Emily Stebbins

When I decided to apply for Summit Leadership Park, I had many reasons for doing so. I knew that the chance to work with my friends on a service project for the community was something that I would enjoy doing. Not only am I helping the community, but I’m also getting to work with my friends to do so. It makes this project so much more enjoyable. Also, applying for Summit will look great on a resume. That isn’t my biggest reason for applying but it is a great perk. Overall, living in Summit seemed like the best choice for my sophomore year. 

I hope to gain a lot from the Summit Leadership Park experience. Since our Summit Group is working with the Special Olympics, I hope to gain skills in working with special needs children. Since I am an education major, I will need to know how to work with all types of students. In my classes, I might have a student that I will be able to work with because of the skills I gain during this experience. I also hope to gain skills in organization. I’ve organized events in high school, but the Young Athletes Program with the Special Olympics is closer to the types of events I might need to organize as a teacher. Lastly, I hope I gain friendships with the children we are working with. I love kids and this will be a great experience simply because I’ll be able to get to know some really great kids. 

This project will impact my life in a lot of positive ways. I’ll learn how to work with special needs students which will impact how I teach in a few years. It might also help me get a job after I graduate. Plus, I’ll get to know these kids and hear their stories. It might give me some perspective on my own life and struggles.

Our project is the Young Athletes Program with the Special Olympics in Springfield. So far, we’ve gotten quite a lot of the groundwork accomplished. Since the Joplin tornado tore out the Special Olympics offices, we weren’t able to get paperwork and meet with our contact as soon as we wanted to. We finally were able to meet with our contact, and we got all that we needed to get. We have volunteer paperwork and a tutorial in how to train the kids in the basic exercises to prepare them for the Special Olympics. We’ve booked the Weiser Gym for the four nights that we will need it this semester as well. Our contact has the equipment that we will need. What we need to do now is find a few more volunteers and contact the local schools to find twelve to fifteen kids to be a part of the program. And, our contact gave us the phone number of a woman who has successfully ran multiple Young Athlete Programs before. The only struggles and frustrations we had were the complications from the Joplin tornado. The reason we’ve decided to have a four week program this semester instead of an eight week program was due to time constraints. But, we will gain a lot of experience this semester so that our eight week program next semester will be no big deal at all.