Career High School Students Share Capstone Projects
Photo credits: Aly Moosa
On December 13th, seniors from New Haven’s Career High School, Yale, and the wider New Haven community gathered at Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center to celebrate and engage with the Career students’ senior capstone projects. The event came out of a partnership between Career biology, physiology, and anatomy teacher Terence McTague and Yale students Aly Moosa and Madeleine Keenan, as a part of Professor Daniel Martinez HoSang’s Anti-Racist Curriculum and Pedagogy course, in which students explored “the pedagogical and conceptual tools, resources, and frameworks used to teach about race and racism” beyond “limited paradigms of racial colorblindness and diversity” by working closely with teacher partners to develop relationships and support teachers in producing anti-racist curricular units and lessons.
Thirteen Career students presented their capstone projects on topics ranging from Learning Childcare to Bone Marrow Donor Matching, to a captivated community audience who were encouraged to discuss with the presenters on the inspiration for and lessons learned from the project. By carving out a space within Yale for the Yale community to learn from the work produced by New Haven high school students, the partnership between Mr. McTague, Aly and Madeleine modeled collaborative, student centered approaches to anti-racist teaching and learning.
Aly, reflecting on the showcase explaned: "We wanted to share and highlight the students' passion for their semester-long research projects with the broader Yale-New Haven community. From the first time Madeleine and I met them, their passion and drive were incredibly inspiring. The Capstone Exhibition was fantastic as numerous New Haven Public Schools students, family members, and Yale students came to see projects on various topics. We plan to build upon the exhibition and expand it for more students and community members to participate in.”