PROVIDENCE, RI—This summer produced a bumper crop of Kids on the Wire stories in which youth across the country made news. In Alaska, teenagers performed a heroic rescue in a bear attack on a student expediiton. A group of Vermont high school students built their own satellite and launched it into space where it gathered data on cosmic rays. In a summer engineering internship, New York City teens wired cockroaches, engineering them to dance. Jobless youth in Chicago—140 novice mechanics—learned how to repair bicycles. Colorado teens applied their classroom studies in biology and earth science on a one-week hike along the Poudre River. Bronx high school students headed to Mali to build a new school with money they had raised.

Summer opportunities like these matched with the energy and idealism of youth make a powerful mix. See for yourself!

Friday, August 12, 2011 — Teenagers Wire Roaches, Engineering Them to Dance. NEW YORK, NY: The City Room blog of the NY Times reported that Wednesday morning at Cooper Union, a three-inch-long cockroach — thin wires protruding from where antennas normally would, miniature circuit board attached squarely to its head — lay surrounded by teenagers. The wires led to the iPod of Dumitchel Harvey, 15, who streamed his favorite Weezer song directly into the roach’s major sensory systems, causing it to twitch and scuttle in halting circular motions. Three more high school students looked on.

The students — not in fact developers of an avant-garde extermination technique — were members of a summer engineering internship and the Central American roach, called Sir Walter Raleigh II, their test subject. The procedure was one of four tested by the students over the six-week internship and the most effective, it turned out, at mimicking natural signals sent to the roach’s brain, forcing it to alter its course and move in their desired direction. The internship provides high school students the opportunity to assess research problems in the various fields of engineering in a college setting, as well as to provide them with insight into what an engineering profession might entail.

This summer’s program has 110 students. Allen He, 17, of the Lower East Side had intended to study premed in college, but he said that after studying the circuitry involved in the project, he was now interested in engineering. He said he was grateful to the program for exposing him to engineering, as well as giving him a whole new appreciation for roaches. “I might actually take one home when the program is over,” he said.

For FULL STORY, go to: the New York Times, 8/11/11 http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/wiring-roaches-the-better-to-teach-them-to-dance/

Monday, August 08, 2011 — Colorado Teens Learn about Poudre River, Themselves During Weeklong Camp. GREELEY, CO: Freshmen to seniors, they came from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different ethnic backgrounds. Some were athletes; some were bookworms. By Friday, they were just one big happy family: 11 high school students spent 12 to 14 hours a day together for a week hiking along the Poudre River, sometimes on trips they never thought they’d finish. “It really felt like when you were on the hike that it was so hard you just want to die,” said Amanda Cary, a sophomore at Northridge this fall. “But when you get back, it really makes you realize how much determination and willpower helps you.”

A 15-mile hike from Pingree Park up the Continental Divide to Long Draw Reservoir was only part of a weeklong camp sponsored by the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District and the Poudre Learning Center that aimed to give students a chance to apply what they learn in their high school biology and earth system classes to the real world. “The hike was meant to get them out of their comfort zone,” said Ray Tschillard, director of the Poudre Learning Center. “We wanted to get them to really understand where they live. We took them from the confluence of the Poudre River to the headwaters to see how the river interacts with earth systems.” “Being in the wilderness really opens your eyes,” Amanda said. “You really want to take care of your earth to preserve its beauty.”

The students soaked up as much information as they could in the week, from transecting the Poudre River at its confluence with the Platte River east of Greeley and the headwaters at Watson Lake near the Bellevue Hatchery west of Fort Collins to hiking, water testing, and plant and bug identification.

For FULL STORY, go to: the Greeley Tribune, 8/7/11 http://greeleytribune.com/article/20110807/NEWS/708079989/ 1002&parentprofile=1001

Wednesday, August 03, 2011 — Students Study Genocide to Prevent Bullying. MINNEAPOLIS, MN: Last fall, Rachel Beecroft had an idea to teach high school students about bullying and genocide, after hearing Ellen Kennedy, founder of the nonprofit World Without Genocide, speak at an event about empowering community from the ground up. Beecroft wanted to spread the message to high schools, so that students can start battling hate from an early age and in a more prevalent form: bullying.

After months of planning, World Without Genocide is ready to host a three-day program called Child Soldiers and Bullying Aug. 16 to 18, which will teach high school students to stand up against hate at a local and global level. It’s the organization’s first annual summer institute. So far, about 15 high school students are signed up. These students will gather at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul for about 12 hours each day to learn about African genocide and child soldiers. They’ll also learn about bullying in their own American communities and how to stand up against hate. “I hope it will create ‘upstanders’ in our communities,” Beecroft said, using a term the organization uses for those who stand up to bullies — the opposite of bystanders.

The students will hear from survivors of the Cambodian and Liberian genocides as well as the Holocaust. They will also listen to human rights activists, watch films, learn leadership skills and act out plays. On the third day, students will present what they’ve learned to parents and to local government officials, Beecroft said. “We’re hoping that these students will become leaders in their schools for advancing human rights,” Kennedy said. Students will learn to create an environment in their own schools where people feel safe and are treated equally, she said.

For FULL STORY, go to: the Minnesota Daily, 8/3/11 http://mndaily.com/2011/08/03/students-study-genocide-prevent-bullying

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 — Teenagers Perform Heroic Rescue in Alaska Bear Attack on Student Expedition. ANCHORAGE, AK: Details emerged Monday on a grizzly bear attack that left two teens in an Anchorage hospital with critical injuries. A group of seven students from Palmer's National Outdoor Leadership School wilderness course experienced a head-on collision with a mama grizzly over the weekend. All met unexpectedly in the narrow confines of a brush-lined valley in the Talkeetna Mountains about 100 miles north of Anchorage. Four students ended up being bitten and all were scared out of their wits.

The group was part of a NOLS Alaska Backpacking Course that left the Alaska road system on June 30 with 14 students and three instructors. The seven who were attacked had parted with the group on the first day of their "student expedition," which involves hiking the remainder of the trip without the supervision of instructors. They were to rendezvous later with the instructors and other students, who were a few miles away at the time of the attack. In the rugged terrain of Alaska, however, the distance of a few miles is the urban equivalent of being in another city. Alaska Air National Guard pararescue specialist Sgt. Brandon Stuemke credited 16-year-old Samuel Boas of Westport, Conn., with providing "phenomenal" first aid to the worst injured of his new friends and added that they entire group did a superb job of regrouping after the evening attack. They got a tent up, got the injured into sleeping bags, and started treating them even before turning on a rescue beacon that alerted the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center. … Stuemke said he entered the tent to find Boas, who had undergone emergency medical technician (EMT) training just before his Alaska trip, had done an amazing job of improvising care for his friends. "He used what he had," Stuemke said, "and he did a phenomenal job. One patient had two sucking chest wounds from getting bit in the chest," and both were pretty well chewed on. "The kid who did the treatment, he managed to patch some of the wounds and control the bleeding," Stuemke said. "He had them in sleeping bags. Neither of them ever lost consciousness."

Despite managing the situation better than most adults, Boas "wasn't sure if he'd done enough," Stuemke said. "I told him, 'What you did is phenomenal." Both injured teens are expected to recover, though Stuemke compared the wounds they suffered to the sort of thing he'd seen in combat in Afghanistan. He praised the students for their unit strength, though, and intelligent use of a rescue beacon.

For FULL STORY, go to: the Alaska Dispatch, 7/25/11 http://alaskadispatch.com/article/alaska-bear-attack-teenagers-recovering-after-grizzly-mauling?page=full

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