junior program summer site : conversations : second session



	Harry from Massachusetts (7/22) Only a 5th grader, Harry is the founder of the Explo Recycles program. Explo Recycles picks up trash on the quad and helps students recycle their old Explorers. Thanks, Harry! So what did you do today? I had my courses, “59 Minutes” and “Creating a Kingdom.” Today in “Creating a Kingdom” we built costumes and we also made a few challenges for if our kingdoms have to go to war with one another. In “59 Minutes” we started to brainstorm ideas for commercials. Basically, in that class we do things like interviewing people, making stories, advertisements . . .. What are your teachers like in those classes? Jen teaches “59 Minutes” and Julia teaches “Creating a Kingdom.” They're very nice and fun. They encourage you if you can't do something, and they help you come up with great ideas. They know how to handle situations well. Are Explo classes different from the classes you take at school? Yeah, because you have a lot more choice. Rather than having to just stick around for math, you get to actually choose whether you want to do math or not here. There's a lot of choices and you get to do all of this new stuff, like stuff you've never heard of. You get to make a lot of friends, too. That's great. So what activity did you just get out of? I was just in “Rubber Band Olympics,” where we were competing as teams and our team won. The teams were “The People” against “The Tornadoes” and I was on “The People.” We did things like shooting rubber bands for distance, accuracy, and height. We even did a little rubber band golf game. We have to get it to a goal, and so we try to hit it with the rubber band in as few shots as possible. It was maybe my favorite activity of the summer -- for both sessions. Was it easy to make friends as a first-year student? It was really easy because the Explo staff are welcoming and students know that there's no bullying, and everyone is very nice. You can just say “Hello” and ask someone a few questions, and before you know it you're best friends. What's your day group like? We started a lot of cool little trends within our group -- our theme is France, so we always say “Viva la France!” and we have a little handshake that's not that complex, but it's still fun. If you had a friend who was thinking about coming to Explo, what would you tell them? I would tell them that it's definitely the place for them. I'm probably going to bring a friend for bring-a-friend day. I think anyone would like the option during quad time to just hang out and play around with everything. A lot of people would kind of love it here, because everyone is so nice. Everyone looks down on bullying here, so you can really just be who you are. You won't get teased about being a nerd, and you won't get too much attention for being popular. You'll just be treated the same. Tell me a bit about the Explo Recycles program that you've started. Well, first session, me and my friend Ben started picking up old Explorers off the ground, and we were picking up other litter too. So all of a sudden I just realized, like, “Oh my gosh, I could actually create a program like this.” So we pick up litter, and we started to announce it to everyone at assembly. So now everyone helps pick up litter, we recycle Explorers at the end of the day, and we're doing a little sticker thing where if you are seen recycling you get a sticker to put on your ID card. I think that this program should help and give out a lot of stickers. I think it will help a lot of people. Because where do those old Explorer's go? I see them in the trash and so we try to stop and pick them out of the trash and recycle them, as long as there's nothing bad in there. Had you been involved in a similar recycling program before? On Earth Day we did a trash pick up with a lot of people in my neighborhood, but this was my first time trying something like this. That's really incredible! If Explo was a type of dessert, what would it be and why? Explo would probably be reverse chocolate chip cookies, because once you've tasted them, it's just happiness. more conversations > first session \| second session