Academic Excellence and Social Responsibility:

Dawson’s Eighth Grade Capstone Project

By Megan Gray, Chief Communications Officer

Don’t just stand in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, but take a walk in them.

-Helen Riess, Harvard Medical School Psychiatrist

Now more than ever. The phrase has become cliche in this pandemic year, and yet its relevance and its truth to how we treat one another cannot be dismissed. Now more than ever, our world, our country, our cities, and our communities need empathy. Empathy is at the core of our humanness and is the key to understanding each other and connecting across differences, no matter who we are or where we’re from. And there’s no shortage of research behind its positive effects on everything from our closest relationships to how we relate to complete strangers.

Why is empathy so important? Because without it, taking another’s perspective, or “walking in their shoes”, and doing so from a place of care and concern – which means not only taking another’s perspective but also valuing it – is not possible. To build cultures of kindness and compassion in current and future generations, we need to start with cultivating the ability to empathize. Outside of the home and family, schools can and should be a place where the foundations of empathy continue to be laid for children.

While we’re all born with the ability to empathize, teaching empathy isn’t simple. This is particularly true now with our culture’s pervasive “selfie” mentality, and research has shown that our ability to empathize is at historically low levels. In children, this lack of empathy has resulted in increased cheating, bullying, poor moral reasoning, and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression – issues that have significant impact upon a school’s culture.

So what role should schools play in the teaching of empathy? The answer is: a big one. School is where students spend the majority of their time and where they have the greatest opportunity to practice deeper learning, creative thinking, collaboration, and teamwork. Schools should not be afraid to approach the teaching of empathy, then, in the same way they teach reading, math, or a sport: as a skill to be developed, nurtured, and refined. Dr. Michele Borba, author of the book Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in an All-About-Me World, says, “We take our kids to so many practices – sports, music, etc. But do they practice being a good person? We are good at practicing everything but humanity.” At The Alexander Dawson School, developing empathetic and compassionate students encompasses almost every aspect of our Core Beliefs. Yet without accountability, our Core Beliefs are nothing more than aspirational words on paper. Where we hold ourselves accountable to living these tenets is found in the School’s service-learning program, and no one has invested more time and energy in the development of this program than Dawson’s new Head of School, Roxanne Stansbury.

“One of our Core Beliefs is, ‘At Dawson, our students investigate root causes, analyze solutions and connect with people in need.’ When students realize they have the ability to make change, their civic efficacy becomes a catalyst for academic engagement and growth,” she says. “Service learning promotes personal, social, and intellectual development when the learning activities provide students with real-world tasks and authentic issues within the community and worldwide. We are shaping students’ skills as future leaders who are empathetic, responsible global citizens.”

Stansbury’s passion for service learning is evident. Before becoming head of school, Stansbury served as Dawson’s assistant head of school for teaching and learning for three years. During that time, she focused significant effort upon building the service-learning program into a school-wide initiative with a central theme, common threads, and empathy-building opportunities and exercises woven throughout the preschool to grade eight curriculum. In addition to bringing Dawson’s various service-oriented projects under one centralized program, Stansbury built a framework for a new service-learning initiative specifically designed for our eighth-grade students: the Capstone Project.

Created as a semester-long project in scope and culminating in a full presentation to a panel of Dawson faculty, parents, trustees, community partners, and alumni, Capstone is a model for how middle schools can engage students in a real-world based process of deeper learning, collaboration, problem solving, and, ultimately, the development of a sincere appreciation for and understanding of the lived experiences of people both inside and outside of their school community.

For Dawson’s eighth-graders, Capstone begins with a topic of focus. This year, the topics were food scarcity, mental health, LGBTQ rights, homeless youth, race and inequality, and veterans’ affairs. Once they select their topic, students are partnered with a faculty or administrator mentor who works closely with the group, walking them through the initial stages of topic research and challenges through the final selection of a community partner the group will work with to gain real-world knowledge and experience. The development of this community partnership and civic advocacy, which is the epitome of “learning by doing”, is at the heart of the Capstone Project. activism has been shown to be the most effective way to break the stigma surrounding mental health.”

Eighth-graders present their Capstone Project on youth homelessness to their peers and a panel of judges. The impact works both ways: When students are more aware of the issues in their local community, they develop a sense of personal responsibility to address those issues. “The most impactful aspect of the Capstone Project was finding a community partner and interviewing them,” shares Dawson eighth-grader Pierce Kelly of his experience. “Our group partnered with the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP. We interviewed Roxann McCoy of the NAACP and she said something that impacted me a lot. She mentioned a quote by MLK. This quote went, ‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’ This gave me goosebumps... and gave me a sense of hope that I could be just as impactful by being a positive example (in the community).”

For many service-learning programs, working with a community partner is the pinnacle of the experience. At Dawson, we take it a step further and ask students the question, What did you learn from this experience that you can teach the community?

This is the driving question behind the culminating student presentation to their peers and a panelist of judges. Tom Kaplan, Dawson parent and school trustee, served on this year’s Capstone panel and was impressed with the students’ depth of knowledge and their enthusiasm for sharing their knowledge and experience with others.

Ciera Bellavance of Hope Means Nevada, a statewide community-driven initiative to eliminate teen suicide in Nevada by reaching and teaching teens and caring adults the critical practices of mental wellness, says, “Community partnerships are vital to Hope Means Nevada...to share a message of hope and break the stigma surrounding mental health. Working together is vital to reaching the teens in our community. Students who participate in service learning are seeing first-hand the impact they can make in their community...and peer-to-peer communication and “Each group skillfully tackled three complex and sensitive challenges of our times: mental health, hunger, and homeless youth,” recalls Kaplan. “Recognizing that each of these topics have been amplified by the COVID-19 crisis, they produced real-time, highly informative, dynamic, and compelling presentations. In the end, each group gave the audience hope that good work was being done, that these problems are being better understood, and perhaps, young students like themselves can be drivers of change. I am so very proud of each and every one of these students.”

This eighth-grade Capstone team meets with LGTBQIA+ community leaders at The Center of Las Vegas.

As Dawson looks to the future of its Capstone Project specifically and service-learning program more broadly, Coordinator of Service Learning and Student Success Matsuko Freeman doesn’t want to lose sight of the program’s dual purpose: to create engaged and socially responsible citizens who understand and address important societal issues, but to also develop the kind of critical thinkers who are prepared to do the hard work of finding solutions. “I see the future of service-learning at Dawson as a combination of serving the community while keeping our academic goals in mind,” says Freeman. “I see our students taking the community service experience, assessing the work and experience, reflecting upon it, and then allowing it to become part of their overall learned experience. This would bring us to the main goal: creating change agents for our community and the world.”

Dawson’s Eighth-Grade Capstone

Project is designed to get students to:

• Explore a selected issue more deeply through extensive research and analysis • Collaborate with a local nonprofit agency to learn more about how they are attempting to address the issue • Make recommendations about how to improve the situation based on research and community engagement • Apply the knowledge, skills and work habits they have learned as a Dawson student to work collaboratively as a team and present a compelling presentation to a panel of peers and community members

Learn More About Dawson’s Capstone Community Partners in 2021:

Hope Means Nevada: hopemeansnevada.org/ NAACP: naacplasvegas.com/ Three Square Food Bank: threesquare.org Fisher House for Veterans: fisherhouse.org Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth: nphy.org The LGBTQIA+ Center of Southern Nevada: thecenterlv.org