I have been participating in the Boulder 21st Century Program since I was 6 weeks old. My mother was an Americorps VISTA Volunteer in the 21st Century Program for the first 2 years of my life.
Since then, I have come with her to the program every day to participate in projects. For the past few years, I have helped my mother plan activities and give ideas for service projects. I believe that the program has taught me life lessons, it has created my leadership skills, and has helped develop my creativity.
Boulder’s 21st Century Program has taught me several life lessons. Last year, we had a prevention specialist teach us about alcohol, drugs, and tobacco and how it will play tricks on your life. We also had a seatbelt safety specialist teach us about why we need to wear seat belts.
Our school has the 8 Keys of Excellence. These Keys include Integrity, Failure Leads to Success, Speak With Good Purpose, This is It, Commitment, Flexibility, and Balance. This year we went to the Department of Public Health and Human Services and the VA Hospital to teach their staff about the keys. This program has taught me about leadership. I led a project to get our school to have tetherball ring. We typed up tetherball rules and then went to our principal and asked about putting up tetherball on our playground. She said only if every class knows the rules. So we went around to the first through eighth grades. We read the rules and answered any questions they had. In just a few days we had the tetherball up and running.
In-Service Learning we have completed many projects. In another project, we screened the documentary Screenagers. We served food before the screening started so that everyone could have dinner. We focused on locally grown foods. While I was developing my creativity, I drew pictures and built forts. In the program, we had things like engineering club and makers club. My mother brought boxes from our house and she prompted us on what we could build.
During the program, she also gave us freestyle time and we would build towers, robots, forts, and whatever we could come up with. In the Summer Program, we had an engineer come and teach us about engineering. He gave us marshmallows and sticks and told us to build the tallest tower, and he gave us five minutes. Through my time in the program, it has taught me how to engineer my ideas and use my creativity. Also, it has taught me to be grateful and use leadership when needed. During this I have learned to be respectful and use my skills every day to overcome challenges. Because of this, I feel I am a good candidate for the Student Voices Project.
