An Absolutely, Incredible, Memorable Day!

Greetings AmeriCorps community! My name is Ellen Hensel and I am currently serving as an AmeriCorps member with Camp Fire USA West Michigan Council in Grand Rapids. Camp Fire USA is a nonprofit that’s been around for more than 100 years. Since the beginning, Camp Fire has always been dedicated to youth development. We strive to create caring, confident, youth and leaders through after school and summer programs. At the West Michigan Council, we do that through several programs including ten after-school sites where Grand Rapids youth receive academic support, participate in activities, and have opportunities to be leaders.

I am currently serving at Burton Elementary in the Schools of Hope literacy class. We have 20 students who begin at least one grade level below their peers in reading and work tirelessly after school, reading independently and continuing to improve daily. Our students have already had a full day of academics, and their perseverance to continue after school always motivates me and keeps me trying my best.

Being able to work with kids everyday can be a tiring experience, but incredibly rewarding. One of the great activities that Camp Fire USA hosts is Absolutely Incredible Kid Day (AIKD). I think sometimes we forget that kids get stressed too, they have bad days and they forget how they make a difference in this world. AIKD is a day when every kid gets to feel special and every kid has a tangible reminder of what they mean to us. In the words of Dr. Seuss, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

To reinforce this positive message, the main goal of AIKD is to provide every student with a letter from a family member, friend, neighbor, educator, or even a volunteer, that reminds them of their positive qualities. At the West Michigan Council, every student in the after school program gets a letter from their activity leader, totaling over 1300 letters. In addition to that, two sites are picked for an assembly on the day and every student from the school gets a hand-written letter. This year it fell on Thursday, March 15. Palmer and Brookside Elementary Schools were chosen for the assembly.

My AmeriCorps program assisted in gathering volunteers to write letters, wrote personal letters for students themselves, and some even got a chance to attend the assembly. I was lucky enough to participate in every part of the process and it was the most rewarding and surprising activity I’ve been involved in thus far in my year of service. As the Volunteer Team Leader, I reached out to our volunteer groups for writing letters. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Although these volunteers had never met the students, they wrote beautiful, inspiring letters. At a library letter drive, one high school student wrote in his letter to a third grader, “Did you know that the world is a better place because you are in it?” I can’t imagine the impact his words had on a child.

The day of the event was a day filled with positivity. Camp Fire USA has built a partnership with our local news celebrity, WWOTV-4’s Maranda, who hosted the assemblies along with some local mascots. As she told each student how special they were, how hard they worked and how much they meant to the adults in their lives, you could see them puffing up with pride. At a certain point, she directed teachers to hand out the letters. Students ripped open the envelopes to find words of encouragement and truth. Five-hundred and sixty-seven students at two different schools opened letters that day and an additional 700 after-school students received them from a trusted adult.

I had the opportunity to go to Palmer Elementary, one of my former service sites. Ismail, one of my previous students, came up to me and showed me his letter. It was written to him from Ms. Jamie. She wrote that he should work hard, and always remember that he makes a difference to others. She wrote about his leadership. He looked at me and asked, “Is everything she said true? But she doesn’t even know me.” I told him, I know you and everything in there is true. He clutched the letter happily as he walked out.

When students get stressed or when their day doesn’t go how they wanted it to, we hope they can look at the letters they received on AIKD and know that someone out there believes in them. At the end of the assemblies, Maranda led the students in a chant, where they shout “I’m Incredible!” and the sound of that positive message resonates with them today.

For more information about Camp Fire USA West Michigan Council visit www.campfireusawmc.org.