SENIOR PROJECT SELF-EVALUATION

Directions: Utilize this worksheet to help evaluate yourself and your project. Be as
complete and descriptive as possible. This self-evaluation should give the scoring team
a clear picture of what you accomplished in your project. When complete, copy/paste to
a textbox in your Weebly.

Name - ​Mikail Bonham ​Project Start Date​ – Fall 2020

Title of Project​ - Care for our Black Mothers ​Project Completion Date​ - December 20, 2020

In approximately 40 words or more, describe who your project benefited and how. In
other words, what was the impact of your project?

a. For my senior project, I wanted to not only bring awareness to the inequalities that black
women across the country are facing every single day, specifically in relation to maternal
healthcare, but I also wanted to raise money in order to fund the amazing things that the
March of Dimes organization is doing in order to combat these problems. The money
that we were able to raise is going directly towards new implicit bias training programs
curated by both March of Dimes and an abundance of hospitals across the nation, all
while being nationally recognized and validated by the American Hospital Association!
Also the money raised will be able to assist in federal and state policy advocacy on
behalf of the March of Dimes, as well as broaden the conversation around health
inequalities for black women in order to stop the disparities in the maternal health care
that they are receiving. Not only does this benefit black women, but black families across
the US.

In at least 40 words explain how this was a stretch for you and forced you out of your
comfort zone?
 a. It really forced me to get out of my comfort zone by having to effectively communicate
and collaborate with adults. Not only did I work with Mrs.Joyce, who was my direct
consultant, but I also worked with some of her co-workers in order to complete my
campaign page and discuss marketing strategies. Also, race can be a difficult
conversation for a lot of people to try and comprehend and while I think that the
conversations about racial inequalities are vital and necessary and the vilification of such
topics are why my senior project topic is still a problem as of 2021, its hard to feel like
only my words can make a difference at such a young age, which is why I spent so much
time pushing my project to my peers. Having to express such complex topics to people
who were older than me felt like a huge step out of my comfort zone, but it was critical
for not only the success of my project but also for my own personal growth.

List and then describe 4-8 fundamental ideas/concepts/skills of your project, which you
learned/enhanced during your project. (See proposal- new/enhanced skills - see if you
learned what you anticipated.)

1. Organizing my event was the biggest portion of my senior project as I had to collaborate
with my consultant and some of her coworkers in order to make a visually appealing
campaign page that was informative and inviting.
2. My marketing skills are the area that I think enhanced the most throughout my senior
project because I have never had to try and market something, especially on social
media. I think this skill will be incredibly useful moving forward into college and beyond
as in our current society, social media can be used in an abundance of ways yet, I have
only ever used it for communication with friends and family. Being able to express my
ideas without standing directly in front of people is just as important as being able to
present ideas in front of a room full of people.
3. My writing was also a skill that only enhanced throughout my senior project journey. Not
only was the research for my project and paper extensive but, the kind of writing that I
had to employ for marketing my project was a completely new experience. Having to
write in a manner that interests people enough to click on my campaign page was harder
than I thought it would be originally, and while I was expecting to grow my writing skills, it
wasn't in the way that I had initially expected.
4. My communication with others was different and nerve-racking. However, I realized
through my senior year that communication, especially during Covid-19 is really hard.
While trying to communicate with my advisor I would sometimes have technical
difficulties which was incredibly frustrating but they were always understanding and
made sure to keep the flow of communication going. Also, the communication that had to
be done with adults in my life, such as my grandparents, parents, and my sister, I
realized that I would be able to reach a much larger audience with their help and always
prioritized answering any of their questions in order to advocate for maternal health
outcome disparities in different ways.
List and describe 4-8 problems/obstacles/issues you encountered in your project, and
briefly describe how you solved each.

1. I raised a lot of the money for my campaign in the very beginning days of my campaign
and then struggled with my confidence in my project when things began to naturally
stagnate. In order to combat this obstacle, I began focusing heavily on marketing
strategies that I had discussed with not only my project consultant, but also Mrs.Van
Schenck (who was incredibly helpful).
2. The second problem I encountered was once I began to market my project, I realized
that my reach on social media was only going so far. I implemented the help of my
teachers, classmates, friends and family to all post my project on their social media sites
in order to raise the most amount of awareness around my topic, as possible. I believe
this was a critical portion of my project and what helped my marketing the most.
3. After Thanksgiving, I began to realize that I wanted to reach out to more of my peers and
teachers in regards to my project. However, I had failed to realize that the vast majority
of my fellow classmates were only beginning to start their projects. I took advantage of
the attention that all senior projects were starting to gain by extending my project
deadline in order to allow my peers and teachers to participate in my project!
4. Toward the end of my senior project, I realized that while registration for my walk/run
was only $1, I had to take into consideration the circumstances. Not only has the
pandemic created an abundance of financial burdens for so many families across the
nation, but it was also Christmas time. Thus, In order to make my project accessible to
everyone, I made it free to register for my walk/run for the last three days of my
campaign!

List all people who helped you on the project and briefly describe the help given.

a. First, I want to thank and mention Mrs.Van Schenck who not only helped every single
one of her students, but was lenient, gracious, and beyond understanding of the
implications of the circumstances we have had to deal with. She helped me so much
every day and always let me leave if I had any meetings with my consultant and was so
quick to answer any of my questions. Next, my mother, sister, brother-in-law,
Mr.Hodges, Ms.Tomao and various friends like Olivia S., Allie, Bella, and Dylan all
posted my links to their social media accounts and allowed me to market my project to
their friends and family in order to reach a broader audience. Mrs. Joyce, my consultant,
helped me immensely in setting up my campaign page, discussing marketing strategies
with me over zoom, encouraging all of my ideas throughout the duration of my project
and never failing to do it with a smile even if I looked a bit more stressed.

How does your completed project compare to the picture you had in mind when you
started the project? Explain the reason behind any changes from your proposal.
 a. It looks pretty similar to what I had in mind for what the completed project overall would
look like. I also think that while I generally understood what skills of mine would grow and
enhance, the ways in which the change occurred was quite unexpected and challenging
at times. At some points early on in the proposal portion, I listed Mrs. Amanda Wellons
Dimpsey as my consultant because the assignment was due before I had the chance to
connect with Mrs.Joyce. Also, I originally thought that I would be able to discuss infant
mortality rates as well, but it would have made my topic extremely broad and choosing to
only discuss maternal mortality disparities lays the foundation for further topics to be
researched and discussed (like infant mortality rates).

If given the opportunity, explain what you would have done differently now that you
speak from experience?

a. ​I think that if given the opportunity to do things differently, I would have potentially tried
to market my ideas on one central platform, like many of my classmates did with an
instagram page, however I didn't consider this option when I started my project in
November. I think this would have given me a chance to reach more of my peers and
allow me to grow a steady following which could have been used to push my topic even
further (potentially to their friends and families on their instagrams). I think my
decentralized marketing makes it hard for people wanting to learn more about the topic
from me, even though I created the campaign page, because its another thing they
would have to click on rather than seeing a post on their feed. It was a fine line though
because many of my peers either are going through hard times due to Covid-19 and a
plethora of other unfortunate circumstances and it felt irresponsible to try and push my
campaign at them. While it is hard to look back and see this amazing but missed
opportunity, I'm grateful that I did post on many social media platforms in general.

Beyond the project itself, what did you learn about yourself?

Over the past couple of months, I have learned that I am able to stay diligent on one subject for
a long period of time. In school, we are constantly learning new things in each class and it was
nice to be able to put all of my attention towards one topic and really dig deep in order to learn
as much as possible, in the time provided. Also, I learned that the satisfaction of putting in so
much work felt so incredibly rewarding to me, I thoroughly enjoyed the hard work that I have put
in. Additionally, getting out of my comfort zone is really hard for me to do. However, due to the
complex and rather depressing nature of my topic, being able to discuss difficult topics was also
extremely rewarding for me.
What grade would you give yourself on the project? Justify the evaluation of your grade
in at least 25 words.

I think overall, I would give myself an A (93). I worked extremely hard to create posts to market
my project on different platforms and put hours of work into creating my campaign pages with
my consultant and other adults. I wouldn't give myself a 100 because I feel like I missed a huge
advocacy opportunity by not creating one central place to raise awareness for my topic, as I
stated above. However, I think the defining reason why I would personally give myself an A is
because of the amount of time that went into defining the specific aspects of my project. For
example, making my walk/run 3 miles in order to raise awareness around the statistic that Black
women nationwide are three times more likely to die during labor, than their white counterparts.
Also, reaching out to my advisor to be able to extend my project date because I knew I could
reach more people as the majority of other peoples senior projects were only beginning to
happen. The last three days of my senior project, I pushed my campaign as much as possible,
and also made my campaign free so that people were able to participate and learn about my
topic without having to spend any money in order to do so. All of these small details allowed me
to have a successful senior project and I'm proud that I was able to be flexible and adjust my
project based on the circumstances at hand.