Along with a capstone class of any kind comes symbolism. Named in reference to the final stone put on a building under construction—like a garnish on a labor-intensive meal, perhaps—a capstone project is meant to represent the accumulation of everything learned in a course. It’s reflection. It’s realization. It’s moving on and taking the course with you. That was the goal the English Department had in mind when they created the Senior Capstone English course, which premiered last year with the class of 2020, and it continued to be their goal coming into the new school year. Reaching that goal, though, has proved perilous in large part due to the lack of ‘normalcy’ that has accompanied this year and last.

“Capstone has never been normal, right?” said English teacher Sean O’Brien. “It was originally planned for seven periods a day—the standard SLUH course—and when we were getting underway in March, they had turned in annotated bibliographies. And suddenly Covid. And then, they're doing daily deliverables online with word counts, or extra entries, or emails, or phone calls to reach out to sources. It was successful, but it felt strange.”

Going into second semester (when Capstone takes place) this year, there were already signs that things would be difficult. The year so far had featured procrastination and late work for many students, so the idea of a semester-long project seemed daunting. And yet, the Capstone teachers were hopeful.

“I think we as a senior English team had a lot of hopes for it,” said English teacher Terry Quinn. “First of all, I think we were hoping for a way to help students see that the skills that they're learning in their English courses—the skills of reading and writing—are skills that can apply to a lot of real life issues or situations, and these skills of reading closely and learning to tell stories and make arguments—essentially these skills of rhetoric—aren't just for the English classroom. They're the basis for a way of learning about the world and expressing not only one's own story but a story that's bigger than you or a story that belongs to someone else that you're only just a part of.”

Quinn especially hoped that the students would discover something more about themselves through the project.

“My hope (was) that as people they (would) take a deep dive into one dimension of the place that they live in or the place that they've called home or anywhere from their entire lives to these most recent years of high school. (I hoped) that thinking about place (would) encourage them to think about their own identity,” said Quinn.

The stage was set. And now, four months later, teachers and students have the opportunity to look back on the experience, some with an eye for the negative and others with a gaze more focused on growth and the great things that came out of the course.

One of the simpler silver linings was the block schedule, which allowed students to work for longer periods of time.

“The block schedule actually allowed me to kind of say ‘if you do this right, you can do a really great project and not have any homework,’ and I've had four or five already that were pretty good projects,” said O’Brien. “I asked them ‘did you do a lot of work?’ Nope. They had completed the capstone project for the most part in class.”

“We probably had much more class time for working on projects than all of my previous English classes combined,” said senior Kevin Hickey in an email interview. “Whether or not that time was used effectively depends on the person and the given day. Most days I was able to accomplish a good deal of work, and as a result, I did not have much to do at home.”

Hickey, who focused his research on the statue of St. Louis in Forest Park and the protests surrounding it, enjoyed the writing process for the most part despite it feeling tedious at times.

“I enjoyed writing the project very much. Since I have Capstone during first period, I would spend academic lab continuing to work on it since I would have so many ideas flowing through my head,” said Hickey. “The ability to choose a specific topic allowed me to focus on my passions (in history, politics, social policies et al.) instead of having to work within pre-defined boundaries. However, there was a great deal of tedious work involved, like writing annotations for sources or navigating the maze of citation formatting, though I think that these are intrinsic to any research project.”

Quinn felt that the best projects featured personal investment.

“I think the best projects are the ones in which students feel themselves called beyond the experience of St. Louis, beyond their experiences of this place, as they have known it, and into something larger, where they find themselves called to explore a topic that is bigger than just themselves and their own more immediate interests,” said Quinn. “I think a lot of students like diving into the technical details and figuring that stuff out and it feels fun and you know it feels like you're learning a new skill, and that's kind of a cool thing.”

Hickey took that to heart.

“I learned that the statue of St. Louis was the primary symbol of the city from the early 20th century to the creation of the Arch and that the historical figure of St. Louis is incredibly complicated as he both helped the poor of France and persecuted Jewish communities,” said Hickey. “I argued toward the end that the historical prominence of the figure of St. Louis juxtaposed with the more modern criticism suggests that we are prone to oversimplifying our histories and only focusing on certain perspectives. About myself, I learned that my writing style should be more authoritative if I have done sufficient research—early on, I relied heavily on non-committal phrases like "it seems that" or "it appears" instead of actually stating my opinions.”

On the more negative side of things, Quinn felt that the fact that Capstone takes place in the second semester proved to be a hindrance to the productivity of many students.

“It's partly because students have a collective feeling that the pressure is now off because in so many ways the carrot and stick consequences that have loomed over a student's experience for three and a half years and all the pressures of how this will affect my grades and how my grades will affect my college opportunities, etc. are sort of in the past,” said Quinn. “And that means that as a student, you get to see who you really are when no one's waving a stick at you.”

To Hickey, a larger choice range for his second semester English course would have been more appealing.

“Capstone in some sense was a final application of all of the reading and writing skills we have accumulated at SLUH, so it makes sense as a closure to the English curriculum. However, I think that the previous set-up, where every senior would choose another elective, may have been similarly effective in closing the year, as we could choose a specific field in which we are passionate,” said Hickey. “In addition, condensing the bulk of the semester's work into one assignment, in my view, caused a bit of unnecessary stress toward the end, so I would prefer if the concentration of grades in the class were spread out more (i.e. focusing more on daily work).”

All in all, it’s difficult to compare Senior Capstone to other English classes purely because Capstone has never existed in a ‘normal’ year. But for the time being, Capstone is here to stay, and the English Department teachers will continue to do their best to improve upon what they have.