This year at school I read a book about how to make big
impacts in little ways. The book opened and closed with the same line, “talent
is universal, but opportunity is not” and delved into the importance of
bridging the gap between widespread talent, and often limited opportunity. The
Yellow Bus Summer Camp gives opportunity to an incredible amount of untapped
talent. They bridge the gap. Getting to experience that firsthand this summer
gave me a brand new perspective on my own city and the value of education
within it.
Much of my time this summer was spent coordinating the pre
and post testing that was used to measure literacy retention rates over the
duration of the camp. I always joked that all the kids were going to hate me
because I was the testing lady, but they were surprisingly good sports about it
(a couple of our enthusiastic 5 and 6
year olds even asked to do it twice). On
one of the first days of camp I went into a classroom and asked for a 3rd
grader to come do his test. He walked out with me very reluctantly, pouting,
and almost in tears. We sat down at the testing room desks and I handed him the
3rd grade reading passage, assuming that he was just really not a
big fan of reading as his pouting continued. After I finished explaining the directions I
asked him to begin and he just sort of sat there and stared at the paper until
he finally muttered, “I can’t”. As it
turns out, he had never learned how to read, or was too nervous to read in
front of me for fear of doing poorly. At the closing of camp I retested him. He
was by no means the fastest reader in the classroom and he still struggled. But
the words “I can’t” never came out of his mouth again. He took on each passage
with a considerable amount of new confidence and asked questions along the way.
His teachers helped change his attitude this summer, and that changed his
outcome.
Another camp afternoon I was helping the younger ones make
puppets with Mad Cap Puppets. As I was helping put their puppets together
almost all of them wanted to explain to me what it was that their puppet was
going to be, all while handing me pipe cleaners and feathers and googly eyes at
a mile a minute. Although I don’t know exactly what a “dog-cat” mix would sound
like, or what a “blob monster” would be able to do, they used their
imaginations and the resources they had to create entirely new worlds and
creatures. I think sometimes this kind of talent can get squelched because it
isn’t academic, but this kind of talent is so unique and important. Creative
people move the world. And I’m not saying creating a unicorn puppet that can “shoot
lasers out of its eyes” is a world changing idea, but by giving these kids an
outlet to think in an unconfined way, the YBSC is making inventive problem
solvers and out of the box thinkers.
Everybody has “smarts”, but sometimes our smarts are in
different things. I am truly lucky to have gotten to see these kids’ smarts,
whatever they are, used, encouraged, and grown this summer inside and outside
of the classroom. It is an experience that I know will always be a part of me,
and one I will not soon forget.
Written by Jill O'Bryan, Volunteer & FwP Summer Marketing Intern
