Weekly Media Roundup: October 23, 2019

At Green Bay's Boys & Girls Club, Students Make 'Magic' Happen While Creating Comic Books, Green Bay Press Gazette (Wisconsin)

About five years ago, the Wallace Foundation awarded a grant to the Boys & Girls Club of Green Bay to explore how to engage students in afterschool programs using the arts. Today, the Club’s “Imagination Station” comic book program is in full swing, with students developing their creativity, artistic talents, literacy abilities, and technology skills by writing, drawing, and using software to edit their own original comic strips. Teacher and mentor Craig Knitt hopes the program shows students that everyone has an important story to tell. “For our next comic book, I’m probably going to make the cover,” a student named Teagan told the Green Bay Press Gazette. “It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something really big, like more than just making an art project at school and taking it home.”

Two Magic Valley Organizations Team Up to Provide Rock Climbing Opportunities, KMVT-TV (Idaho)

Thanks to a partnership with the Gemstone Climbing Center in Twin Falls, Idaho, students in the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Magic Valley afterschool program will get the chance to try rock climbing. The goal is to expose students to new experiences after the school day ends and teach them about physical fitness, determination and perseverance. “Every peak on this earth is going to be accessible to every child, and they won’t feel like it’s out of their reach,” Hailey Barnes, co-owner of the Gemstone Climbing Center, told KMVT-TV. “[Rock climbing is] hard, and you are going to fall, and you have to get back up and try again.”

Miami Dolphins Gather Nearly 50 Students in Miami to Talk Diversity, Inclusivity, WSVN-TV (Florida)

At the Breakthroughs and Bridges event, students in the Breakthrough Miami out-of-school time program and Miami Dolphins football players and executives teamed up to discuss diversity, understanding, collaboration, and creating positive change in South Florida. The event included networking, activities focused on inclusion and social change, and small group discussions with students from diverse backgrounds. Managing Program Director Lauren Keller Rudolph told WSVN-TV that students were excited to “have an opportunity and a safe space to share their ideas, their passions, where they would like to see change, and to find other like-minded youth that are really excited about change, and have the opportunity to meet new students.”

Students Create Patchwork Chinook Salmon Mural, Lacamas Magazine (Washington)

Middle school students in the Club 8 afterschool program in Washougal, Washington recently brightened their community with a mural celebrating individuality, diversity and unity. The city government supplied and primed the mural’s location – a downtown public retaining wall – and students worked with a local muralist to develop their own creative ‘patchwork’ sections of the image of a Chinook salmon, which represents the Washougal area. Then, on a Saturday morning, the students showed up to make their visions a reality. “I love painting and love making our world a better place,” sixth-grader Aubrey Kleiva told Lacamas Magazine.  “It is cool because I can make people smile through art.”