WHAT A LONG STRANGE TRIP IT'S BEEN BY AMBER DECHAINE

I like to compare my year of service to a Grateful Dead tune. Just when you think it’s over, they keep on jammin’ on into the next verse. 

Although there has been much less of a psychoactive influence on my year of service than there might have been on a Grateful Dead song, just when I thought I was done growing and learning, I kept jammin’ on into the next verse. 

Throughout my time with the Montana Career Lab I have developed a greater understanding of career development, career theory, and why it is important to explore career development as early as pre-school. I have had hands on experience with age appropriate career activities for students at every level while developing leadership ability and self-confidence. I have had the opportunity to travel across the state and network with many wonderful organizations and agencies all promoting the success of students. 

There are so many ways in which this year of service has benefited me, I only hope that my time with the Montana Career Lab has had an impact on the students I was able to work with. 

My first partnership was with the local Student Aged Child Care (SACC), that ran afterschool programs out of all but one of Helena’s elementary schools. 

I started in two schools and was able to build strong relationships with the SACC coordinators and students. Every student in the program picked a career from our Careers Build a Community curriculum and I assisted them in exploring why they chose that career. We completed hands on activities and hosted community speakers to help them gain a better understanding of what that career entailed. 

Many of the students picked the same careers as their parents but at the end of the unit they all had an opportunity to share what they learned about their chosen career to teach their peers about other careers in their community. 

When I got the “okay” from Helena School District, I started advertising myself to the teachers by putting little handouts in their mailboxes. They must have been rather unappealing fliers or just busy teachers because I only got a response from one school- you live, and you learn. 

Within weeks I was teaching our curriculum in two first grade classrooms at Broadwater Elementary. I would say this was a breakthrough moment for my service and I was really able to get hands on with the curriculum to determine what worked and what needed improvement (of course the activities with candy were always a hit). 

If I am being completely honest, this year I discovered that I S-U-C-K, big time, at teaching. Despite my playful fantasies about having my own classroom that fosters free love and produces miniature hippies, I am much better on a 1:1 basis with students. It’s possible that I am just inexperienced or too anxious, but I can’t think of a better environment in which to learn this about myself. 

Even with my ignorance in effective teaching methods, the students were AMAZING and kind to me. They all came with different levels of knowledge, interests, thoughts, and feelings, each one as unique as a snowflake. I wanted to very carefully cultivate autonomy in every one of these students and help them explore careers that could be personally fulfilling and as unique as they are.

After each career lesson, the curriculum had the students reflect on what they learned about that career: what they liked or didn’t like, who they knew who does that career, or where in the community they might find that career. The very last day the students were able to pick the career they liked best and make a career puppet and a booklet out of their reflection pages. 

The curriculum includes a final community day where students can choose their careers and host a reverse career fair. They can decorate a business front and invite their family and community members to stop by their “business” to learn about their career. Unfortunately, because of time constraints, I couldn’t host a community day with any of my groups. I am holding our future AmeriCorps Leader accountable to invite me to any community days he achieves! 

I can’t say that the students I’ve worked with will remember our 45 minutes a week when they are heading off to college, but at least I can leave my service knowing that I gave them an opportunity to explore careers they might not have thought of before, and that I’ve planted the seed for their “Sugar Magnolia” trees to blossom.  

 “Once in a while you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” -Grateful Dead

BIGGER AND BETTER: THE HIDDEN LIFE LESSONS BY ADAM MAES

The first week of our Upward Bound Summer Academy 2019 went off without too many issues. Starting over with a new team has been quite interesting, but rewarding and exciting. There are seven of us providing supervision and guidance for the 51 high school students in our care. Part of this commitment is planning activities to keep them occupied and out of trouble in the evenings. This week we carried out an Upward Bound tradition of playing “Bigger and Better” on the streets of Butte.

The rules are simple, I give out a paperclip and tell the students that they need to talk to people and trade this paperclip for something “Bigger and Better.” The team must stay together, and they may only offer the item that they have at the time. The winner is then judged on size, value, and creativity of their final item.

As we embarked on our journey, my team immediately ran into someone walking down the street with a backpack (in a weird coincidence it was an EnergyCorps volunteer) who traded us a female hygiene product for our green paperclip. We kept walking and met a lady on her porch and traded our pad for a light up stick. We continued on down the street and met a man on his porch who traded us a lead pipe for our light up stick. After carrying the pipe around town for a while, a lady raking her yard traded us a metal rod for our lead pipe. We then met some men working on a vehicle who traded our metal rod for a larger metal fence post. Eventually we ended up trading the fence post for what I can only describe as a large metal “chimney?” which we then had to carry up Tech hill to the dorm, because we were running out of time.

After listening to the other teams’ stories and seeing what other items showed up, including a dog, a bucket of tacos, a box of chips, a restaurant t-shirt, and hair straightener we were ultimately disqualified because one of my group members was related to the last person we traded with (I warned them we would get disqualified).  

It wasn’t so much the items that each group returned with, but the experience of reaching out to others in the community and learning how to communicate with complete strangers. Upon reflection, which I have had a lot of time for, lately being put in a deja vu situation of sorts, I realized how many small but essential lessons I learned while participating in these same activities with the same program. Building self-confidence, learning how to approach what could be uncomfortable situations, and quite possibly being disappointed by your trade are all “hidden lessons” in what we consider a tradition and fun game.

In essence, we weren’t just looking for the biggest and best item, but working with our students to make them the biggest and best they can be by teaching our hidden lessons of communication, confidence, and self-advocacy. 

HAPPY GRADUATION, SENIOR CLASS OF 2019! BY ALEXIS BURTON

Valedictorian and Salutatorian walking to their seats

 at the start of the ceremony

Spring has sprung, as they say, with summer clinging tight to the tail end of this season, ready to move in at a thunderstorm’s notice. All of the seniors at Troy High School have completed their last day of school, checked out of their classes, cleaned their lockers, returned their books to the library and submitted their final papers and projects. With them gone, my office feels empty, though my door remains open. Perfect time to reflect on all that has occurred this year, and the impact the seniors have had on the student body and myself.


In the beginning of September, the GEAR UP team and I divided all 29 seniors into small “focus groups” as we called them, so we could have meaningful, one-on-one conversations about their goals and plans in order to create specific and targeted plans for their senior year. Over the next few months, our groups became share spaces for important information and deadlines, upcoming scholarships, events, college application materials, and other how-to -adult items as they came up. We hosted a FAFSA night, where parents brought in their taxes and received guidance from the GU team, myself and a representative of Reach Higher Montana to fill out the FAFSA with confidence. We had a Do’s and Donuts of Scholarships evening where we shared information (and donuts) about different financial aid options, tips for writing good essays and how to find appropriate scholarships per circumstances. We hosted the largest Career Fair THS has seen yet, and later had a Reality Fair focused on learning how to budget. We funded nearly 20 field trip visits to various colleges, and had additional funding set aside for students who wanted to check out other schools with their folks that reimbursed travel costs and paid for hotel stays and meals. By spring break, all 29 seniors had been admitted to a community college or university, and have applied for thousands of dollars worth of local scholarships. Not all of them plan to attend school right away, but the fact remains that their admittance into schools shows how capable they each are, and how many options they have ahead of them.

Senior Paige giving the introduction for Ms. Maust, the
class’s elected speaker. This class is Ms. Maust’s first
 group of freshmen-senior cohort, making these introductions
and speeches real tear-jerkers. 

As the school year has gone on, our specific focus groups have organically disbanded, and in its place has arisen a broadly welcoming center for all who have questions about life and college, as well as a place to gather to share stories and apprehension at leaving the bubble they’ve known all their lives. My office may feel empty, but my heart has never been so full. I am proud to call many of these students friends, and on their last day I handed out cards full of congratulations and encouragement. I shared a poem that was given to me when I graduated college, and many of them now have it posted up where they will see it every day to pull further encouragement from.

I’ve read countless entrance and scholarship essays, shared life advice, and called numerous college offices with my students to help them get questions answered about dorm life, financial aid, class registration, and how to make friends at school. I’ve come in after hours and on days off to meet with students to answer questions, responded to middle-of-the-night-panic emails, and written several letters of recommendation. On June 1st, 2019 I had the privilege of attending their graduation, and watched all of them walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. One of my students wore a pair of heels I gave her that I wore at my own high school graduation, and another wore a dress I gave her. These students have worked their way through tremendous odds to make it to the point they are at today, and have the resilience to continue facing anything that tries to stand in their way. With the support of programs like GEAR UP and MTCC cheering for continued education, countless students across Montana will be encouraged to make their dreams into realities year after year.

Seniors tossing their caps at the end of the ceremony.

Congratulations, Troy High Class of 2019. You are officially 2019% done with high school! :’)

IT TAKES A VILLAGE: THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN AGENCY AND INSTRUCTION BY CHANDLER PADGETT

After years of waiting, the Boys & Girls Club of Richland County moved into its new building in March. Amid the pristine white walls, shiny steel kitchen, and ample programming space there sparkled a host of hopes and expectations for what we would accomplish free of our previous limitations. In May, the last month of school, I planned to channel these goals into my art program—to take full advantage of our new resources and involve our entire club community in a collaborative project.
I decided the project would take the form of a village; in an attempt to engage the interests of as many members as possible and to encourage creativity, I didn’t set any stipulations on what was made—just that it had to fit on the allotted space. The result was a middling motley of creations that varied greatly in effort, construction, and style: a Cenex station with no cars to fuel, a number of one-walled houses, and only one lonely person to enjoy it all.

I was a little disappointed in the end. Should I have been more structured and strict in my requirements? Would that have just made the kids lose interest in the project? I struggled to find a balance between agency and instruction; I didn’t want to dampen the students’ imagination and creativity, but I also wanted to give form, shape, and a definite lesson to the project. For example, though I tried to push kids to make more buildings and to put more effort into their creations, they often wanted to make a small animal sculpture or quickly move on to something new.
Ultimately, around 20 members participated, which is about a third of our daily attendance. There were definitely bright moments of the collaboration and creativity I hoped to achieve: discussion about the layout and placement of the village, cooperation between grade levels on unique ideas. It’s hard to measure what the kids learned and how much fun they had doing so (which is more important than the end result), and I’m not entirely sure what I learned myself—maybe there’s some deeper lesson about community buy-in or the eventual futility of gasoline—but going forward into summer camps, I hope to educate in a way that’s both informative and fun.

FINDING A LOVE FOR STEM EDUCATION BY LANA PETRIE

When I was little, I didn’t have the normal childhood most kids have growing up. I was diagnosed at age 5 with chronic pancreatitis. I was the youngest case Vanderbilt Hospital had, so they didn’t really know how to fix my pain. I had multiple surgeries and hospital stays throughout those years. It is kind of surreal to think about now. Yet, despite these struggles, I did learn that I had a love for science and serving people. I saw my doctor, Dr. Wallace Neiblit, constantly thinking outside of the box to help me. He also had a crew of resident doctors that would come in, read off my case like on Grey’s Anatomy, and brainstorm with Dr. Neiblit. My doctor was devoted to helping me and was able to do so (put simply) through science.

Fast forward to present day, and I am an AmeriCorps Senior Leader serving with MTCC. I get to serve students and help spread my love for STEM Education. Especially due to my past, STEM Education is close to my heart. Now, I want students to understand their potential and see how much fun STEM programs are. As such, I treasure any chance I get to work with students and cultivate their appreciation and love for science.

The most rewarding experience I have had thus far in this pursuit was creating science fair projects with students at Hot Springs School. Each student got the chance to show their personalities in each project. One had a love for animals and did a project testing bacterial growth of her dogs’ mouth compared to her own. Another project was focused on water quality of lakes in the surrounding areas. There was such a wide range of ideas and interests among the four projects, but, at the end of the day, it was brought out through having a passion for science.

Seeing all of their projects on display at the SKC Science Fair Festival helped remind me that making science fun can show students that STEM careers are fun. It reminded me how Dr. Neiblit used science to help me get better and why I eventually chose a STEM career in Agriculture. I hope to continue to spread my love of science to students wherever I go. You never know how students will respond to your lessons, but sometimes it can be the best surprise.

EMPOWER PLACE SCIENTIST BY JORDAN FERNANDEZ

As the spring floats in briskly with the cloud spotted sky, Missoula slowly waves goodbye to winter. In with the sun through the windows of EMPower Place, we find ourselves at the after school club, on a Thursday evening. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, EMPower Place hosts programming with cooking classes for kids, science activities and much needed post formal education play. Thursdays are my favorite day of the week, because I get to host the science activity. These children usually go bananas over the activity, it gets a little out of hand. 

 A couple of weeks into April, we were running an activity on DNA extraction of strawberries. This is one of the more difficult activity for the small ones, who are usually the crowd at EMPower Pplace. Mind you, most of the kids that come to after school club are preschool to second grade. The DNA activity also requires patients, which we all hopefully get to learn throughout life.  As you may remember, being cooped up in school all day, doesn't make listening very easy. Our poor parents can probably attest to this claim. 

So, how do we make sure everyone receives a positive experience before heading home you ask? We’ll I have to be prepared and it helps to have my colleagues back me up when I’m struggling, which I was that day.  

DNA from strawberries? You mean you want to make Jam with second graders? So the process is, have the kids put previously frozen strawberries in a landfill bag. Ok, now, zip the plastic closed and mash up those berries with a solution of water, dish soap and a bit of salt. The kids love this part.  Next, you put the strawberries in a coffee filter and wait for the mixture to drip through to the bottom of a beaker. Ok, add isopropyl alcohol and wait. Essentially you are breaking down the strawberry to a more basic form. If you actually want to do this, you can find videos on YouTube for precise measurements. 

After a few cycles of kids extracting DNA, one of the children that had been assisting me, asked me a question that I wasn't ready for. She paused on her tenth extraction of the hour, while also helping other kids and exclaimed, “Are you a real scientist?” Some of the other kids around the table became apparently aware of the conversation and awaited my answer. Before I could even think of a response, that same second grader who asked the question said, “I think you are a scientist.” She smiled and went back to what she was doing. It's almost as if she could tell I was stressed that day and I needed a confidence boost. It reminded me, how a simple encouraging comment can mean so much. Sappy? I know right? I didn’t feel like a scientist, with my liberal arts degree and my zero hours of lab work. She reminded me that we can be whatever we want to be in life, that we just have to believe in ourselves and others. 

As much as I would like to say that I am serving this community with my forty hour weeks of service, I feel as though sometimes, I am the one being served. I look forward to Monday mornings, because I get to hang out with curious growing toddlers. Science Tuesdays, I get to hang out with Dr. Amanda. Wednesdays are easier to get through when I can conversate and receive life advice from mothers, post Tiny Tales. My colleagues are some of the sweetest and understanding people. Honestly, every day of the week has its appeal, sometimes it just takes a little reminder.   

A CONVERSATION WITH FORMER AMERICORPS DIRECTOR BY SABRINA QUIMBY

Service work is not for everyone, but for some it’s their calling. Bill is one of those people who was meant to help others and dedicate his life to it. We met for the first time at Serve Montana Symposium earlier in March and I was taken back by how laid back he was considering his resume. He talked more about other people than himself and he is quite humble for someone who served this country on a national level for over four years (along with lifelong experience in the field of service in general). Someone that has dedicated his whole life to public service. Someone who worked closely with Barack Obama and Joe Biden for years, people who are also advocates for doing national service pathways like AmeriCorps. 

(Picture from https://readingpartners.org/blog/obama-advocates-for-americorps-on-the-daily-show/)

After symposium was over I wanted to learn more about him beyond what was said in his talk and beyond what is on the old White House’s website:  https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/champions/service-and-social-innovators/william-c.-basl

 I wanted to know how a Rhode Island native, that participates in winter sports in my home state of Vermont, came to be the accomplished person he is today. So I reached out to my colleagues to get his contact information, sent him a message, and was shocked that he answered so quickly. Next thing I know we are on the phone chatting and networking. 

 When I asked him about how he became who is he is today, he never thought he would make it to such a high position and is grateful everyday for his experiences. He just took any opportunity he was shown and all of them built up to the biggest position of them all. While in his position he worked closely with the former president and vice president of the United States to strengthen AmeriCorps while helping give awards to veterans for their service. Throughout our conversation after that he was determined to help me be the most successful after this current service year and gave me so many helpful tips/resources to use. It was obvious how much he cares for service leaders and members as a whole even after leaving his larger position.

Bill retired from the position in 2016 and didn't want to fully end his career in public service so he continues his service at Washington Campus Compact daily along with volunteering weekly to help the homeless in Seattle. He has a lot of wisdom and I thought that I would share a few things that I learned from him:

1. Motivation is hard to measure, but the ability to to try new things is extensive

2. Being equal and being fair are two totally different things.

3. Never pass up on new opportunities; there is endless potential there.

4. The purpose of service is to understand the struggles of the community you are serving, not to try to solve everything. We get lost in trying to find solutions when we can just have compassion for people, giving them the hope for a better tomorrow while we support them.

 Also Fun Fact: Bill is a college basketball fan and is big in March Madness 

I will take Bill’s advice of, “Always Aim Higher” as I continue on in my service year and hope to be even achieve a fraction of what he’s done for our country.  Thank you Bill for your service.

(Picture from https://www.9quotes.com/author/tae-yoo/page-3 )