Summer Search is a program for low-income teenagers with the mission to help “transform what [the students] believe is possible for themselves and develop the skills they need to become college-educated leaders who give back to their families and communities,” informed guidance counselor and referral partner Erin Craven.
The Summer Search program is a two-year leadership and mentor program. It looks for students with resilience, altruism, and determination. Each student involved in the program is assigned a mentor that they are required to meet with weekly.
The program sends the students off on three-week long trips that generally are in the wilderness. Students may travel within the states or have the opportunity to travel internationally. Other students visit college campuses and attend classes there. College trips are about double the time of a normal three-week trip.
This past summer students traveled all over the United States. Junior Patricia Luong is one of many summer search students at Malden High School. Over the summer, Luong went on a three week canoeing trip in Maine in North Woods Canoe, with the Chewonki camp. Over the time she spent outdoors, Luong discovered untouched leadership skills. The trip helped her undergo “a lot of personal growth,” stated Luong. She spent three weeks with “a group of strangers from all over the world and from various backgrounds.” Together, they all learned how to overcome adversity.
Luong’s experience holds “many unforgettable memories and lessons.” She described her experience as a “once in a life time opportunity” in which Luong “met some of the greatest people” that became her “closest friends.” The program provided Luong with an opportunity to “reflect on [herself] and to grow as a person.” Luong recommends that “anyone who is interested in travel” to apply his sophomore year.
Senior Nico Quesada Nylen also took part in the summer search program over the summer. Quesada Nylen ventured to Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. He stayed there for five weeks where he studied Anthropology and College Writing.
The trip exposed Quesada Nylen to a whole new life style, an “independent environment,” as he described it. Quesada Nylen had to make “choices [he] usually would not have.”
Quesada Nylen quickly noticed that the college assignments he received were “very different” compared to his usual high school work. Quesada Nylen found that “the way you dress, or the way you speak, or the way you look” along with financial differences, affect “how people interact with you.”
The program allowed Quesada Nylen to form “irreplaceable bonds with people [he] will never forget.” Summer search trips bring students from different places together where unforgettable memories are made and a greater sense of self is discovered.
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