Senior Project Speech

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Rachel Dorris

Ms. Tillery

16 April 2012

AP Lit

Senior Project Speech

Senior year.The last year of high school. The year most students look forward to with

special events and activities held just for them. Do you remember why your senior year was so

special? The dances, field trips, meals, all these things planned out just for you to make your last

year of public schooling was the best it could be.

Hi, my name is Rachel Dorris and for my senior project I not only organized the Senior

Breakfast, but I also started the Grizzly Senior Envelope Project which will hopefully become a

tradition here at Creekview High School. I am an active student here at Creekview lettering in

twovarsity sports all four years of high school as well as participating in numerous clubs, being a

member of the Creekview Yearbook Staff, and a recipient of Who’s Who. I guess you could say

I’m pretty involved. Ever since I was a young girl I have always been very active in school and

I’m a rare student that can honestly say “I enjoy coming to school.” This could be because I want

to become a third grade teacher after attending college so I am very interested in the school

events.I wanted to be able to work with projects that could make the Class of 2012’s year even

better!

For my project I researched people’s needs of service and exactly why they need to be

served. Various forms of service are seen through everyday events and businesses, such as the

Toms organization which for every pair of shoes purchased from there, a pair is matched to a

child in need in another country. Service is a psychological act where it gets into the person’s

head that people do care about them to do something kind for them. It is both a need and a want.

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The seniors receiving breakfast and an envelope filled with positive letters makes them feel

different than just being a freshman, sophomore, or junior. These acts of service make their

senior year really stand out to them since they will be graduating in May.

With my senior project I ended up having two products. My first product which is not

completed yet would be the Grizzly Envelope Project. Through this project I have created a flyer

asking any family, friends, neighbors, teachers, and anyone close to a senior to write them a

letter or card congratulating them on their graduation and wishing them luck as they venture off

to college or somewhere else. The seniors will receive this navy blue keepsake envelope on the

day of the senior slideshow and it is just something they can look back at and treasure forever. I

heard about this project when I was asked to write a letter for my cousin who was graduating

from Milton High School a couple years ago and I thought this would be such a great tradition to

start here. To advertise my project I have sent the senior’s parents a flyer through a mass email,

as well as handing out flyers for the teachers to give to underclassmen, putting this on the

morning announcements and on the school website. I also talked in front of all the seniors in one

of our meetings in the theatre back in March letting them know about my project. These cards

and letters could either be mailed to the school or dropped off in a box I made in the front office.

I was able to use the Senior Class money to purchase the navy blue envelopes for each senior. I

bought the white labels which I typed every senior’s name onto, at Wal-Mart for around $30. As

of right now I have already spent over ten hours on these envelopes typing out all the senior’s

names onto labels, then putting their labels on the envelopes, and then putting their letters in

there as well. My hours for this project will still increase dramatically since the letters are not

due until April 27th. This was one of the few problems I encountered during this section of my

project because since this is a graduation gift to the seniors I am not handing these out until the

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Senior Slide Show which is on May 22nd. A lot of my time will be spent organizing the letters

into the seniors’ envelopes as well as making sure every senior has at least two letters in their

envelope. One of those letters will be from Dr. Eddy since I went to him asking if he could write

a general letter to all the seniors since he has been with us on this journey all four years at

Creekview. If the senior does not receive any letters, which might be a problem I encounter,I will

have to ask a teacher or friend of theirs to write a letter because I do not want any senior to

receive an empty envelope. Another problem I encountered while starting out this Envelope

Project idea was the senior teachers said this was not rigorous enough, so I added on the Senior

Breakfast to my project, which would be my second product.

The Senior Breakfast was suggested to me by the teachers which was a lot bigger task

than I expected. This breakfast took a lot of organization and help from others. With the senior

sponsors’ help I was able to know exactly what they wanted. I wrote out an email to send to the

senior parents asking for volunteers to help at the breakfast as well as donate breakfast foods.

Luckily, I was able to get more than enough help from parents. With 355 seniors, a lot of food is

needed so we used some of the senior class money to buy chicken biscuits. I also went to the

Publix at Free Home asking if they could donate any pastries. The manager informed me that if I

came the hour before they closed, they could give me their close to date expiration pastries. So

the Sunday and Monday night before the breakfast I made a trip there and was able to get

numerous amounts of donuts, bagels, muffins, and danishes. All the other foods such as

pancakes, sodas, Starbuck’s coffee, and fruit were donated by parents. Some parents even

donated gift cards to places like McDonald’s, the movie theatre, and Target, which I used to give

out in a raffle drawing during the breakfast. With the parents that volunteered I assigned them to

stations such as serving the fruit, being a pancake chef, and re-stocking the pancake station,

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pastry station, and drink station. I also was able to use Mrs. Carnes’, the Home Ec teacher’s,

utensils and dining ware to put all the food on and then the cafeteria ladies were nice enough to

put all our dishes through the dishwasher for us once the breakfast was complete. We had more

than enough food so I put all the leftovers in the teacher workroom for any of the teachers who

missed the breakfast. Luckily with this part of my project I did not encounter any major

problems. My biggest factor I had to work with was making sure I stayed organized because

when a parent would volunteer I would have to take count so I could make sure I had enough of

each breakfast item for the breakfast. Through contacting parents and updating my lists of food,

this breakfast took around nine hours to make it a success.

These two projects would have been difficult without the help of Mrs. Deborah Frost. She

is a teacher at Creekview who has been teaching for over 30 years. She is very well known

having received numerous teacher awards, and she was my yearbook teacher my sophomore

year. Mrs. Frost has made a major impact in my life, and I find myself to be very similar to her,

so I thought it would be very easy to work with her. She knows a lot about the senior activities

since she is one of the senior sponsors. Also, her boys attended Milton High School, so she has

been a part of the Envelope Project already.

Through this project I have definitely learned a lot about communication. I have learned

that without communication it is hard to get anywhere. The majority of my senior breakfast was

communication with teachers and parents. I was constantly emailing parents back and forth

thanking them for donating food and answering them with what item we needed most that they

could donate. I also learned that I cannot be afraid to ask for help. Without the volunteers it

would have been very hard for me to complete this big task by myself. I feel this will also help

me in the long run since I want to be a teacher and major part of teaching is having to

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communicate with other teachers and students’ parents. I definitely would pursue more in this

topic of event coordinating and serving to others. It is such a good feeling to know a person is

happy from something you have been a part of.

From these projects I have learned to manage my time more wisely because I used to

always underestimate how long things would take and now I realize they take a lot longer

especially if you want it to become a success. Although it did take a lot of work and was stressful

I am so glad I was able to hold the senior breakfast as well as start the Grizzly Envelope Project

because these are both things the seniors will look back and hopefully remember for a lifetime.

I would just like to thank you all so much for your time to come here today and judge.

I’m sure you have a busy life outside of this school, so it means a lot for you to come and spend

your own personal time to listen to my project. Does anyone have any questions? [Answer any

questions the judges might have.]. Thanks again and I hope everyone has a wonderful evening!

Senior Project Speech

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