Reflection 1: What?
If you happen to be a stranger who stumbled upon this website, saw the tab called “Capstone”, and thought to yourself “What is a Capstone? What is this Alyssa Akomer girl up to?”, then I am pleased to inform you that this essay has all of the answers you are looking for.
Situation: You are walking down a sidewalk, headed to a coffee shop to begin designing your capstone project. You are juggling a laptop and a stack of papers with information that you have gathered about your capstone. You look down at your phone to look at the time. As soon as you look up, you accidentally bump into a stranger. You have a death grip on your laptop, but your papers fly everywhere. The stranger bends down to help you gather your papers and cannot help but notice the word “Capstone” on more than one page. After retrieving a few papers that have flown away, the stranger returns them to you and asks, “What is a capstone?”
How do you respond to the stranger?
A capstone is a project that allows students to combine classroom learning and all of their accumulated knowledge towards a subject that they are passionate about. The Teacher Scholar Capstone is specifically designed to give students the creative freedom to pursue their interests and form them into an academic curriculum to share with their fellow Aggies. For my capstone, I have the opportunity to teach a small class on a subject that I take much pride and interest in, which will be entertaining to not only the students, but for myself as well.
Explain your proposed project and its importance.
The project I am proposing is a new one credit hour seminar course over the Enneagram and its vital impact on every interaction one partakes in. The enneagram is a nine-sided figure which represents the spectrum of possible personality types, one of which we gravitate towards and adopt during childhood to help us cope and feel safe. Each number has a perceptible manner of seeing the world and an underlying motivation that heavily influences the way that type thinks, behaves, and feels.
What issues will you address in the development of your project?
As I develop my project, I will aim to become as knowledgeable as I can be about the Enneagram, that way I will be able to answer any questions my students might ask me about it. While I am interested in this subject, there are few formal classroom-type places to learn about the subject matter, so all of my knowledge has been from independent research. In addition, I will try and ensure that the assignments/class lessons are enjoyable for myself and the class, and that my students are actually learning applicable information that they can use in their everyday lives.
What interests you about the particular topic of your capstone?
The purpose of the Enneagram interests me because it is not a “silly” personality test that you can find on Buzzfeed, but rather it helps people develop a greater sense of self-awareness and learn how to recognize and disidentify with the parts of their personality that are limiting them from their true potential. Personalities are a combination of coping and defense mechanisms, learned reflexes, and qualities that people develop in childhood to fit in, please their parents, or satisfy the expectations of their culture. In this sense, personality is flexible, and by becoming in touch with what wounds, losses, or experiences have shaped our personality, we can then identify which parts to improve upon. By actively learning why people are the way they are and what experiences have shaped them to see the world how they do, then our entire society can be shifted to being more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding of others’ experiences. In the polarized society we live in today of unbudgingly one-sided mindsets, a class that teaches people how to understand and empathize with the viewpoints of others is what we need- even if only ten people can sign up for the course.
What academic experiences, skills and abilities will you use to develop your project?
The academic experiences, skills, and abilities that I will use to develop my project include my observation of teaching styles I have enjoyed/not enjoyed in my own experience as a student, especially in this new online format. I will be paying special attention to how professors are keeping students engaged through Zoom, so that I can then use these techniques to keep my future students engaged and excited to learn. I recently read “The Road Back To You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery”, which is an experience that I will be using to develop my curriculum.
How does this project connect to your core values?
This course connects to my core values because understanding the Enneagram directly correlates to students having a greater compassion for themselves and for others, which is the foundation of all healthy relationships (friendships, romantic, professional, political, etc.). A quote from “The Road Back To You” by Cron and Stabile that accurately portrays what I hope to do with my class is, “The Enneagram shows us that we can’t change the way other people see, but we can try to experience the world through their eyes and help them change what they do with what they see”. My core values include compassion and acceptance of others.
What are three words that come to mind as you create your project? (You do not need to expound upon them in this prompt.)
The three words that come to mind as I create my project are self-discovery, compassion, and progress.