ATCI Redux: a letter

    You may or may not remember the student project back in 2013 when Abby E. and Dominic S. worked through the year to propose the Afton Teen Center Initiative (ATCI). It remains, for me, the most complete demonstration of students applying classroom skills that I have ever witnessed at ACS. Their idea was to leverage our school facilities and community involvement to create a place where teens might go to teens-together; safe, engaging, fun.

    Despite their surveys, their award winning video, community donations, and their meeting with community leaders - we (and that includes many) failed to find, follow-through on, or create an umbrella structure for a good idea to survive within.

    In the second half of last year, the library began hosting a half-dozen students who wanted to play “trading card games.” They met on Wednesdays from 2:20 until the elementary bus run. They were consistent in their attendance and courteous about the opportunity.

    This year as our back room has slowly become a place for remote-control cars, quad-copters, and builders, those students have also been turning up on Wednesdays. Yesterday we had thirteen boys here playing trading cards, foosball, RC cars, quad-copters, building with erector sets, straws & paper clips, and hot-gluing their car modifications. And it occurred to me that it is much less a MakerSpace than an ATCI center.

    For many it is the place to just be a teen, to be the one who knows something more than an adult: to be part of something. And it strikes me that we are fulfilling, in a way, the vision of Abby and Dominic. They were right. Kids rise to the opportunity; they are courteous, happy, learning from each other, and engaged. It is that oasis that they envisioned.

    I have spoken to both Abby and Dominic about these Wednesdays and they were radiant.

    Perhaps the only miss of the ATCI idea was assuming it needed to function in the evening to be beneficial. Although that remains a best-case scenario, I want you to know that the spirit of their hard work survives and is making a difference in the lives of the following ACS students.