Hailey Towne Senior Project

  9:00 am Today is going to be a very long day. I need to create the presentational piece of my project, as well as finish up my 1,000-word self-evaluation essay. On top of that, I need to finish up last-minute touches to my google docs to make sure everything is nice and presentable for Expressfest. I will probably be on campus all day, so I will have lots of time to do this. I'll check back in in a bit! 5:00 pm Today was very long. I worked on my self-evaluation paper from 9-11 and then worked on my paper and my physical presentation from 1-5. I finished my paper, but there are still some last-minute touches that I need to do to my poster. I would keep working, but unfortunately, I have to leave campus to pick up my car. I will most likely work on it later once I get home.  10:00 pm By the time I got home and was able to work on my project, it was 9:00 pm. I worked on my poster for another hour, and that makes 7 hours today. This brings my total hours up to 63 hours and since tod

  1:00 pm I would have started sooner today, but seniors had their seminar from 11:30 to 12:30 today. Today is the day that I finish "The Water Dancer" and wrap up my final parts of my Senior Project. I am in the art studio with my friends today and we are all working on our projects/concentrations together so that we can get as much time together as possible. I'll be back later! 6:00 pm I FINALLY DID IT! "The Water Dancer" is completed, and it is one of the BEST novels that I have ever read! I know this isn't a book review, but PLEASE read it! There is a copy of it in the Lovejoy Library :) It may not seem like much from the outside, but it took a lot to finish this book in time. It's over 400 pages and I also was stressed with a lot of college stuff these past few weeks. I logged 5 hours today, which brings my total up to 56 hours. I finished all of my hours! Tomorrow, all I need to work on is my reflection and I'll be done! WOOHOO!

  This week seems to have gone by a lot quicker than last week, I feel like I barely got anything done! Thinking back on it, I think it only feels that way because I got the majority of the tedious work done last week. This week, I have mainly just been reading “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and coming up with discussion questions for each class based on the chapters. Thankfully, this novel is AMAZING and it has been really hard to put it down! I definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone who has the time to read it. I have been a little stressed this week because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to finish both “The Water Dancer” and “The Best We Could Do” before the end of Senior Project, but Shauna and I talked and figured there wasn’t really a need to read both novels. That is, as long as I had all of the classes mapped out for each day (which I had already done). I am almost finished with “The Water Dancer” and that will conclude my Project, and then all I

  9:00 am My day is going to be pretty boring again since the only thing that I have left to do is read, and Voices of Color doesn't meet today. I am confident that I will have the novel "The Water Dancer" finished by Monday, and then I can spend the rest of my time working on my final 3-5 page reflection paper. I am so glad that this book has been so interesting, it has really been helpful in keeping me motivated to read. I am not sure what exactly I am going to post pictures of since I am just in my room reading, but we'll see.  1:00 pm Like it has been the past few days, I did not check in hourly because I have only been reading. I only have two chapters left of my book, and I wanted to save them for Monday. They are pretty long, so it will probably take me about an hour or two to finish them. I can't believe how fast this is going by, and that we only have two more days left of Senior Project! I did 4 hours today, which brings my total up to 51 hours so far. I

  11:00 am I had a super hard time getting out of bed this morning, so I started a little later than I had wanted to. Today I am just going to be reading since Voices of Color doesn't meet today. Like I said yesterday, I no longer need to read "The Best We Could Do" so I am not as stressed about timing for finishing "The Water Dancer". I am currently at the swinging bridge soaking up some Vitamin D with my friends who are also working on their projects. What better place to read a really good book than by a body of rushing water in the sunlight? I probably won't be checking in every hour because I am just reading, but I plan to do 4 hours today. 4:00 pm I ended up doing more hours than I had thought I was going to do because I got a little sidetracked looking up prompts for college essays. Monday, Voices of Color is going to be working on these essays so I wanted to get some background information before I go into class to help the students. I, unfortunately

  12:30 pm A late start today, but that's because I was listening to an incredible lecture in the meeting house this morning. Definitely a great way to start my day! I will be staying later than usual today because I need to finish this book, it feels like it just keeps getting longer and longer. Normally I wouldn't mind, but this is a time-sensitive matter and I really need to finish VERY soon, if not today then tomorrow for sure. I have class at 1:25 today and I believe we will be talking a little more about the students' college essays. I am going to stay after classes today and read until I am at a point where I know I can finish the novel tomorrow. Until then, I am going to read. Peace! 1:30 pm I am in class right now and we are talking about college essays. Once we are done with this, I am going to continue reading.  3:00 pm I've had a hard time staying focused today and got sidetracked with a lot of college stuff. I talked with Shauna about where I was at and she

  9:00 am I got up early this morning to do some college stuff before working on my project, and I am already tired. I am in Voices of Color right now and I am about to watch two students present on the novel that they read "Little Fires Everywhere". I am also super excited, because "The Best We Could Do" arrived last night! It looks like it will be an easy, quick read, so I am not too worried about timing and stuff like that. I am going to try to map out how many classes it is going to take to finish the graphic novel, and then I am going to read more of "The Water Dancer". 10:00 am I finished mapping out the readings for "The Best We Could Do" and it fits perfectly into the schedule. The only thing that I am concerned about is fitting in an exam somewhere, but maybe I won't put one in because who likes exams? (Sorry Shauna!) I am hoping that the daily discussions and quizzes will make up for that. I am going to spend the rest of the day rea

  10:00 am Voices of Color does not meet today, so I will just be reading today. I made a lot of progress in my book yesterday, and I am hoping I can get even more done today since that's all I need to do. I also need to see if the second book came in yet, since it was supposed to come in today.  1:00 pm I haven't been checking in hourly because there's really nothing exciting going on, I am just reading. I added a few more discussion topics to the list, and I hope to be able to add in a few more by the end of the day. I have made a lot of progress so far today, I can't believe how good this book is! (Anyone reading this HAS  to read "The Water Dancer" by Ta-Nehisi Coates) 3:00 pm I know that this was a short and boring blog today, but there hasn't been much to really talk about except that I have been reading the whole time, and no one wants to read a repetitive blog, right? I am hoping to finish up the novel within the next few days so that I can jump ri

  10:00 am Today it will be just me in Voices of Color because Shauna could not make it in today. The students will be working on a response and using the rest of class time to work on their college essays. While students do this, I will be reading through some more of "The Water Dancer" and helping with essays when the time comes (although they do seem to work pretty independently). Class does not start for another hour or so, so I will be filling this time working on what a typical class day looks like in Voices of Color.  11:00 am I read through three chapters of the book in the last hour and added some discussion topics to my brainstorming list. I am not going to be able to finish the novel as soon as I had hoped, but I will have it done by the end of the week. I still need to read through the second book that I chose, but it should take me only half as long to read that one because it is a graphic novel with lots of pictures and there aren't as many pages, either. Cl

This week, I learned that it takes a lot more work than I thought to design a curriculum for a class. It was a lot of tedious work like making spreadsheets and researching novels, but the most time consuming so far has been reading through the first novel I chose “The Water Dancer” by Ta-Nehisi Coates and coming up with discussion topics. Although it’s a lot more work than I thought it would be, I am really enjoying myself. I like that I always have something productive to be doing and I feel good after I get something done, even if it’s a small task. One thing that was kind of upsetting to me this week was that no one signed up for the conference slots I had set up to help the students in Voices of Color with their college essays. I guess I can’t be too upset about it though, I probably wouldn’t want to talk to some random senior about a personal piece of writing either. I am also a little discouraged about how long it’s taking me to read the novel, but I am hoping that I will be able

  9:00 am This morning I spent some time going over what I have in my brain storming document to see if there were any key factors that I left out. My goal today is to read through the next 2-3 nights of reading and come up with discussion topics for each class. I think that I might do less than four hours today because it is so nice out and I want to get outside today.  10:00 am The only reading I've done so far is finish chapter 5 which I had started reading yesterday but hadn't gotten the chance to finish. It's tough to get anything done today because it's so nice out so I am gonna go read outside for a while and hope I don't get eaten alive by black flies.  11:00 am I read through a few more chapters and added some more discussion topics. I didn't get a lot done today but I also only did two hours so I am not too upset about it. This brings my total hours up to 24 hours so far.

  10:00 am Todays blog is going to be pretty boring, as my goal by the end of Tuesday next week is to read through "The Water Dancer". So, I will be spending the next few days reading. I am still going to check in every hour to give how many pages I've read and such. My goal for today (which might be a long shot) is to finish the first section of the novel, which is divided up into three parts. We'll see! 11:00 am I decided that I'm going to read in increments and every time I finish a nightly reading, I will go into my Google Document and write down discussion topics for that class after the reading. I just finished the first section so I am going to brainstorm now.  12:00 pm I am still reading, nothing really exciting to report. I'm really liking the book, it's definitely not what I expected but is definitely keeping me interested. I might not finish as much as I wanted to today, but I still have a few hours left so who knows. 1:00 pm Today hasn't be

  10:00 am I got here kind of early today because I felt restless at home and wanted to get a head start. I'm not sure yet exactly what I'm going to be doing today, so I am going to start by seeing how long the chapters are in "The Water Dancer" and map out how long it will take to read the whole novel. Heidi luckily had a copy in the library, and she also has a huge stack of other books to choose from too which is wicked rad. 11:00 am During the last hour I went down to the library and got "The Water Dancer" from Heidi and got to skim through some of the other books that she had picked out. They all seem pretty interesting and intriguing, but I think I want to stick my choices for now. I got to skim through "The Water Dancer" to get a rough estimate on how long it will take to finish it, and it seems a little long. I am hoping that when I go through and map everything out it will come out okay, but we will see. I will be spending the next hour div

  10:00 am I woke up late and ended up missing the first few minutes of Voices of Color this morning. I haven't really been feeling great the last few days and I've been really tired. Today I am going to talk with Shauna and discuss what I have come up with so far and adjust/proceed accordingly. Just to recap, I've chosen two books, and written paper topics for each and a project to go along with them. After I discuss with Shauna, I will most likely have my goal for the day set into place. 11:00 am So far I have come up with a final project idea for the book that the class is currently reading. The novel that they are reading is "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng, and I wanted to make the project fun so, of course, being me, I incorporated art into it. My idea is that students are going to use their imagination to reconstruct a scene from the novel using any medium of their choice (as long as it's fun and colorful!) like paints, crayons, colored pencils,

  10:30 am I enjoyed a nice sleep-in this morning since Voices of Color doesn't meet on Tuesdays. My goal for today is to find a book to replace "Beloved". Although Shauna and I both agreed it would be a great choice, we decided we should have a more diverse ethnicity of authors, considering the name of the course. I am going to research authors from around the world who mainly focus on fiction/realistic-fiction to keep students interested and engaged.  11:30 pm My research so far has been pretty successful. I thought that it was going to take a lot longer to find a new book/author and come up with essay and project topics but it only took me the first hour to do all of this. My new choice is "The Best We Could Do" by Thi Bui. Her graphic novel is a memoir of her parents escaping Vietnam during the war and becoming refugees in the United States. I am going to now dive more into depth about the parameters of the paper topics, and then dive deeper into the project

  11:30 am Today, I started with attending Voices of Color at 11:25 in LC3W with Shauna. My Senior Project is being a TA for Shauna Turnbull, and helping her design a curriculum for this course in the fall of 2021. I had a pretty hectic morning, but everything settled itself out once I started watching the students' presentations. These presentations were on the book they are all reading called "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng. Each presentation consisted of a summary of their assigned chapters, significant scenes, symbols/themes, quotes, questions, etc. Some groups even ended with a fun Kahoot! to keep everyone active and participating. After class is over, Shauna and I will be discussing topics for the final project for Voices of Color. 12:30 pm After Shauna let the students go, we chatted about my new goal for my Senior Project. My mission for the rest of the term is to come up with a curriculum for Voices of Color in the fall semester. This is going to include