Youth Lead the Change: Day 4

Editor’s note: Sawyers Ames is an eighth-grader at Watertown Middle School in Massachusetts. At the end of August, she attended a new camp run by The Leadership Institute at Harvard University for Boston-area kids in 7th through 10th grades. The purpose of the free camp, Youth Lead the Change!, was to help find the next generation of leaders and to give them some tools to speak out and learn how to make a difference.

The following is Sawyer’s look at her final day at the leadership camp.

***

The final day! Everyone at YLC is buzzing with anticipation and preparation for the presentation we’ll give to staff, parents, and each other in the afternoon! We meet in the usual room for a quick pep talk and then we split. My group and I go to the computer lab in the science center where we all have the same Google Docs presentation open and are all working on it at the same time. Our take on the childhood obesity problem was pretending to be a division of Nike.

We stay in the lab for three hours, putting the finishing touches on every slide and running it with the projector at the front of the room countless times. Every time one of us slouches, Melanie (one of our teachers) calls out, “You’re Nike! Come on! Act like it! We got this in the bag!” It draws out grins, laughs, and leadership qualities.

We claim the first two rows in the enormous auditorium. Parents filter in slowly. I see mine, along with my sister, take a seat in the middle section. Right in the center. My group is the blue group. As we were arranged according to the rainbow, we were slated to go second to last.

Clean water. Homelessness. Obesity. Clean water. Homelessness again…

“And the blue group!”

We file up onto the stage with nervous, awkward smiles frozen on our faces. I open our PowerPoint and we begin. Whenever someone stumbles over a word or goes to the wrong slide, I blush in embarrassment, though it’s not my mistake. My three slides roll around. I talk for around 30 seconds, but it feels more like five. As I step back from telling the audience about who we are and why we care about this problem, Maeve and Claire slap me two high-fives. So, I didn’t do as bad as I thought?

We receive a loud round of applause, and as we filter out of the room, Erica and I see a little boy crying over near the bathrooms.

“I don’t wanna! I-I don’t wanna be obeeeeeese!” he says through his tears.

I can’t help smiling a little. I guess we got our point across.

***

These four days definitely paid off. I feel a lot more comfortable speaking in front of an audience, a well as understanding topics and strategies I wasn’t so clear on before. We had five speakers, and only one was disappointing. The others were really brilliant! I definitely recommend this to anyone and everyone who is — or wants to become — a leader!

(Photo: Kara Kubarych (left), one of the camp organizers, is the chair of Harvard's Leadership Development Initiative. (Courtesy John Vitti)

 

Youth Lead the Change: Day 3

Editor’s note: Sawyers Ames is an eighth-grader at Watertown Middle School in Massachusetts. At the end of August, she attended a new camp run by The Leadership Institute at Harvard University for Boston-area kids in 7th through 10th grades. The purpose of the free camp, Youth Lead the Change!, was to help find the next generation of leaders and to give them some tools to speak out and learn how to make a difference.

The following is Sawyer’s look at her third day at the leadership camp.

***

I look down at the booklet in my hands warily. Letting out a sigh — three speakers? If they aren’t good, then this day is going to be painful.

And the first hour certainly is. My “action” team works on digging back to the root cause of childhood obesity. This was what our speaker came to talk about. She works at a nonprofit group working with schools to help students become more physically fit.

Now, what we had done so far in the week was really about presenting and thinking of yourself as a leader. It was relatively obvious that this woman had not ever taken part in such a thing. Shoulders rolled forward, very quiet voice, monotone, looking at her feet. I almost fell asleep at 9:30 in the morning.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon passes relatively quickly, with little preps here are there for the final presentation we would do the next afternoon. Right after lunch, a Harvard Business School student shows us a PowerPoint on leadership through community service. Her example is as a high school student, trying to get a law passed in Delaware prohibiting smoking in public places. I am happy to report that I have no trouble staying wide awake during this!

We take a small break to do some non-leadership activities. What a relief! Then back to our seats for — wait for it — yet another speaker!

Zeynep Ton had been a professor at Harvard Business School until switching just this summer to MIT. The premise of her talk is to let us know that every single job is important. To put everything in perspective, she uses her apple. And we trace that apple all the way from where it had been grown in New Zealand to the little market where she bought it in the heart of Boston.

The way she shows us all of this was interactive, with a joke and a question here and there. I swear almost everyone in the room genuinely wants to pay attention.

(Photo: Courtesy John Vitti) 

Youth Lead the Change: Day 2

Editor’s note: Sawyers Ames is an eighth-grader at Watertown Middle School in Massachusetts. At the end of August, she attended a new camp run by The Leadership Institute at Harvard University for Boston-area kids in 7th through 10th grades. The purpose of the free camp, Youth Lead the Change!, was to help find the next generation of leaders and to give them some tools to speak out and learn how to make a difference.

The following is Sawyer’s look at her second day at the leadership camp.
 

***

The big event in the morning is our first speaker for the day. Kathy Delaney-Smith, the head women’s basketball coach at Harvard University. She practically runs into the room, grinning, and telling us that all embarrassment needed to go “out the door” when she is speaking.

“If I ask you if you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend, you’re going to tell me!” she says with a wink and a grin.

The class bursts out laughing and rushes to agree with her. You don’t usually get an adult wanting to hear about that kind of stuff, you know?

As she talks, she tells us about the Five C’s of Leadership: commitment, composure, character, communication, and confidence. The premise of her talk is to let us know that if we want to be a leader, we really have to want it. We really have to want to work for it, and let other people know that we have what it takes. She is a perfect example, and I think we all find the hour with her inspiring, interactive, and interesting. As she leaves the room, she shouts out her team’s mantra: “Don’t just survive — ATTACK!”

***

It is soon time for an opening activity for our final project! In our groups, we were each given a mini case study. Mine is on childhood obesity. We work on tracing to the root cause of obesity in children. There isn’t just one, so the one my group and I choose to look at is advertising. Next time you’re watching TV, think about how many commercials there are for fast-food restaurants, and then look at how many there are for places such as Whole Foods. Many people don’t notice this, but once you look for it, I promise you’ll notice a huge difference.

***

“Please welcome Ranjay Gulati!” Kara squeals. We all clap as the Harvard Business School professor steps up to the podium.

“Thank you, thank you! Today, I will be focusing on leadership in relation to root causes. This is what you have been working on, no?”

There are murmurs of agreement from all of us, and he begins the presentation. It is a wonderfully made PowerPoint with videos here and there. One of the videos includes Domino’s pizza! They had been getting numerous complaints about their cheese seeming fake and the crust tasting worse than cardboard. (How these people knew what cardboard tasted like, I don’t know.) Domino’s was unhappy that its pizza was not pleasing people, but the company didn’t push the comments away saying that the customers were the problem. Domino’s looked at itself, and tried to see what it was doing wrong and how it could be fixed. Eventually, a new sauce was created with new crust. The very same people who had said the pizza was horrible LOVED IT! Domino’s fixed its problem by tracing the root cause.

These types of examples from Professor Gulati really get us going, inspire us, and I think he is definitely to thank for how wonderfully the week turned out!

(Photo: Harvard women's basketball coach Kathy Delaney-Smith (Courtesy John Vitti))

Youth Lead the Change: Day 1

Editor’s note: Sawyers Ames is an eighth-grader at Watertown Middle School in Massachusetts. At the end of August, she attended a new camp run by The Leadership Institute at Harvard University for Boston-area kids in 7th through 10th grades. The purpose of the free camp, Youth Lead the Change!, was to help find the next generation of leaders and to give them some tools to speak out and learn how to make a difference.

The following is Sawyer’s look at her first day at the leadership camp.

***

“I’m going to Harvard! We’re going to Harvard!” I screech, grabbing Julia’s forearm as the two of us walk through Wigglesworth Hall. I think it goes without saying that I am excited, but with every step I take closer to Emerson Hall, it feels more like butterflies. Big, hyper, flapping butterflies in my stomach.

“Name?” one of the undergrads running the program asks me.

“Sawyer.”

“Sawyer Ames?”

“Yes.”

“Great! Right through those doors, and it’s your first room on the right!” she says with an enormous smile.

I nod and follow her directions. I find myself in what looks like a mini auditorium. I’m immediately taken aback. “Give Me Everything Tonight,” is coming out of the speakers, and all of the teachers are milling around. They’re really the only ones that look comfortable in this setting. All of the kids sit in black chairs, bags perched on their laps. Some make small talk with others next to them. Even some smiles! Gasp! But most of them stare straight ahead.

***

It’s around five minutes before Kara bounds into the room. She claps her hands loudly and the music comes to a stop.

“Who am I?” she asks us with a gleam in her eye. We’re puzzled. She jumps up on the platform and writes the question on the board before whirling back around to face us. “That’s the question for today! We are going to find out what kind of leaders we all are! But first — we gotta break the ice! Come on! Follow me!”

Fifty-five kids with awkward smiles and wary looks get up and hitch their bags over their shoulders. Kara leads us into the yard next to Emerson. We’re instructed to get in a circle, and one by one, run to the middle and shout our name and school. We do, and by the end, everyone is laughing at how over-the-top some people made their statement. Who would’ve thought something like that could be fun?

We play a few other games, team-building kinds of things, and then filter back in pumped up from the start to our morning. We have a short break and some people socialize. I’m not one of those people.

***

“Are you ready for the PATH OF LIFE, everyone?” Gabe (another one of the counselors) jumps into the middle of the hallway.

We look up, startled, and he tells us to divide into our groups. There’s a lot of inspecting name-tags to see which color group we were placed in, as well as numerous sympathetic glances between friends as they move into rooms opposite each other. I was in blue. No one else I knew that well was, but hey, no big deal.

The Path of Life ends up being pretty much just that. We are all given a sheet of paper, and a pen. The activity is to draw a line, with ups and downs corresponding with how your life has been so far. Then label them, and make a symbol representing the event or what it meant to you. The only real dip in my line was the sixth grade. My trip to Morocco and seventh grade were pretty much straight up!

The rest of the afternoon passes by quickly with more team-building trust games and a break or two. With about an hour and a half left before dismissal, we are all given a small quiz. “Leadership Compass” was the title at the top of the page.

I end up being north and south: North meaning I was controlling and liked to be in charge. South meaning I was creative, and a visionary. Pretty accurate.

(Photo: Gabe Lloyd is the Assistant Chair of the Leadership Development Initiative (courtesy John Vitti))

The Making of Dolphin Tale

The trip to the Florida Marine Aquarium was not my first. Previously, I visited to write stories about Winter the dolphin when the book about her, Winter's Tale, came out. Later I returned for a story about the Scholastic Essay Contest winner, Jessica Rendleman, who was inspired by Winter to overcome her battle with cancer. So this trip, I expected to enter the lobby, as usual. However, this was not the normal aquarium.

Winter could not go to Hollywood, so director Charles Martin Smith brought Hollywood to Winter!

Staff members carried film equipment and large coolers full of fish — payment for the star. Of course, Winter was not the only cast member. The roster included award-winning actors Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick, Jr., Kris Kristofferson, and Ashley Judd. The younger stars included Nathan Gamble (Sawyer Nelson), Cozi Zeuhlsdorff (Hazel Haskett), and Austin Stowell (Kyle Connellan).
 
Filming a movie is not easy, especially when you are a kid. Not only do they have to put in nine hours of work, the same as the adults, but they must also fit in three-and-a-half hours of school. One thing that stands out in my mind is the constant repetition when filming the scenes. Actor Nathan Gamble spent over an hour in the water filming the underwater ballet scene. He was exhausted because he had to hold his breath and swim repeatedly in order to perfect the scene.

Actually the majority of the filming day was spent on this one scene. Fortunately, my job was easy and the view was spectacular. As the scene was filmed with special underwater 3-D cameras, I sat with editors and engineers in a room with multiple monitors. Several monitors showed the 2-D version image of the filming, while the other monitors displayed the mind-boggling 3-D images. In fear of missing a moment of this awesome experience I was constantly slipping my 3-D glasses on and off to see all that was happening. 

As I interacted with the stars and sat with the cast at lunch, I realized they were just normal people. They were down-to-earth and humble. Interviewing them was like talking to friends from school. As a matter of fact, Austin Stowell’s mom is a teacher just like mine. And by the way, movie set food is AWESOME!

The cast of Dolphin Tale works to make the best movie possible, both on and off camera. Their hope is to inspire others as much as Winter has inspired them.

Check out my behind-the-scenes video report from the set of Dolphin Tale!

—Kid Reporter Shelby Fallin 

Apply now to be a Kid Reporter!

Become a Scholastic Kid Reporter!

We are now accepting applications for the 2011-2012 Scholastic News Kids Press Corps!

To apply, applicants must complete and mail ALL of the following:

* a typed news article (maximum 400 words) about your community. The article must include at least two quotes from at least one interview.

* a typed essay (maximum 250 words) that answers the questions: Why do you want to be a Kid Reporter? What do you hope to learn as a Kid Reporter?

* two ideas for stories about people making a difference in your community that you would like to work on as a Kid Reporter.

* a basic background information form that lets Scholastic News Kids Press Corps editors know more about you and help us select a diverse group of kids from all over the country.

* a Student Release Form (form provided by Scholastic must be completed and signed by your parent/legal guardian).

* a recent photograph of yourself that, if you are selected as a Kid Reporter, will appear on the site when we announce the new Kid Reporters (this can be a color printout or an actual photograph, but we cannot return any submitted photographs).

Download the application on the Scholastic News Kids Press Corps website! All applications must be postmarked by October 11, 2011. NO LATE APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

9/11 from the Perspective of a Young Arab-American

Editor's Note: As a Kid Reporter, Charlie Kadado knows that he must always remain objective in his reporting. But on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Charlie asked if he could write an opinion piece about growing up as an Arab American in a post-9/11 America. News publications, print and online, often offer editorials or opinion pieces for their readers on current news topics.  This week we felt there was place for Charlie’s opinion piece in our 9/11 special report.

What you're about to read is an editorial, not a reported story like we usually publish. It reflects Charlie's opinion as a kid, not a Scholastic Kid Reporter. 

Terrorism, the Middle East, 9/11. They are words that have come to flow together after the tragic attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Now on the 10th anniversary, the words have become part of discriminatory and intolerant phrases, full of hate and prejudice.

As a young American Middle Eastern, I was raised to appreciate my heritage, but, at the same time, exhibit my American pride. I am American born, American raised, and a proud American. However, after the attacks on 9/11, my family and I became confused. We were confused by our surroundings, confused by media depictions, and confused by the new misconceptions of our race.

Before the attacks, we were proud to be Americans. We were the kind of people who had an American flag in our front yard, enjoyed the patriotic fireworks on the Fourth of July, and wore American flag lapel pins on our clothing. After the attacks, however, we felt a renewed sense of patriotism. We were not only demonstrating our patriotism, but we began to appreciate our country, appreciate our lives, and appreciate the hard work of the men and women in uniform.

As people came together to help those who lost family members, we watched in admiration. That sense of admiration powered our patriotism.

Unfortunately, our patriotism was not welcome by others. Our patriotism was met with discrimination. We were looked at differently when we walked into the grocery store and when we greeted our neighbors. We were no longer the American patriotic family who lives next door — we became the Arabs who live next door.

I was quite young when the attacks happened, but I can still vaguely remember my father's face and response to the media coverage of the incident. He was surprised by why it happened and how it happened. Like any other American, he was in shock.

As I grew older and learned more about 9/11 in school, I was forced to grow up in a different world. My elementary school was situated in Farmington Hills, Michigan, a diverse neighborhood in Oakland County. My classmates were a mix of Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Europeans, and many more cultures. Discrimination has never an issue at my school, but the news headlines, interviews, and opinions were hard to avoid.

Without question, the attacks on September 11th had a tremendous impact on the lives of Arab Americans. Discrimination became an issue that many Arab Americans now faced.

In 2001, my father was a community activist in the Oakland County area. As a precinct delegate, leader of political activities, and business owner, he was shocked by the effect 9/11 had on Arab Americans. Despite his public service, he still encountered discrimination.

Arabs who practiced Islam faced the most prejudice, but Christian-Lebanese families like us faced it, too. Our religion helped us connect with our community and disregard the intolerance.

The 10-year anniversary of 9/11 should be a time to rethink what we say, reestablish how we live, and remember those who died during the terrible attacks. It also should be a time to teach others about what 9/11 meant to the nation.

Teaching young people about 9/11 should also be a time to explain the meaning of discrimination. It is an issue that people should learn at a young age. We must learn that discrimination will get us nowhere. The world will change, people will change, issues will change, but the affects of discrimination will not. It will always be a problem, a problem that is tough to get rid of.

For more Kid Reporter stories about the 10th anniversary of 9/11, check out the 9/11: Ten Years Later Special Report. 

—Kid Reporter Charlie Kadado

Photo: Kid Reporter Charlie Kadado in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Charlie Kadado)