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Passion on display at Weymouth High capstone fair

The Patriot Ledger - 3/20/2019

March 20-- Mar. 20--WEYMOUTH -- At 5:30 p.m. Tuesday the halls of Weymouth High School were teeming with students carefully adjusting poster boards, running through last-minute facts, giving each other words of support and straightening table cloths. Classes had been let out almost four hours earlier, but the seniors were just getting started.

Tuesday night was the first of two back-to-back capstone fairs at the school, a chance for the more than 400 members of the graduating class to show off the projects that defined their senior year. Every Weymouth High School senior is required to complete a capstone project that showcases their passion and shows off their professional skills. And this week, when community members come through the doors to see what they've been up to, is when the hundreds hours of work all come together.

"This is the night -- this is their moment," capstone fair chairperson and high school teacher Malissa Northup said. "So often we teach students what we want them to learn and don't learn what they want to teach us, so this project really brings out the best in everyone."

Students are free to tackle any topic they choose for their capstones, from civic issues such as voting disparity between states and the ongoing effects of the "forgotten" Yemen War, to medical topics like providing comfort care to cancer patients and the effects service dogs have on those with autism. The topics can relate to what students want to do in the future or their favorite high school class, but almost all of them demonstrate the students' passion.

For civic-minded Shirley Adams and Hailey Allison, theirs brought them behind bars. Adams, who hopes to study criminal justice and work to rehabilitate inmates, and Allison, an aspiring police detective, studied the history and impact of inmate isolation in the nation's prisons.

"Solitary confinement affects the physical composition of the brain, which then affects how you think and make decisions, and in turn how you interact with other people," Adams explained. "It has the opposite effect of what it was originally intended to do."

Allison said she hopes to take the research even further after graduation and study the real-life correlation between solitary confinement and offender recidivism. And she's not the only one who plans to take her topic outside the walls of Weymouth High.

Aspiring nurse Mackenzie Lyons explored the physical, emotional and financial effects of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, six years after her mother received one. Through her project, Lyons raised more than $3,000 for the MS Society and handed out orange awareness ribbons to those at Tuesday's fair.

"I didn't understand it then, I was 13, and I still didn't really understand until I did this project," she said. "But now I see it in a whole new light."

Cam Moore, who hopes to go straight into the electrical or metal fabrication trade when he graduates this spring, used the project as a chance to complete his first major electrical project: he restored a 1963 Sweet Hearts pinball machine.

"This has basically become a love affair for me," he said. "When I got it, it wouldn't turn on at all, the play field was gross and the body was covered in sticky, 40-year-old nicotine stains. But now look at it."

Alan Strauss, the school's principal, said the pride Moore has in his machine is exactly the point of the year-long project.

"They're going to have to go out into to the real world and pitch someday, whether it's selling themselves in an interview or selling their ideas," he said. "And this has given them the confidence that they can find something they're passionate about and take off with it."

Half of the senior class presented their projects Tuesday, and the other half will showcase theirs Wednesday night starting at 6 p.m.

Reach Mary Whitfill at mwhitfill@patriotledger.com.

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