On December 20, 2021, a group of 10 AYLUS volunteers headed to Ed White
Elementary School to help teachers teach kids from 1st to 5th grade during a winter camp called Camp Spark. There were kids spread out across the grades, with two or three classes per grade. The volunteers were split up into classes based on their individual
preferences and capabilities. For example, many of the children are bilingual, and some still struggle with English. In first grade especially, where the students primarily speak Spanish, the volunteers that learned Spanish as a child or learn Spanish in school currently were sent to those classes. Volunteers that could speak Chinese were also sent to classes that had Chinese children in them.
The day started at 8:00 am, and the children learned math, reading/language arts, and science throughout the day. The volunteers stayed in one classroom while different groups of students came and went after one hour periods. For the higher grade levels, different classrooms each taught a different subject, so the children would move to different classrooms while the volunteers stayed behind and waited for the next group of children to arrive from another classroom. The volunteers listened to the teacher’s lesson and helped out the kids if they had any trouble during activities. At 11 am, the volunteers would go to another room for lunch, courtesy of AYLUS, and return back to their classrooms at 12 pm while the children were still at recess. After the children got back, they would clean up their supplies and go to their next class, and the last group of kids would come into the classroom and learn the lesson for the day. At the very end, the first group of kids would come back into the classroom for some small group activities. At 2 pm, Camp Spark was over and everybody, including the volunteers, went outside to wait for their parents to pick them up.
The next day, December 21, 2021, was the last day of Camp Spark. 10 more volunteers
from AYLUS arrived again, with some different faces than the first day. This day followed the same as the first, where volunteers stayed in one room while groups of kids came, learned, and left.
Even though it was only for a couple of days, the volunteers had the opportunity to bond with the children. They reported feeling very fulfilled at helping the children understand concepts better and hope for the opportunity to go back to Camp Spark again. The children, too, seemed happy with the arrival of the high school volunteers.
The volunteers worked 7 hours in the day camp from 8 am to 2pm, and 1 hour of commute time.
Volunteers on December 20:
Alex Sun, William Sun, Elizabeth Hu, Sophia Fu, Yurui He, Ethan Chen, Dayou Wu, Andrew Du, and Even Du, Kang Zhang (arrived at 9:00 am).
Volunteers on December 21:
Elizabeth Hu, Aila Jiang, Richa Paliwal, Jonathan Niu, Matthew Niu, Jiaqi Ren, Haoqi Zhang,
Karen Xu, Fred Guo, Zide Liu, and Andrew Du.
Reported by: Elizabeth Hu
