Rachel Dorris organized the Senior Breakfast and started the Grizzly Senior Envelope Project for her senior project. For the Envelope Project, she collected letters from friends and family to congratulate seniors and put them in envelopes that would be given to seniors on their graduation day. She encountered challenges with timing and ensuring every senior received letters. For the Senior Breakfast, she communicated with teachers, parents and the community to plan and provide food for over 350 seniors. Through these projects, she learned the importance of communication, asking for help, managing her time well, and the satisfaction of coordinating events that make others happy.

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Rachel Dorris
Ms. Tillery
19 April 2012
AP Lit
Senior Project Speech
Senior year. The last year of high school. The year most students look forward to with
special events and activities held just for them. Do you remember why your senior year was so
special? The dances, field trips, meals, all these things planned out just for you to make your last
year of public schooling was the best it could be.
Hi, my name is Rachel Dorris and for my senior project I not only organized the Senior
Breakfast, but I also started the Grizzly Senior Envelope Project which will hopefully become a
tradition here at Creekview High School. I am an active student here at Creekview lettering in
two varsity sports all four years of high school as well as participating in numerous clubs, being
a member of the Creekview Yearbook Staff, and a recipient of Who’s Who. I guess you could
say I’m pretty involved. Ever since I was a young girl I have always been very active in school
and I’m a rare student that can honestly say “I enjoy coming to school.” This could be because I
want to become a third grade teacher after attending college so I am very interested in the school
events. I wanted to be able to work with projects that could make the Class of 2012’s year even
better!
For my project I researched people’s needs of service and exactly why they need to be
served. Various forms of service are seen through everyday events and businesses, such as the
Toms organization which for every pair of shoes purchased from there, a pair is matched to a
child in need in another country. Service is a psychological act where it gets into the person’s
head that people do care about them to do something kind for them. It is both a need and a want.

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The seniors receiving breakfast and an envelope filled with positive letters makes them feel
different than just being a freshman, sophomore, or junior. These acts of service make their
senior year really stand out to them since they will be graduating in May.
With my senior project I ended up having two products. My first product which is not
completed yet would be the Grizzly Envelope Project. Through this project I have created a flyer
asking any family, friends, neighbors, teachers, and anyone close to a senior to write them a
letter or card congratulating them on their graduation and wishing them luck as they venture off
to college or somewhere else. The seniors will receive this navy blue keepsake envelope on the
day of the senior breakfast and it is just something they can look back at and treasure forever. I
heard about this project when I was asked to write a letter for my cousin who was graduating
from Milton High School a couple years ago and I thought this would be such a great tradition to
start here. To advertise my project I have sent the senior’s parents a flyer through a mass email,
as well as handing out flyers for the teachers to give to underclassmen, putting this on the
morning announcements and on the school website. I also talked in front of all the seniors in one
of our meetings in the theatre back in March letting them know about my project. These cards
and letters could either be mailed to the school or dropped off in a box I made in the front office.
I was able to use the Senior Class money to purchase the navy blue envelopes for each senior. I
bought the white labels which I typed every senior’s name onto, at Wal-Mart for around $30. As
of right now I have already spent over ten hours on these envelopes typing out all the senior’s
names onto labels, then putting their labels on the envelopes, and then putting their letters in
there as well. My hours for this project will still increase dramatically since the letters are not
due until April 27th. This was one of the few problems I encountered during this section of my
project because since this is a graduation gift to the seniors I am not handing these out until the

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Senior Breakfast which is on May 23rd. A lot of my time will be spent organizing the letters into
the seniors’ envelopes as well as making sure every senior has at least two letters in their
envelope. One of those letters will be from Dr. Eddy since I went to him asking if he could write
a general letter to all the seniors since he has been with us on this journey all four years at
Creekview. If the senior does not receive any letters, which might be a problem I encounter, I
will have to ask a teacher or friend of theirs to write a letter because I do not want any senior to
receive an empty envelope. Another problem I encountered while starting out this Envelope
Project idea was the senior teachers said this was not rigorous enough, so I added on the Senior
Breakfast to my project, which would be my second product.
The Senior Breakfast was suggested to me by the teachers which was a lot bigger task
than I expected. This breakfast took a lot of organization and help from others. With the senior
sponsors’ help I was able to know exactly what they wanted. I wrote out an email to send to the
senior parents asking for volunteers to help at the breakfast as well as donate breakfast foods.
Luckily, I was able to get more than enough help from parents. With 355 seniors, a lot of food is
needed so we used some of the senior class money to buy chicken biscuits. I also went to the
Publix at Free Home asking if they could donate any pastries. The manager informed me that if I
came the hour before they closed, they could give me their close to date expiration pastries. So
the Sunday and Monday night before the breakfast I made a trip there and was able to get
numerous amounts of donuts, bagels, muffins, and danishes. All the other foods such as
pancakes, sodas, Starbuck’s coffee, and fruit were donated by parents. Some parents even
donated gift cards to places like McDonald’s, the movie theatre, and Target, which I used to give
out in a raffle drawing during the breakfast. With the parents that volunteered I assigned them to
stations such as serving the fruit, being a pancake chef, and re-stocking the pancake station,

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pastry station, and drink station. I also was able to use Mrs. Carnes’, the Home Ec teacher’s,
utensils and dining ware to put all the food on and then the cafeteria ladies were nice enough to
put all our dishes through the dishwasher for us once the breakfast was complete. We had more
than enough food so I put all the leftovers in the teacher workroom for any of the teachers who
missed the breakfast. Luckily with this part of my project I did not encounter any major
problems. My biggest factor I had to work with was making sure I stayed organized because
when a parent would volunteer I would have to take count so I could make sure I had enough of
each breakfast item for the breakfast. Through contacting parents and updating my lists of food,
this breakfast took around nine hours to make it a success.
These two projects would have been difficult without the help of Mrs. Deborah Frost. She
is a teacher at Creekview who has been teaching for over 30 years. She is very well known
having received numerous teacher awards, and she was my yearbook teacher my sophomore
year. Mrs. Frost has made a major impact in my life, and I find myself to be very similar to her,
so I thought it would be very easy to work with her. She knows a lot about the senior activities
since she is one of the senior sponsors. Also, her boys attended Milton High School, so she has
been a part of the Envelope Project already.
Through this project I have definitely learned a lot about communication. I have learned
that without communication it is hard to get anywhere. The majority of my senior breakfast was
communication with teachers and parents. I was constantly emailing parents back and forth
thanking them for donating food and answering them with what item we needed most that they
could donate. I also learned that I cannot be afraid to ask for help. Without the volunteers it
would have been very hard for me to complete this big task by myself. I feel this will also help
me in the long run since I want to be a teacher and major part of teaching is having to

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communicate with other teachers and students’ parents. I definitely would pursue more in this
topic of event coordinating and serving to others. It is such a good feeling to know a person is
happy from something you have been a part of.
From these projects I have learned to manage my time more wisely because I used to
always underestimate how long things would take and now I realize they take a lot longer
especially if you want it to become a success. Although it did take a lot of work and was stressful
I am so glad I was able to hold the senior breakfast as well as start the Grizzly Envelope Project
because these are both things the seniors will look back and hopefully remember for a lifetime.
I would just like to thank you all so much for your time to come here today and judge.
I’m sure you have a busy life outside of this school, so it means a lot for you to come and spend
your own personal time to listen to my project. Does anyone have any questions? [Answer any
questions the judges might have.]. Thanks again and I hope everyone has a wonderful evening!