Immigrant children often help out their parents in ways most American kids could never imagine — serving as interpreters in interactions with English speakers and helping to make sense of bills and forms.
High school senior Yuling Chen is one such kid. Five years ago, Chen came to the United States with her family from China. Since arriving in America, she has always helped her family with the language that she was quicker to pick up. “When I go home, they all hand me a big stack of letters to read,” she told Chris Burrell of The Patriot Ledger.
But she doesn’t mind. “When I first came to the United States, my English wasn’t so good at all, and I wanted to help (the elderly) with their lives,” she said. Chen is one of a group of 235 Asian immigrant teenagers in Quincy, Massachusetts that are taking this assistance to the next level, volunteering to help elderly immigrants at Quincy Asian Resources.
Along with the other teens, Chen teach seniors how to use computers, help middle school students making the transition to America, and assist at the Lunar New Year party and August Moon Festival, among many other duties.
Peter Tam, a Quincy native, first came to the center in 2007 as an AmeriCorps volunteer; now he directs the youth programs, involving volunteers from both of Quincy’s public high schools. “We’re really looking to create the next generation of Asian-American leaders and recent immigrant leaders in the community,” Tam told Burrell.
To thank the teens for their hard work, Quincy Asian Resources awarded seven of them, including Chen, a college scholarship worth $1,000.
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Tag: teenagers
These High Schoolers Solved a Foodie Problem With a 3-D Printer
If you’ve ever had the unpleasant experience of squeezing out watery ketchup all over your hotdog, two high school students in Liberty, Missouri, have come up with just the invention you need.
Condiment experts Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson, both seniors studying in the Project Lead the Way Program (PLTW) at North Liberty High School, were challenged by their teacher, Brett Kisker, to come up with a solution to a problem that was relevant to them. “We always start with the phrase, ‘it really bugs me when,'” Kisker told Lindsey Foat of the Hale Center for Journalism at KCPT. (PLTW is a nonprofit that provides instruction and training in science and technology to students from kindergarten to high school, in the form of after-school programs and in-class lessons for teachers.)
What could be more relevant to a teenager than the perfect ketchup experience?
Kisker challenged their idea initially. “I said that they could just shake the bottle and that there is a free solution,” Kisker told Foat. “But they did a lot of research and they had me convinced that this problem really does exist.” The two teens found that many people would be willing to pay a little extra to have the watery ketchup problem solved. Additionally, a ketchup dispenser that doesn’t need to be shaken could help seniors and people with disabilities alike.
The students began their project by researching what patents had already been issued for ketchup inventions. “There are a surprising amount of ketchup-related patents out there,” Richards told Foat. “There was one — it’s kind of hard to explain — but basically it’s a way to inject ketchup into a french fry. It was a bit extreme.”
Next the students brainstormed, coming up with 60 possible solutions. The one they settled on is shaped like a mushroom and inserted into the underside of the ketchup cap. “It is based on the Pythagorean cup idea,” Thompson told Foat. “It’s also the same principle that toilets work off of.” They built their prototype using a 3-D printer and showed it at an exhibition of PLTW experiments in Kansas City.
The two don’t have any immediate plans to turn their ketchup idea into a business, however. Thompson has enlisted in the Army, and Richards will start at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in August. But whatever they do, their time spent as inventors probably means that they’ll never look at a bottle of ketchup the same way again.
MORE: Two Keys to the Future: 3-D Printing and Employed Veterans
This Impressive Teen Received a College Degree Before Finishing High School
It’s probably safe to say that most 16-year-olds are thinking more about getting their driver’s license than thinking about their plans for higher education. But that certainly wasn’t the case for one Hollywood, Florida teen.
Grace Bush astonishingly earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) a week before finishing high school. So how did she do it?
Grace, who completed her undergraduate degree in just three years with a 3.8 grade point average, participated in her school’s dual enrollment program that allows gifted students the opportunity to earn college credit for selected high school courses, Yahoo! News reports.
MORE: This Extraordinary Student Got Into All of the Ivy League Schools
This whizkid told CBS Miami that she started collegiate level courses when she was only 13-years-old at Broward College, enrolling in extra classes during summers to make it all possible. In case you weren’t amazed enough already, Grace also plays the flute for the Miami Music Project orchestra and the South Florida Youth Symphony, too.
Not only is this teenager incredibly smart (she started reading when she was only 2!), but she’s also incredibly hardworking, as well. The Sun Sentinel describes her brutal schedule of staying up until 2 a.m. every night studying and sneaking in naps on her commute to school every morning. And to maintain her rigorous academic schedule, Grace skipped out on attending typical school social activities such as school dances, football games or parties. She acknowledged to the paper that she “missed out on being a kid, goofing off and wasting time.”
Looks like Grace, the third oldest of nine siblings (who were all home-schooled by their mother Gisla), is just following in the footsteps of her likewise gifted family. “My two older sisters are doing it and I’m the third to do it,” Grace told CBS. “My oldest sister already graduated and my second oldest sister is graduating in the summer.”
ALSO: Inside the Movement for Free Community College
Her parents told the Sun Sentinel that they put their children on this path because they can’t afford to send them all to conventional four-year colleges or universities. (Grace took her courses at local colleges for free.)
So what’s next for Grace? She’s aiming even higher, naturally, and is planning to attend FAU’s master’s program and go on to law school so she can achieve her dream of becoming chief justice.
If past performance is an indicator of future success, Grace definitely has bright days ahead.
Their Daughter Died When She Didn’t Buckle Up. Now They’re Working to Save Other Children From the Same Danger
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, more than 33,000 people were killed in car crashes in 2009. Of those fatalities, more than half were not wearing their seatbelt. Last year, Alexa Johnson, a 19-year-old Colorado resident, was one such victim.
Johnson died when she lost control of her pickup truck in rural Weld County, Colorado and was ejected through the driver’s side window. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
Colorado highway officials note that many drivers on rural roads fail to wear safety restraints. In fact, 59 percent of the unbuckled fatalities in Colorado last year occurred on rural roadways. Alexa’s father, Tad Johnson, told Monte Whaley of the Denver Post, “The first thing I felt was anger and then I wanted to blame someone. And then I had an ‘aha’ moment and I said, ‘Alexa, what are we going to do about this?'”
Tad and his wife Jona launched a social media campaign to raise awareness about the problem of young adults in rural areas driving without seatbelts. He looked at the photos on Alexa’s Facebook page and said, “We saw that in all those photos, hardly ever was Alexa and her friends using seat belts. It’s something that we just had to deal with.”
The Johnsons took to Facebook with their message about buckling up for safety, and then began to sew inch-wide Velcro ribbons that wrap around seat belts to remind drivers to use them. The ribbons are called Alexa’s Hugs, and since last year, the Johnsons have produced thousands of them, which now come in a variety of designs.
Alexa’s Hugs have already saved at least one life. Alexa’s friend, Kole Kilcrease told Whaley he was driving near the same stretch of highway where Alexa died when he hit ice and lost control, rolling his pickup two-and-a-half times. Both Kilcrease and his passenger survived because they were buckled in. Kilcrease said, “I never really buckled up because it just seemed like an inconvenience. You have a busy day, and you have other things on your mind. I don’t think that anymore.”
MORE: A 16-Year-Old Died in A Car Accident. What Happened Next Changed Hundreds of Teenagers’ Lives.
The Nation’s Pastime Motivated This Disabled Teenager to Walk Again
A stiff-brimmed baseball cap. A bag of uncracked peanuts. A field of spring-green grass. Baseball’s opening day always brings a sense of renewed possibility to players and fans alike, even when the chances of winning a championship are stacked against them.
Sixteen-year-old high school baseball player Diego Alvarado has faced longer odds than most. Diagnosed with epilepsy as a baby, doctors finally managed to treat his seizures effectively by the time he was three, but his illness caused him to be developmentally delayed. Then when he was in middle school, aggressive leukemia struck. Doctors treated him with chemotherapy that badly damaged his joints. Alvarado ended up in a wheelchair and underwent two hip replacement surgeries.
Diego’s father, Colorado State Trooper Ivan Alvarado, told Neil H. Devlin of the Denver Post that he noticed Ivan was laying around the house, “being lazy like a teenager…but he had no quality of life.” He and the doctors decided to discontinue Diego’s chemotherapy, because as Ivan explained to Devlin, “We were faced with the decision of quality of life vs. quantity of life.”
They made the right decision: When the chemo ended, Diego transitioned from the wheelchair to a walker, and then told his P.E. teacher he was ready to go out for the Bennett High baseball team.
Coach Joe Stemo welcomed Diego on the team — Ivan didn’t even know his son had talked his way onto the Tigers’ roster. With two games under his belt, Diego has made contact with the ball, walked a few times and scored a run. Teammate Jonathan Cretti told Devlin, “It’s crazy how far he has come. He couldn’t even stand up in P.E. Now he’s playing baseball. And he’s always working his hardest. It’s one of the most incredible things I’ve seen.”
For the Alvarados, who immigrated to Colorado from Guatemala, Diego’s progress is just the thing that (ballpark) dreams are made of.
MORE: This Dad Went to Heroic Lengths to Help His Disabled Sons Finish College
The Totally Surprising, Heartwarming Power of Teddy Bears
The offerings in hospital gift shops — teddy bears, cards, flowers — might seem like insignificant trinkets that can’t adequately express support when a loved one is ill. But when Nicole Javorsky was hospitalized at the age of 14, suffering from an eating disorder, the teddy bears she received from friends and family buoyed her spirits.
Now 18, Javorsky has recovered from anorexia and is using her newfound energy to launch a charity, Cubs for Coping, which provides teddy bears to kids and teenagers in hospitals, shelters, and eating disorder programs. Her goal? To spread hope and encourage volunteerism among young people.
Javorsky told Taylor Zansberg of Talking GOOD, “I felt scared and alone in the hospital. My friends and family sent me stuffed animals, which made me realize that people do care. Not everyone is so lucky…Hope changes everything. Knowing that there are people out there who care about you is so important.”
The teddy bears from Cubs for Coping aren’t just any generic stuffed animal. Rather, Javorsky and others sew the bears by hand, leaving them unstuffed so volunteers can gather to fill and custom decorate bears at regular events in New York.
You’d think running one nonprofit would be enough for an 18-year-old to handle, but Javorsky hasn’t stopped with bears. She also founded the Mirror Mission club at her high school, at which participants discuss body image and healthy eating. The club made a video for Eating Disorder Awareness Week and raised money through a bake sale for Project HEAL, a national charity working on the issues Javorsky is passionate about.
Javorsky is now in college, planning to start her sophomore year at Barnard next fall. Continuing to be an ambitious volunteer, she’s also an intern at DoSomething.org, a non-profit engaging young people in charitable missions, and through Dancing Dreams, she spends time helping kids with physical and mental disabilities learn to dance. She told Zansberg, “We often feel that the world is too big and complicated to change. Through taking action, I stopped feeling intimidated and instead started to develop a better understanding of the complex world we live in.”
MORE: Meet the Teenager Whose Efforts Keep Hundreds of People Warm
Meet the Teenager Whose Efforts Keep Hundreds of People Warm
Instead of focusing on things like prom and where to go to college, MaryRose Purdue, a high-school senior in Hopatcong, New Jersey, relentlessly serves others.
Purdue has collected over 200 coats and donated them to Project Self-Sufficiency, a nationwide non-profit that serves the needy in her New Jersey area. Its mission is to help low-income people achieve stability through a variety of programs, including parenting classes, G.E.D. preparation, job-seeking help, and more.“She saw a need and decided to do something about it,” her mother, Barbara Purdue, told Lisa Pachnos, the publicist for Project Self-Sufficiency. “She knew that they would be given to people who really needed them.”
MaryRose set up donation boxes at her high school, and her principal, Noreen Lazariuk, helped her spread the word about the coat drive. “I believe that one of the most valuable skills we can give to our students is the awareness of their place in a larger community and the fulfillment they will experience when giving to those in need,” Lazariuk said.
MaryRose gathers coats for the poor for the winter, but she’s also busy helping others every other season as well. She volunteers for the Special Olympics as a “hugger,” greeting the finishers at track and field events, and she speaks out about juvenile arthritis, a condition from which she suffers. Last year, she was chosen to represent the cause in meetings with senators and representatives in Washington D.C., advocating for increased funds for research and lower medication prices. MaryRose plans to study nursing in college, and she wants to specialize in pediatric rheumatology to help others suffering from juvenile arthritis.
Regardless of where she decides to go to school, we’re sure that MaryRose will continue to make a difference in her community.
MORE: A 16-Year-Old Died In A Car Accident. What Happened Next Changed Hundreds of Teenagers’ Lives.
Can Writing Poetry Help Set Incarcerated Youth on the Right Track?
“You don’t understand what it’s like.”
“You never listen to me.”
Most teenagers make these over-the-top complaints to adults at some point during those angst-filled years. But for some troubled teens, these emotional statements aren’t hyperbolic. And those are just the kids that Richard Gold wanted to help.
When Gold left Microsoft 18 years ago, he started the Pongo Teen Writing Project, a Seattle non-profit that connects with troubled teenagers who are in jail, homeless, in the foster care system, or being treated for mental illness, and teaches them to write poetry to express themselves. Since 1992, Pongo has served 7,000 teenagers, providing them with volunteer writing mentors and publishing their work in anthologies.
Gold told Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour, “What so many of us struggle with is the unarticulated emotion in our lives, and when poetry serves that, it’s doing something essential for the person and for society.”
Through one of Pongo’s programs, writing mentors visit juvenile inmates individually for an hour, asking questions about their lives and emotions to guide them toward writing poetry about their experiences. The mentors transcribe what the inmates express, collaborate on revisions, then give the teenagers a chance to read their work aloud to the group.
Pongo volunteers do similar work at the New Horizons homeless youth center Seattle, helping homeless teens write poems, and hosting poetry reading events.
The workers in the juvenile justice system attest to the difference Pongo makes in the lives of the teens it works with. Warden Lynn Valdez at the King County Juvenile Detention Center, once an incarcerated gang member himself, said that after the teens write their poems, “the reward is, I think that they have actually released something that they have repressed inside.” King County Juvenile Court Judge Barbara Mack said that the young people she sees in her court “have never really learned how to express themselves. And Pongo gives them the opportunity to do that in a way that’s not threatening.”
It’s clear that poetry can be a powerful tool to make teenagers feel valued as they try to move past their rocky adolescences and become productive adults.
MORE: Poetry Program Offers Hope to Detroit Schoolchildren
Homelessness Didn’t Stop the Music From This Teenager
Whether it’s jazz, hip hop, or classical, music has the ability to lift a person’s mood. Seventeen year old Dominic Ellerbee, of Denver, Colorado, found that to be the truth when his family hit hard times.
Last year, Dominic was forced to live in a minivan with his mother, Madonna, and his little sister Dejaune. But Dominic had a creative outlet that enabled him to keep his spirits up: He’s a multi-instrumentalist and composer making a name for himself in the Mile High music community by playing and starring in the Denver Public Schools’ Citywide Honor Band.
Dominic, who plays the six-string bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, drums, the piano, the vibraphone and the recorder, also writes music for his school’s drum line and gives music lessons to other students. Of his difficult life, he told Alison Noon of the Denver Post, “It was hard sometimes, but it never really got to me because I had music and stuff.”
For months now, Dominic has moved from house to house, staying with friends and family members. But he expects his transitory life to become more settled now that his mother has found a job and they plan to move into an apartment this month. Meanwhile, he’s writing an original musical that, if completed, the school director at Denver South promised to stage next year.
Our guess is this young musical talent can finish anything he tries.
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How to Get Teens Interested in Saving the World
Young Americans have the passion and energy to help people across the world, but don’t always have the resources. That’s where New Global Citizens, a Tempe, Ariz.-based non-profit steps in. New Global Citizens provides information about global problems to teenagers and lesson plans for teachers that show how to make complex issues accessible to their classes. The group’s lesson plans break down issues such as global hunger, epidemics, and gender inequality. NGC also connects young people with volunteer opportunities, and through its after school programs, supports teenagers in starting their own movements and fundraisers.
NGC has supported students holding bake sales or talent shows to raise money for A Ban Against Neglect, which helps impoverished mothers in Ghana, and Sustainable Resources Ltd., which completes infrastructure projects in developing countries.
When she was in high school, Stephanie Arzate of Avondale, Ariz. participated in an NGC afterschool program to raise money for the Afghan Institute of Learning, which provides education to women in Afghanistan. Later Arzate went to Georgetown to study for a planned career in the Foreign Service, and had the chance to meet that organization’s executive director. “I didn’t need to tell her more than my name and where I went to high school,” Arzate told Larisa Epatko of the PBS NewsHour. “She immediately hugged me and thanked me and my high school team for the money we raised.”
MORE: He’s Only 16, But His Generosity is Already Worthy of a Movie