With their final presentations due either during the evening of June 1 or June 2, students in this semester’s Newtown High School Junior/Senior Project course practiced on Tuesday, May 26.

The Junior/Senior Project program at NHS is designed to enable students to build on existing strengths and to provide an opportunity for further study not available in the traditional classroom. The program provides motivated and responsible high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to explore a subject/career that they are passionate about and develop a career-oriented relationship with a community professional as a mentor in the student’s area of chosen interest.

Peg Ragaini, Elizabeth Hanna, and Susan McConnell oversee the course.

Laura Sullivan, a junior, said she researched the therapeutic attributes of animals for her project.

“I’ve been around animals my whole life… They’ve just been so therapeutic to me,” said Laura.“Throughout the last couple of years I realized how animals are a coping strategy for people, and I wanted to research why they are so therapeutic for people.”

NHS junior Dawson Goodrich said he worked on recording songs with his band, Grass Stains, and made an album for his project.

Before saying he would recommend the NHS Junior/Senior Project course to other students at the school, NHS junior Brandon Qiao said he edited a number of videos for this project.

“I really like video editing,” said Brandon. “I do it in my spare time, too.”

NHS juniors Gemma Hyeon and Mimi Hawke worked together to create a soundtrack for part of an audio book of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

“She wanted to do music to a book to promote reading, so I came up with the idea of Fahrenheit 451, which also promotes reading,” said Mimi.

After traveling to Ecuador last summer, NHS junior Lydia Field said she wanted to fundraise for Honrar La Vida, an organization in Ecuador that helps under privileged children living in slum areas outside of Quito.

Lydia said while traveling last summer she volunteered for three days with the Honrar La Vida organization, “playing with the kids, painting in murals in their courtyard, and we painted and cleaned a classroom, too.”

While her project was due at the start of June, Lydia said she is organizing a fundraiser for the fall.

Amanda Walsh, another junior at NHS, said she wrote a collection of 30 poems in a book, called Poetry From The Heart.

“Poetry is a different way of expressing words and feelings,” said Amanda, “without the confines of a five-paragraph essay, so there is more freedom to do and express what you want.”

Amanda thanked her best friend, junior Jared Pearson, for inspiring her and therefore her poetry.

For his project, NHS junior Sean MacMullan said he created character concept for a short film he was intending to make when he started the project. Sean is no longer planning on making the short film, but he said he created three characters.

NHS senior Astrid Sundberg said her project was about comedy. She wrote and performed a stand-up routine, because, “my mom always told me I was funny.”

People laughed, so, Astrid said, “my mom was right.”

Since he has been interested in electronics “for a long time,” and he really enjoys building things, NHS junior Chris Lafky said he built a dual resonant solid state Tesla coil for his project.