Presenter: Riley Harris, Psychology and Family Science, Global Public Health Scholars
For my practicum project, I worked at a summer enrichment program for elementary/middle school aged students, the Boys and Girls Club. With this summer specifically, I helped the kids remain conscious of social distancing rules within a pandemic, making sure that the students understand the importance of staying safe during this time. This includes teaching behaviors like mask wearing, social distancing, and proper hand washing techniques. I also led a class on diversity, in which I showed the students how they differ from one another and made sure they understood that different does not have to be seen as a bad thing, and that no person was better than the other. This program works to help children who may be having issues in school and prepare them for next school year. These students came from varying backgrounds of income, ages, race, or other factors that could lead to lower health outcomes. The goal of this program was to provide assistance that may not be available to students because of public health hurdles they may face. In short, they work to ensure each child is able to reach their full potential as a student given the structure of the curriculum.
You mentioned how ultimately trying to spread the ideas of your project through the club ended up being difficult because the children had bias and were more difficult to reach than expected. How can this be made a longitudinal implementation to more effectively ingrain the ideas into the children for the long term rather than just a one-and-done type situation?
Is there easy access information out for Minority parents to learn about his education gap?