Lower School students began to dream of the future, when they will be the leaders and giants on campus.
Scheck Hillel’s Grade 11-12 Capstone Years offer a unique program designed to prepare and transition students into college and today’s global society. This comprehensive two-year span represents a culminating, transformative experience for each student to help each attain what Tony Wagner (Wagner, 2008) describes as the “21st century skills” necessary for competitive citizenship:
• critical thinking and problem solving
• collaboration across networks and leadership by influence
• agility and adaptability
• initiative and entrepreneurialism
• effective oral and written communication
• ability to access and analyze information
• curiosity and imagination
One of the most exciting components of the Capstone experience is the Senior Seminar. Each student meets daily with core Capstone faculty and engages in a series of 2-3 week units addressing Big Questions – topics that transcend academic areas – through multiple academic lenses. Each seminar addresses the same question, albeit in different ways.
• What does it mean to make a good decision?
• What will prove to be the most valuable resource of the 21st century?
• What does it mean to be “healthy?”
• Where do I belong?
• What does it mean to “know” something, and how do we know what we know?
• What is power?
• What effect does technology have on identity?
Class-based activity focuses on a seminar-style approach (using discussion, textual analysis, experiential activity and skills acquisition) to exploring the unit’s Big Question and mastering the literacy tools essential to furthering their investigations in this area.
