Our home school St. Johnsbury Academy celebrated Capstone Week during the last week of April 2017. This is the same Senior Capstone Project that St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju will institute for its first class of seniors in 2020.

A capstone project is a multifaceted assignment that serves as a culminating academic and intellectual experience for students, typically during their final year of high school or middle school, or at the end of an academic program or learning.

For example, students may be asked to select a topic, profession, or social problem that interests them, conduct research on the subject, maintain a portfolio of findings or results, create a final product demonstrating their learning acquisition or conclusions (a paper, short film, or multimedia presentation, for example), and give an oral presentation on the project to a panel of teachers, experts, and community members who collectively evaluate its quality. Capstone projects also tend to encourage students to connect their projects to community issues or problems.

At St. Johnsbury Academy in Vermont 120 students stood tall and poised, and over the course of six hours, delivered some outstanding performances. As Lucy Woo, Marketing Director of St. Johnsbury Academy Jeju who had traveled to St. Johnsbury to be part of Capstone Week, said, "Every single presentation I saw today was truly impressive. I watched about ten different presentations, and each presenter thrilled me. I saw different passions and talents expressed through diverse topics, and I literally learned lots of new things from their work."

Several of these speakers spoke without notes, fluently and articulately explaining their research, findings, and analysis. They were passionate, funny, humble, and thoughtful. They had a firm grasp of their research and a clear confidence in themselves.

The community members, generously volunteering their time and talents, came in greater numbers than ever to hear young scholars share their expertise and to help them improve by providing constructive feedback.

It is this kind of engagement that makes for healthy schools and communities. One of our hopes for SJA Jeju is that it will help spread this kind of school-community partnership around the world. Just as Capstone Day allows us to demonstrate how our seniors have mastered the skills for successful adulthood, it also highlights the willingness of the adults in our community to help make the day an authentic learning experience. Without them, Capstone day would just be more schoolwork.

As Dr. Peter M. Toscano, the Head of Secondary for SJA Jeju, who also attended said, "Students were professional, thoughtful, and well-prepared and it was great to see the entire school community working together. But more than anything, attending the presentations helped me understand that the Capstone is like a connective tissue that not only unifies all learning at SJA, but also helps to individualize a student's experience through the choice of topics that are personally meaningful. All in all, it was a unique and powerful event. A true celebration of learning! We are truly excited at the prospect of our first Capstone Day in May of 2020."