Summary and Conclusion

Elaine Lin / Rachel Garnadi

April 11, 2011

Ms. Adams

Capstone

Summary and Conclusion

It’s hard for both me and Rachel to believe that this semester is about to be over. With this year coming to an end, this also means our capstone project is coming to an end. In the beginning, we felt that one semester was way too long for a project and that it would be nearly impossible to accomplish anything. However, after encountering many obstacles, we know that we wished we had more time to accomplish more things. With this project, we’ve gained many new experiences, which we can take with us for the rest of our lives.

Looking at the guidelines for the Graduation Portfolio System, we can proudly say that we have investigated the world, recognize and weigh perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action. This capstone project has helped us identify our strengths and weaknesses as well as letting us realize what we can do to correct our weaknesses. We learned that there is a lot of “behind the scenes” action in order to get our desired results. However, we know that we have what it takes to become leaders.

The first category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to investigate the world. We definitely incorporated this element of the GPS into our Capstone project by identifying global warming and the greenhouse effect as our main topics. Although the topic of global warming is highly debated upon, we believe that global warming does exist. Our strengths in this area are being able to connect our capstone project with the world and using a variety of resources. We have used several sources to construct coherent responses to globally significant researchable questions. This is our strength because we were able to explain our topic to others with actual evidence. This is demonstrated in our Capstone in our Review of Literature as well as when explaining our Capstone project to others. Our weakness in this area is to develop an argument that considers multiple perspectives. We consider this to be our weakness because although we did mention that the topic of global warming is highly debated upon, we did not explain both sides of the argument, but rather, only one side of the argument. We planned to correct this weakness by researching the opposing argument on global warming to gain more insight, and then edit the review of literature, so that it has an actual argument that considers multiple perspectives.

The second category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to recognize and weigh perspectives. We have incorporated this element of the GPS into our Capstone project by expressing our own opinions about my thoughts on global warming and the greenhouse effect as well as how fortunate America is compared to many other countries. Because everything in America is already made for us, this Capstone project gives us a chance to step back and do things for ourselves by learning how to be our own leaders. Our strength in this area is knowing cultural interactions influence situations, events, issues or phenomena. This is our strength because we realize that many different societies have different points of views due to the culture surrounding them. This is demonstrated in our Capstone by us trying to change the perspective of students that we can and are able to grow our own food that looks and tastes good. Our weakness in this area is examining perspectives of other people and identifying the influences on those perspectives. This is our weakness because we are not able to pin point exactly what influences their perspective. We planned on correcting this weakness by becoming more informed of the world around us, which we did. We became more aware of the community around us. We talked to Mr. Yu for his approval on where we can place the greenhouse. We also talked to Mr. Renner about making a foundation for the greenhouse, what materials would be needed, and when he could help us build it.

The third category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to communicate ideas. We have incorporated this element of the GPS into my Capstone project by seeing different people’s response towards our goal to rebuild the greenhouse as well as the topic of global warming and the greenhouse effect in general. Our strengths in this area are listening and communicating effectively with diverse people, using appropriate verbal and non-verbal behavior, languages and strategies as well as using appropriate technology to communicate and collaborate with diverse audiences. These are our strengths because we knew exactly how we wanted to communicate with these local companies. We wrote a proposal for each company as well as making a sample advertisement for their company to see what they would receive by making a contribution towards our goal. Our weakness in this area is reflecting on how effective communication impacts understanding and collaboration in an interdependent world. This is our weakness because at first we thought that we would just mail/e-mail companies our proposal. We corrected our weakness by realizing that it was much more effective to go there in person to explain our mission for our project to each company.

The last category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to take action. We have incorporated this element of the GPS into my Capstone project by initially communicating with Mr. Amerson, Mr. Yu, Ms.Kerner, Mr. Renner, and Ms. Williams about our plans to rebuild the greenhouse as well as communicating with people from our local community to make contributions to our greenhouse. We have taken into account our previous fundraising approaches and came up with a completely different one. Our strength in this area is communicating with people from our local community. This is a strength because we visited many companies asking for contributions, and were successful in several. However, many companies were not able to give us an answer immediately because they cannot make those kinds of decisions by themselves, but instead, the corporate office has to make those decisions. This is demonstrated in our Capstone by our fundraising aspect. Our weakness in this area is to reflect on their capacity to advocate for and contribute to improvement locally. This is our weakness because we expected more companies to buy an advertisement from us, not only because it was for a good cause, but because the price for the advertisement was really inexpensive as well. We planned on correcting these weaknesses by realizing that not every company is able to help us in our goal to rebuild the greenhouse. Even though with this setback, we still made enough money to purchase the greenhouse as well as had extra money to purchase materials for the greenhouse, such as sand, soil, seeds, etc.

Overall, we feel very accomplished that we were able to raise so much money to actually buy a greenhouse. We never though that we would be able to achieve so much, but we now know that when we set our mind on something, we can definitely accomplish it.

As our project comes to an end, this is our time to shine. We are proud to be able to showcase our achievements through this project. But we must thank all those who have helped us. Especially Ms. Williams, our capstone sponsor and gardening club sponsor, she has helped keep us motivated, going on the right track, as well as coming up with ideas. We would also like to thank Mr. Renner for helping us build our greenhouse. We know that we would have had a lot of difficulty setting up the greenhouse if it wasn’t for him. His insightful knowledge led us on the right track of knowing which materials we should purchase. We would also like to thank Ms. Kerner, our other capstone sponsor, because she also led us into the right direction. Last but not least, we would like to thank Ms. Adams and Mr. Yu for giving us this opportunity to take initiative and see what we can actually accomplish on our own.

Methodology

Elaine Lin / Rachel Garnadi

April 11, 2011

Ms. Adams

Capstone

Methodology

Global warming is a highly discussed topic these past few years. Due to global warming, the weather is inconsistent and frequently changing. Many of our world’s wildlife and natural habitats have been affected byglobal warming, especially in the colder regions. Rachel and I realized that if we wanted to save these endangered species and to make our planet greener so that future generations are also able to enjoy these wonderful sights, we must take action now. Because most of us take everything we have for granted – going to stores to buy food, driving to get to a destination, etc, Rachel and I have decided to inform people about global warming, the greenhouse effect, as well as sustainable living. In order to accomplish this, we have decided to fundraise money to purchase a greenhouse for our school.

Although Rachel and I knew some of the effects of global warming and the greenhouse effect, we wanted to become experts in this topic in order to inform others about this issue. We gathered diagrams depicting the greenhouse effect as well as researched articles about global warming. For our sponsors, we chose Ms. Williams because she is the sponsor of the Gardening Club and is passionate about teaching students about how to grow their own food. Also, we chose Ms. Kerner because she is a science teacher who knows a lot about these topics.

In the beginning, Rachel and I planned to rebuild the greenhouse in our school that was unfortunately destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. We talked to Mr. Yu about this idea, and were informed that we would need to talk to Mr. Amerson for his approval. Mr. Amerson liked our idea and initially agreed to our plan. However, a few weeks later, we were then notified that the area where our school greenhouse resides would become a parking lot, and therefore could not be built there. We then talked to our sponsors, and they suggested that we should rebuild the greenhouse in our school’s courtyard, where everyone can see it. Because when I talked to students about my capstone project, many were surprised to hear that our school even had a greenhouse.

Our initial goal was to raise about $3000 to rebuild the school’s greenhouse, but was then changed to $1000 after learning that the greenhouse could not be built in the place where we had originally planned to build it. We talked to the students from the gardening club about fundraising ideas, and ultimately decided that we would sell Chinese food. Selling Chinese food was a complete success; the amount of money we made was double the amount of money we invested. We knew that at this rate, we would reach out goal of $1000 in no time. However, unfortunately we encountered some setbacks. After selling Chinese food for about 5 times, we were then informed that we were no longer allowed to sell Chinese food.

The Gardening Club helped us out a lot with our capstone project. On many Club Fridays, Ms. Williams took the students out to clean the area where the greenhouse will be placed. Also, several students from the gardening club helped us sell Chinese food. The gardening club was very supportive of each milestone we accomplished.

With this setback of not being able to sell Chinese food, Rachel and I knew that we would have to come up with a new fundraising idea. We then came up with the idea of selling advertisements that will be sponsored in our school yearbook. We talked to Ms. Johnson, who is in charge of the yearbook, and she liked our idea. We agreed that we would each get half the profits from each advertisement sold. Now that we had the approval from Ms. Johnson, we wrote our proposals to the local companies. We also designed many sample advertisements to show the companies an example of what the advertisement will look like if they sponsored us. This was not as easy task, and took us nearly two weeks to complete it. After we had the proposal and sample advertisement for each company made, we wanted to go to each company in person to talk to them about our capstone project. However, we could not leave the school campus without a teacher. Fortunately for us, Mr. Sigren agreed to drive us around to all of the local companies.

After going to nearly 20 companies, in the end, only three companies bought an advertisement from us. Because many of the companies we proposed to were franchises, they could not make the decision at the local level of buying an advertisement from us. We were informed that we would have to contact the corporate office to approve of this matter. We contacted the corporate office, but did not get a response. We initially targeted big companies because we thought they would have the money to buy a $30 advertisement to sponsor our school, but we then realized that targeting big companies was too much of a hassle. Also, Ms. Johnson notified us that we could no longer sell anymore advertisements because the yearbook had no more room to place them.

At this point, we raised about $500 and were ready to see what greenhouse we could buy – only a mere 6 x 4 greenhouse, and still short on money to purchase other materials. We then talked to Mr. Yu about our problem and asked if he could let us sell Chinese food one last time, which he approved. It was a complete success as well – our new budget was now about $650. We now had the money to buy a 6 x 8 greenhouse, which we did, using HISD’s Credit Card. We then talked to Mr. Renner about making a "foundation" for the greenhouse / ways to make the greenhouse more sturdy. We discussed about using cement /rebar to embed the greenhouse, however, Mr. Yu has vetoed that decision. We then decided that the foundation for the greenhouse would require sand and tiles. We would first put sand to level out the area in the courtyard we will use, and then places tiles where the greenhouse will be placed.

We finally placed the order for the greenhouse, and it finally arrived on April 14, 2011. We still need to purchase the sand and tiles to make the foundation. After the greenhouse is built, we will then buy seeds, soil, and plants to place inside the greenhouse. With the help of the gardening club, some plants have already been planted. We hope that students and teachers will use this greenhouse to enhance students’ learning of science. We also hope that after students learn that they can grow their own food and that it can taste good, it will impact their life and make them want to make a difference. We want them to know that sustainable living is possible and reducing global warming all contributes to helping make for a greener planet.