Proposal
Michelle Raphael
13 East Lake Place
Middletown, CT 06457
September 16, 2021
Mrs. Amy Boutilier
Sport and Medical Sciences Academy
280 Huyshope Avenue
Hartford, CT 06106
Dear Mrs. Boutilier:
2021 has been an awful year for a lot of people. But one group of people who have suffered the most are the transgender community, who faced what can be considered the worst year towards trans people in American history. Record-high numbers of anti-trans legislation and anti-trans violence occurred throughout the country. Almost every day I hear about another law proposed or violent attack against transgender people, and I had come to find that many people, online, in public, and even in our own government, are pretty uneducated on gender. I wondered why, then I thought about my own school. I had, in previous years, noticed that a lot of people, even students in our school, aren’t very educated on the topic of gender and transgender people. Sex is talked about in health courses, but I myself had never learned anything about gender in school. I had to do most of that learning from resources outside of school like the internet and my local library, which not many people have the time or care enough to do themselves. This is a cause that I do care deeply about because I feel so many people misunderstand it and would be a lot more accepting if they didn’t. I want to help educate my classmates so I could create a more aware environment. I will center my Capstone project on spreading awareness and educating my peers in school about gender and trans people to create a safer, more understanding and accepting environment towards trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. I will try to achieve this by preparing presentations for my fellow seniors and by creating a Twitter account on which I will post resources to help my fellow students learn more about trans people from reliable sources.
The research question that I want to answer through this project is: Will my peers be more accepting of gender, trans people, and trans issues once they are properly informed? I want to find out how my peers view gender and trans people and I want to find out if showing them that gender is not just a birth designation can change how they view gender and trans people. I will measure this by giving surveys (Google forms if students have computers?) on how students view trans people and trans issues before and after presentations and to also give feedback on presentations, which I will keep as artifacts for my project. How students respond will help show me if what I show them has any impact on them. This is important to me because trans people have suffered greatly in the last year and a lot of that is because their voices are not being heard. This will hopefully give the trans community a voice by creating a more aware generation of future adults.
I have not found a mentor at this time, and I am unsure how to go about it. A learning stretch for me will be presenting in front of classes. I am going to push myself to speak in front of my peers, which is something I am not good at, because I get really bad social anxiety. Hopefully this project will help me overcome my anxiety and get better at public speaking. A part of this project that will push me is informing my peers. Gender is a topic that many people are uninformed or misinformed on and that lack of knowledge is a big factor in why there is anti-trans violence and anti-trans legislation. I feel that by creating a more informed environment I can create a more accepting environment.
Sincerely,
Michelle Raphael