Yohe – Internship Blog 5

As we approach the end of the semester, and therefore, the end of my time interning at ACH Clear Pathways, I’d like to reflect on my time and the programs ACH has to offer. Going into this internship, I already had a pretty good idea of the philosophies that ACH embodies in its mission, and what that mission means. I’ve been a believer and advocate for what creative expression and extracurricular activities can do for the developing mind of a growing student, due to my time teaching martial arts in my youth. In a way, getting to intern at ACH has been an opportunity to reawaken my passion for cultivating the youth in through meaningful means. Some of my favorite moments have been getting to witness students problem solve to fully realize the creative potential of their artwork, watching students collaborate and build fantastical worlds that exist in their imaginations, or even just getting to see them express themselves and their feelings through art has been nothing short of fascinating. The perfect example that exemplifies this sentiment is a LEGO world that some of the students created. In its entirety, about 5 students teamed up and made an entire city out of bricks. There was a whole narrative and backstory for each of the minifigures, each role-played by a different student. My personal favorite figure was a human body with a squirrel where its head should have been – while this may seem rather goofy, this was that student’s way of working through the problem of limited LEGO pieces in a way that allowed them to participate in the overall narrative of the city while also getting to generating a character bio about human fusion with a squirrel gone wrong. The city also required collaboration – seeing as how these students had to all coexist and create in the same space – which developed the etiquette and foundations of what was expected from each of its contributors. While the LEGO city was only a miniscule fraction of what was accomplished during my time while interning, it encapsulates what exactly ACH stands for – imagination, collaboration, and creative expression in an extracurricular setting for growing and developing students.

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