Over this past final semester of their time at St. Louis U. High, the senior class has been finishing off the year with their English capstone projects. In five unique classes all built to touch upon seniors’ English skills while introducing them to new concepts, the capstone project and course is meant to be the realization of a senior’s time in the English department and overall time at SLUH.

For the second year now, seniors have had the opportunity to pick their own classes, choosing a course which will help them dive deeper into a specific topic or introduce them to something completely new. With five different classes, the seniors have a breadth of options including Documentary Film, Poetry, Journalism, Fiction, and Podcast.

 

Documentary Film

Taught by: David Callon, PhD, and Terry Quinn

Documentary Film is all about building off of the literary English skills which students have been developing over the course of their four years at SLUH and applying them to a new medium: videography and film.

This year, with the introduction of the new library item rental program, students were given film kits which attach to their cellphones. These attachments consisted of tools like a stabilizer, microphone, and a mini tripod.

In addition to learning the basic technical skills of filming, students learn to paint a message for viewers.

“It’s all about the shot, the image, the scene — knowing how to draw an audience close to reality in the same way that we learn to do that through concrete detail,” said Callon. “And so some of that is familiarizing people early with how to use a camera to tell a story.”

The course starts with camera fundamentals and how to properly frame shots, then shifts to a focus on interviewing people in a documentary style in order to reach all sides of the real story being told.

“Doc film was a great experience for me,” said senior Jack Auer. “I enjoyed it because it was amazing to see my many hours of work culminate in a perfected product that I could show others.”

For the last project of the year, students created a documentary about some influential aspect of their own life, adding a personal touch to their work while allowing for some reflection as they come into a new episode of their lives.

 

Poetry

Taught by: Justin Danzy

Beginning with an introduction to “poetry school” and diving immediately into works like “The Poet at Seventeen,” the Poetry capstone is one immersed in the actual stuff of the literary craft. Bite-sized lessons over the course of a couple days covering various tools like associations or sound allowed for a focused semester on becoming better readers and writers of poetry.

With each lesson, students would write a poem which uses the lesson’s tool in the crux of the poem, giving students the freedom to explore their own creativity while still remaining attentive to the tool being taught.

“My favorite (poem) was the revision one that we did,” said senior Wilson Scher. “We took a poem that we had previously written, and we radically revised it to be something different. So I took one of my poems, and I changed the form, I changed the content. It was a lot of fun.”

After the end of each set of classes focusing on that skill, students would circle up and read all their poems aloud to each other at the end of the lesson period.

“It’s good getting to hear not what I wrote and what these professional poets wrote, but what my fellow classmates are writing,” said Scher.

Through these readings, students grew not only in their skills but also in their understanding of each other. For one assignment, students were instructed to write a political poem. In a senior class often divided politically, the idea of writing such a poem and reading it aloud in a room with students from near-opposite political view points can be daunting yet informing.

“It’s important for students to take this course because it forces you to engage with your creative side in a way that many people, even musicians like myself, don’t practice nearly enough,” said senior Klaus Jöstlein. “The course also helps you become a stronger writer overall, since writing poetry forces you to think carefully about how words flow together and how they will ultimately sound to the reader.”

 

“Loma Prieta” (1989), by Klaus Jöstlein:

Buildings shake in the Golden Gate State,

Bricks Break before the quakes final wake.

 

People wait, TV’s set to channel eight.

Bay Bridge bobs, breaks under its own weight.

 

Giants v. A’s, 10 days, no one at the plate.

Today, no team will be etched into fate.

 

Magnitude 6.8, sirens don’t activate.

Earthquake, San Francisco’s in rough shape.

 

Journalism

Taught by: Chuck Hussung 

In English teacher Chuck Hussung’s Journalism course, students had the option to write a dissoi logoi feature for 1818 College Credit. The feature included two opposing opinions on a certain subject, which were written in different styles in order to best support each side. Although the dissoi logoi is required for college credit, many students opt out of the course and choose to go straight to the main assignment: a long form feature about a topic centered in St. Louis. Students are expected to be very informed on the topic but the assignment is written from a more emotional perspective than a traditional news article.

“Jake Fitzpatrick’s this year was really really good,” said Hussung. “His topic was black Catholics in St. Louis. He gave us the history of black Catholics in St. Louis and the struggles they went through, in so far as going to a play about sister Thea Boaman and attending mass several times at St. Alophonsis parish.”

Another piece that Hussung thought was notable was Kayden Kim’s piece on Hop Alley. Hop Alley was removed from St. Louis city around 100 years ago to make way for Bush Stadium through the use of eminent domain. In his article, Kim talks about the nature of life in Hop Alley and the various businesses that sprung up there such as underground laundromats.

“I’m not from St. Louis so I don’t really know about its history,” said Kim. “I’m Korean, so learning something about the Asian heritage in St. Louis, even though they aren’t here anymore, was something really amazing.”

 

Fiction

Taught by: Frank Kovarik, Sean O’Brien

In the Fiction capstone, students were challenged to not read just as readers analyzing theme, character motivation, etc., but instead as writers in order to inform their own writing. With smaller projects spread throughout the semester, Jr. Bills could hone their fiction skills, gaining the sense of creative freedom which comes with creating stories which aren’t limited by the reality of the past.

Towards the beginning of the course, students were given an array of short story collections to read and learn from. For their first major assignment, students graded a story from one of these books using the rubric. Students then wrote a literary craft analysis essay and a short story inspired by the independent reading books for the third quarter.

“I loved my third quarter story,” said senior Gideon Taylor. “Just because I felt like I spent a lot more time thematically on it. I was able to really get the exact themes that I wanted and get all the development I wanted.”

Later in the year, students wrote fiction about a topic of choice, reaching towards creative goals and using many in-class writing sessions to flesh out their stories.

“I think that the appeal of fiction is that stories are kind of central to who we are as people,” said Kovarik. “So I think it’s great to dabble in that genre.”

 

Podcast

Taught by: Jamie Cordia, Kate Essig

In Jamie Cordia and Kate Essig’s Podcast capstone course, students learned how to create stories through the medium of sound. Students learned about many different types of sound such as archival sound, sound beds, background music, sound effects, and field sounds to craft a story. They worked on three different projects throughout the semester: a vox pop where they would pop questions to people and get a quick answer, an interview where they sat down with someone and go in depth on a single topic, and a dissoi logoi feature where they would write two opposing views to the same topic. Later they combined elements of all three into one final podcast episode.

“Some days were just me or Mrs. Essig teaching them information that they would need to know for them to be successful,”said Cordia. “A lot of days it’s just individual work, like we’ve already taught you what a vox pop is, you just need to go get that tape to create a vox pop. Then you need to come back and we’ll teach you about editing and then you can go edit.”

The course was designed by Cordia and Essig to have free time built into it so students didn't have to take much of the project home after class each day. Students had their own ideas and Cordia and Essig gave them the tools to succeed and then let them loose. Some students researched global soccer tournaments and tied them into their own experience winning state championships, others interviewed family members about their experience with international travel. Topics have ranged from drug use and the use of AI in schools to the history of St. Louis golf, which happened to be senior Ryan Bean’s topic.

“The most important thing I learned was how to tell a story in a concise and effective way, " said Bean. “I had to realize the importance of certain things, and the unimportance of other things because of the time limit. I was allowed to use a lot of my creativity within a lot of my editing choices and my uses of archival sounds that I got by just hitting golf balls in my backyard”