YouthQuest Highlights: October 2022

An Apple a Day

Students at Brownell STEM Academy were able to visit Montrose Orchard in October. There, students went on a hayride to the pumpkin patch where they picked their own pumpkins, and they got fresh picked apples with fresh doughnuts and apple cider. This trip allowed students to see what an orchard is and experience a real-life farm with crops and animals. Many students had never been to an orchard, seen a pumpkin patch or even an apple tree. The students had a great time and were able to practice their social and emotional skills by being mindful of each other’s feelings and space.

ABC, Easy As 123

To provide academic support, each Monday in October students at Pierce Elementary School worked on literacy during welcome time. There they would practice sounding out words, spelling and pronunciation. During the academics portion of the day, students would have fun with numbers by playing games like Math Basketball, Math Facts Race and Math Tic-Tac-Toe. Hitting on those two main subjects that students often have trouble with, staff saw huge improvements in students’ math and spelling over the month.

Reading Rainbow

In October, to help improve literacy with students at Eisenhower Elementary, YouthQuest staff created a Book Club to get students to read more. During the club, students take turns reading chapters from the book. During the month, students read Michigan Chillers #3 Poltergeists of Petoskey to align with Halloween. The club is important since literacy scores have fallen in the US in the last few years, and this provides a way to combat loss of literacy and make students great readers.

Mural Tour

Multiple YouthQuest sites including Southwestern Classical Academy, Holmes STEM Academy, International Academy of Flint Middle and High School, and Accelerated Learning Academy went on a field trip in October to see mural boards they created that were put up around Flint by the Flint Public Art Project. Steve Barber, a lead learning guide for YouthQuest who happens to sit on the Flint Public Art Project board led the tour. During the tour not only did they see their creations but other murals around the city and they learned about who created them and the inspiration behind the murals.

YouthQuest is made possible through the generous support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and 21st Century Community Learning Centers.