Journals Entries
Journal 1
My first day as a Senior
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal entry 1
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11/14/19
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Coming into senior year I was stressing out a little knowing that this is the year where I have so many things to do. I have to work on Capstone, the SATs, school, and college applications and essays. I’m kind of doubtful of whether or not taking AP Calculus AB, ECE English, AP Physics, and ECE Urban studies was a good idea. After the first few weeks, I was starting to feel a little bit better knowing I have Mrs. Dionne to keep me on track and always reminding me of important things to do. I personally looked up important dates and things to do for college like FAFSA. As for my capstone, I had no idea what to do. I spoke to my dad about my problem and he suggested to help out the kids in the library since they are the future. I thought about it and thought it was a brilliant idea. I already have the connections and a good reputation in the library so it wouldn’t be all that difficult. I wanted to think of another potential capstone idea, but couldn't think of something people hadn’t done. So I settled with the library idea. I needed to go to the library and talk to the person who let me do my service learning hours at the library. I remembered seeing a UCONN student do mini STEM classes during the summer, but they didn’t seem to be popular or interesting. So what I decided to do was take over the idea but make it even better and add tutoring. I proposed the idea to my now mentor, Mrs. Williams. She liked the idea and was very interested since she wanted me to do something similar during the summer. We settled with doing 4 STEM classes one for every part of STEM and tutoring would be done every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The difficult thing for us was to get me some time because the library already had their schedules filled with other activities. In the end, we got everything to work out. I’m a bit nervous about giving classes, but I'm okay with doing tutoring since I have done tutoring in school.
Journal 2
My first day doing my Capstone
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal entry 1
11/14/19
My first day doing my capstone was kind of awkward. The library had an activity before I came in and everybody had just been there and they left. So when I got there, there were 2 people there. The staff told me that maybe some people might come later on around 4:00. I had gotten there at 3 so I started homework and then a staff came and I asked me if I wanted any food. I went to the room where they were offering the food and found out that some classmates of mine were also doing their capstone. It was very similar to mine but they were working with high schoolers who needed help with English. They asked me to volunteer in their activity and I agreed. It was a good thing I did because I got to see how they managed their sort of tutoring. They had an activity where everybody talked about themselves to the group in English. They had a beach ball with numbers on every color. They had a poster with questions that corresponded to the colors. So I thought that was an interesting idea that I could possibly include in my capstone. It was around 4 when I went back to the children's area so as I was told before there were more people coming into the library. I wanted to focus on presenting myself and my capstone to families. So that’s what I did and will do for a couple of days until I start to get people interested. I got to meet a few families and some were more interested than others. The second day I went the same thing happened people came in at 4. So I talked to a few families but I saw a kid (Dasies) I saw before in my community service hours at the library.
Journal 3
My STEM activities
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal entry 3
12/23/19
I did my first STEM activity today it went okay. I was exactly what I expected not that many people, but just enough to make it through the activity. I didn’t have any permission slips to take pictures of kids trying to hold the most pennies with the boats they made. I got the list of the children’s names and pennies their boat could hold. Many thought it was going to be an oragami class where I was going to teach them how to make an actual boat out of aluminum foil. The next class I had was on the 30th of November. It went a lot better in my opinion because I didn’t have to go around asking people to come over and try the activity. Everybody came to the activity on their own. It was very interesting because I thought nobody was going to want and look at microscopes. To my surprise the children were very interested in it. It involved a group of suspects and some residue they left behind. They had to look at the residue and find the book stealer. They had the residue to compare to salt, sugar, baking soda, flour, baby powder, and garlic powder. Most of them had their parents help them out, which was nice to see. I kind of let the children do it themselves to give them some liberty over what they did. I stepped in every time I saw them starting to get confused. I did also did a STEM class on the 7th of December it was on roller coaster. All the boys liked it alot they all helped each other make a big roller coaster out of foam. They used a marble as the cart and a cup as the end of the roller coaster. There was one girl who was participating with her mom they also did very well. It was an overall amazing time because everybody was helping each other and having a good time.
Journal 4
My first day at Ropkins
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal Entry 4
2/5/20
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I never went to the Ropkins library, because it’s on the other side of Hartford, but I went there to meet Mrs. Linda yesterday to talk about my Capstone. When I got there I saw that the library is connected to SANDS, a school that is for Pre-K-6th grade. When I walked in I was greeted by a familiar face from the Downtown Library. At first, I didn’t recognize her. I asked if I could speak to Mrs. Linda she told me where she was. As we spoke she introduced me to the kids I was going to tutor and be interacting with. I also got to meet Mr. Anwar. He is a retired librarian and he is Mrs. Linda’s mentor. This means I have two people I can talk to about my Capstone or anything surrounding my Capstone. My hours are Monday Wednesday, and Thursday from 3:30-5:00 pm. When I was saying my goodbyes she introduced me to the familiar face and a security guard. Turns out that the familiar face was also working at the Central Library. That’s when I remembered seeing her at the library. They have a pretty good library. The place is smaller than the old library I volunteered at. But they make up for it with the vibe of the place. The vibe is very energetic. I went today for the first time and it was very fun. Some of the kids were energetic and some were a little under the weather, but that didn’t stop them from celebrating the 100th day of school. To celebrate they made a string necklace with 100 fruit loops. At first, they were counting on their own and then once they started to get around 60 or more they started to ask for me or Mrs. Linda to count for them. I counted around 5 or 6 times all the way up to 100.
Journal 5
Snacks and the compromise
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal Entry 5
2/7/20
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Imagine coming into a library and 20 little kids get so happy to see you. It’s the most heartwarming thing ever. They were coloring a quilt for black history month poster they were going to display on the board. John the little 2nd grader I helped the day before was there. After finishing coloring they had snack time they got to choose what they wanted. It was either some pita chips or a granola bar. Most of them opted for the Chocolate granola bar. Nobody wanted the vanilla granola bar. After that they had time to do what they wanted since there were 30 minutes left before they were getting picked up. Some of them had homework so they went to the table we were coloring and had snacks before. John didn’t finish coloring so he worked on that for a few minutes. There were two sisters that were there yesterday. I remember one of the sisters offered me her cookie the day before. I politely declined since it was her cookie. One of them forgot her folder in school so she couldn't work on it. The other sister was doing math homework. It was about fractions. She was a little bit confused at first but then she saw the example problem and remembered how to do the problems. John finished his coloring and then came over to the table and started to do his homework packet. He had to add and subtract. He had a little bit of trouble with subtracting. He would count back 72,71,60,59 and so on so I corrected him saying that it’s 72,71,70. Then he was like “Ohh yea”. He looked tired and he told me he was bored. It was his last page of homework and he had two columns of math so I told him to do the last 4 problems of the first column and then he could do the last column at home. He looked tired so that really brightened up his mood. He finished and went to the computers after about 10 minutes he got picked up from the library. I went over to Mrs. Linda and she asked me how it went.
Journal 6
Mood Brightner and Cheese Puffs
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal Entry 6
2/11/20
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The ride home from school was boring and I fell asleep. I didn’t really feel like going to Capstone because I was tired. Especially with the weather being cloudy and rainy, but I decided to go anyways. When I got there I was in a somewhat neutral mood. I walked into the library, the kids weren’t doing an activity together they were all doing their homework. Mrs. Linda told me that Elon needed help with homework. So I went over to Elon, a 2nd grader, and I asked him if I could help. Elon started telling me about his homework and shortly after Jan, Dari, Mcquan, and Anasty came over to ask for help on their homework. I don't know what it was but my mood instantly got super happy to be there. I helped them all with their homework and then it was time for snacks. I went to the backroom to get their snacks and Mrs. Linda told me that I should pass them out this time. So basically I have them all wash their hands. Then I call them one by one to decide what they want as a snack. It’s either a granola bar, pita chips, cheese puffs, or heart-shaped cookies. A funny thing happened, so I decided to be a little generous and give them a little bit extra of what they wanted. Honesty is a kindergartener and she wanted some cheese puffs, so I gave her a good amount of cheese puffs. Everybody finished and she was the only one left and I asked her if I gave her too much she was like “yeah”. I thought she was going to be able to finish the cheese puffs but it turns out I gave her too many cheese puffs.
Journal 7
Sad Ending
Main Highlight
Freddy Fabian
Capstone
Journal entry 7
5/6/2020
Well, we are about a month away from graduation and we are still in quarantine. I got informed that we are not going back to school. A part of me is okay with it and the other isn’t because I have two AP tests to study for and reviewing and learning by myself isn’t the same as having a teacher there to explain. The upside to staying home is that I can wake up late. Staying asleep later than 8 makes me feel unproductive and really sets my mindset for the day. That’s when I notice how much I procrastinate if I don’t have a solid deadline for things or if it’s up to me to do the work. My capstone came to a complete halt because of the virus. The only thing left to do is fix up my website. I miss those little guys they are always up to something and excited to tell me what they did in school or what game they want me to play with them. It would have been amazing to have a proper goodbye it was right after my last day of the week that school got canceled. I still had a few activities I wanted to do with them. I wanted to go over the activities I did in the library with them because they would be really interested in those activities. That’s why I would recommend tutoring as a capstone for the seniors of next year, it’s an amazing project anyone can do. They just have to be a good role model and know how to interact with the little ones. Even the more reserved seniors, it gives them an opportunity to open up and be a bit more social. I definitely saw myself open up a lot more and watched myself be more comfortable talking to other people I don’t know. I saw this right away when I presented myself to the staff and the little ones for the first time. It really gives you a real-world experience on how to properly present your self to others. This is definitely going to help me in the future when applying to jobs, going to interviews, or when looking for internships. In the end, there wasn’t a part of capstone that was negative it was all educational and very helpful. For some seniors, they have a connection to their projects and I saw that some are really going in on their project trying to make a change in the world.
