Bryn Mesquitta

This poster in the English hallway explains the capstone project, outlines its benefits, and provides examples of research topics.

For all of this year’s and subsequent DHS seniors, a research-based capstone project has been added to their English credit requirement. For the past three years, English teachers Jesse Grieve and John Caron have been trialing and piloting this new project for seniors. The new senior capstone project requires students to choose a research question and, at the end of the year-long process, create a presentation that answers it thoroughly. Students can choose any topic and question to pursue, with the hope that this freedom will have them invested and give their all into this assignment.

All presentations should be around eight to 10 minutes long with students wearing professional presentation attire. Seniors will present their projects on May 18 and May 21 in two special advisory periods with two randomly chosen teachers scoring their presentation. Each room will have five or six students presenting, with advisory running from 9:30-10:30 on both days. Half of the students will present on the first day, and the other half on the second day.

The project is aiming for students to explore something that is deeply personal and important to them, and it should demonstrate their ability to find answers to questions, as well as their ability to communicate their findings to the audience.

DHS principal Ryan Shea shared the importance of this project. “It’s meant to show the value of a high school diploma from Dartmouth High,” he said. “We want people to say, ‘Your value of your high school diploma means something,’ and people look at that with a level of respect and desire.”

“The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) wants schools to have a promise to their community that students leave school with certain skills,” Shea added. For Dartmouth Public Schools, that promise is the district’s Portrait of a Learner. According to the document, students should from DHS with skills in critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. They should also have the ability to be a continuous learner, contributing citizen, and collaborator.

“The project really targets all of those [skills],” Shea said. “This is really one of those opportunities for our students to show that they can do that.”

This decision to have seniors create a capstone wasn’t made last minute. Although AP English students were told in October that they would also be completing the projects, Shea and English Department lead teacher Will Higgins explained how the idea for this project is at least three or four years in the making.

“[Jesse] Grieve started this about four years ago,” said Shea. “Then for the last three senior classes, we’ve done a version of the senior capstone, improving [it] every year.”

For senior students in AP English Literature and Composition, their capstone assignment deviates slightly from the common project. Students must choose a novel that they will explore with a thoughtful, philosophical question that is addressed throughout the book. The question from the novel will connect to an overall concept that the student pursues for their project.

This project, although slightly frustrating for AP Research students who are already involved in research projects of their own, is meant to be the culmination of skills that students have been developing throughout their K-12 career. The AP Research project was primarily research-driven, while the capstone will be focused on research, interviews and personal experiences.

This change in policy has reasoning behind it, contrary to the belief of some irritated seniors. Sadie Gifford, a student currently in AP Lang, thinks that “students are not prepared for [the project],” believing that “not many people will put in effort.” She views the project as “a waste of time,” as does Clara Gelinas, who is currently enrolled in AP Lit.

“You don’t need research skills if you’re not going into research in college,” Gelinas said.

Siena Parsons, a former AP Research student currently enrolled in AP Lit, feels she is “not really learning a lot from [the capstone project].”

Although opinions may change as the project takes shape, many seniors enrolled in AP English classes are indeed against the new project. AP Lit student Elena Sobran, who previously scored a five in AP Research, described the current project as “annoying.” She finds dissatisfaction with the project because she also has to balance it with “a rigorous AP Literature class.”

This opinion was echoed by several students. AP Lit student Juliana Carrico mentioned the difficulty of reading “an entire book and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at the same time.” Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a core text in the DHS AP Lit curriculum. Students are currently reading it in class and for homework, on top of their work for the capstone.

Nonetheless, the project is not going away. “I think it’s a valuable enough experience that everyone should participate,” Higgins said. He went on to mention that the capstone project will alleviate some equity issues between students who previously had to complete a research project and those who did not complete one in their senior year.

“It’s probably coming up sometime in the future in that it will probably be tied to graduation somehow,” Higgins said. “It’s going to be a graduation requirement.” He, along with many teachers, are excited to see this project become a staple of DHS.

“When we first did this, maybe three or four years ago, the first people who went through it were kind of stressed,” Higgins explained. “Then the second group was like, ‘All right, this is what we do,’ and then the third group was like, ‘This is actually kind of cool.’ And now, this year, for those students, they’re just doing it.”

“I’m genuinely proud of this project,” said Shea. “I really am. I think it’s a really great culmination of what we do.” 

Seniors already have a notably more stressful year than other grades, with lots of college decisions to make, and the creators of the project have not turned a blind eye to this. 

“I know there’s a lot of negativity from AP students about this,” Higgins said. “I understand, that’s totally human nature. People are telling them that they’re going to do more work. If you come in here and tell me I have to do more work, there’s no way [I’d be happy].”

Teachers and students alike know that, in general, change is frustrating or even scary. There’s hope from both that, in the future, the project will become an integral part of the DHS curriculum and could even become something that students can look forward to in their last year of high school.

“There are a lot of people that have had these projects, and this is a really great way to express our knowledge in a multifaceted way: written, orally, and visually,” Shea says. “All of this comes together to show the value of a high school diploma at Dartmouth High.”