Global Scholars Capstone Project

    I entered Polytechnic's middle school in 7th grade, which marked the beginning of an entirely new period in my life. In the final global scholars project of my high-school career, I came back full circle to present to a 6th grade class full of kids my age when I entered Poly. It was a surreal experience just being back in a middle school classroom, where I used to spend so much of my time not too many years ago. Another difference this time around was instead of sitting in a chair and listening to the teacher present the lesson, I was the one providing the information to these students. 

    Jack Adkins, my partner in the major grant proposal writing project, and I had decided that continuing to expand upon our initial project by closer connecting the Miry's List community and our own Poly community would prove to be the best summative global scholar's project we could do. We initially determined that the target audience could be globally minded groups, like the breaking boundaries club or another outreach council, but a unique opportunity to present to lower schoolers presented itself. This proved to be undoubtably the best possible audience for our presentation because these students had not only just recently studied the Miry's List organization and mission in one of their classes, but we could also work to instill globally minded qualities in them, which would last through the entirety of their high-school career. 

    Once this collaboration was organized, we constructed a google slides presentation that included both our brainstorming process for our grant proposal, and recommendations for becoming involved in global scholars, Miry's List, and the volunteer community in general. During the presentation, the students were incredibly receptive, which was heart warming because they understood the pressing manner of issues of immigration and ensuring the wellbeing of others in a difficult situation. They participated by asking questions relevant to the presentation, and expressing a genuine curiosity and interest in becoming involved. We gave them suggestions for ways to volunteer at Miry's List, and even included their parents in our outreach by sending them all a correspondence explaining the purpose of our presentation, and opportunities for their children to participate. However, the most rewarding part of the entire process was not summing up our grant project, it was the letters of appreciation we received from every student in the classroom during our presentation. They were all individualized, explaining their appreciation for our work and effort in helping out, and their interest in continuing that progress in the coming years.