Plenty of projects for outgoing senior class

As Wrangell's high school of seniors prepares to receive their diplomas on Friday, last week 17 students took time to showcase their capstone projects at the gym.

Required for graduation, the self-driven projects encourage students to give back to the community as best they can. Projects last at least 25 hours each, which can be difficult to arrange when fitting them in with other priorities.

Many of the projects students picked reflected their interests.

"I did fire safety training with the high school staff," said Brian Schwartz.

Schwartz has been a member of the Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department since his freshman year of high school.

"I joined as soon as I can," he said. With the guidance of fire captain Dorianne Sprehe, he put together an instructional course that would better prepare adults at the school for handling an emergency.

"We went into a classroom here and made a presentation on the dynamics of fire extinguisher types," he said. "We went outside and did a live drill, it went really well."

Kiara Meissner taught elementary school students about Impressionism, featuring two of her favorite artists, Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.

Meissner walked students through the basic approaches of each painter, as well as their theories on interpreting life through art.

"After that they move on to a project where they use a white crayon, which is like a wax base, that they put on blank watercolor paper," said Meissner. They would then add colorful paints, and voila! "It was like magic for them."

After graduation, Meissner may pursue a degree in early childhood development, though art has always been an interest.

"That was always my dream. I thought about doing art and working with elementary school students," she said. As such, her project was a perfect pairing. "It's really exciting, because it's both of my passions."

Art was also the object of Ian Jenson and Anna Allen's project.

"Our project was remodeling the elementary school library," said Jenson.

"Jen Gerald had been talking about how she wanted to change up the library for some time," Allen added.

"So we rearranged everything in there, bookshelves and furniture, and repainted the walls," said Jenson.

Working on the regular during their free time, Allen thought the experience was encouraging – both for themselves and for the younger students at Evergreen.

"As we were doing it we realized all the kids were really enjoying it. So it made it even more exciting that we were doing this," she said.

McKinley Bosdell taught an American sign language class, recalling her brother's experience as a newly arrived deaf student several years ago. Lacking communication support in class, his father would assist as he could. Bosdell had taught a similar course once in eight grade, so the experience was not a new one.

"It was a very fun learning experience. Everybody honestly loved it," she said. "I started out with the alphabet, we did numbers and colors, then words. ...Eventually we were carrying on conversations with each other."

Devin Till and River Guggenbickler designed and assembled the box maze for Wrangell Ministerial Association's annual harvest festival. They collected boxes from Ottesen's and other shops, and used about 26 rolls of duct tape to create their labyrinthine set of tunnels.

"It was a lot of fun," Till said.

"It really makes people work together and figure it out," added Guggenbickler.

Mikel Smith and Krissy Lockabey both assisted with the Wrangell Mariners' Memorial committee's fundraising efforts.

"We contacted all the members and got their information, so we can get feedback, tell them any updates about the memorial," Smith said.

"Any upcoming events that would happen," Lockabey added.

Both saw the project as a means to do something positive for their community.

"I heard about this project and thought it would be a perfect opportunity to give back to them," she said.

"It means a lot to me, because I have a lot of family members that are on the ocean all the time, and several that have been lost. I think it's a really awesome project," said Smith.

A common thread among many students' projects was sports. A longtime basketball player, for instance, senior Tymon Teat was an assistant coach for the Stikine Middle School basketball team.

"Assistant-assistant," he clarified. "I did this for two months, every day for an hour and a half."

Much of his work was with scrimmaging and drills, but the main thing was making sure athletes were caught up on their assignments so they could travel.

"I've helped ref before, but this was the first time I actually helped coach kids I already knew," Teat said.

Caleb Groshong worked with the middle school's physical education class, assisting its teacher.

"Teaching them how to burn fat, or build muscle," he explained. Working five days a week throughout the year, the project fit in with his interests in exercise and physical activity. "This is kind of a fun thing I like to do."

He noticed a favorite activity among the students was "German ball." "It's kind of like a kickball, baseball and softball mix. You can run in either direction around the bases."

"For my senior project, I helped coach the middle school volleyball team," said Kayla Hay. "I attended every practice. They were held five times a week."

Excitingly, the team's A-squad took second place this year, an unexpected upset.

Erin Galla was also in for a pleasant surprise with her project.

"I was the Lady Wolves' basketball manager for the season," she said, accompanying them on their unexpected trip to State.

"It was really fun, and I was really glad to see them succeed so greatly," she recalled. "It was definitely pretty hectic trying to get that changed straight after regions."

Galla had odd jobs on and off the court, helping the coaches and players.

"My main focus was taking stats on games," she said. "That was used to help players make and break records. So it helped them see how their progress was going and improve themselves."

Coaching was not the only way to be involved in school sports. Zachary Lane and Erik Ottesen livestreamed home basketball games for an online audience. The two noted an increase in viewership this year as some of the bugs were worked out over last year's service.

"More people enjoyed it," Lane hypothesized, based on an increase in "likes."

Scythia McQueen and Hannah Miethe took charge of raising students' spirits, with a spirit club throughout the year.

"Nobody was making posters, which was the big problem, nobody was planning homecoming," Miethe recalled. "So we just took it on."

"We coordinated with businesses and had them sell flowers for Valentine's Day. We made posters for the different teams, which is really fun," said McQueen. The duo also designed and printed team spirit logos, and fundraised for the girls' basketball trip to regionals. "We just wanted to positively affect the community and get the school involved in the community, the community involved in school."

"For visiting teams it was a big thing," Miethe added, making Wrangell a more welcoming venue.

As this year's graduating class heads out to new and exciting experiences, a number of them will be heading to college more financially prepared. On Monday afternoon a number of awards and scholarships were presented to the class. Some awards have still yet to be announced, but at the moment the Class of 2018 have amassed $357,000 in state and local scholarships.

"It all adds up," explained aademic counselor Aimee Romeijn. "We're very grateful for the support the community has provided."

Graduation is on Friday evening at 7 p.m., inside the Wrangell High School gymnasium.