Story by Sarah Reed

Photo by Randy Hoeft

The Yuma Sun

July 06, 2010

PHOTO:  Makenna Hohlbein squeezes as hard as she can while trying to get colored glue out of a tube and onto her clay pot during Wednesday morning's day camp session at the Wellton Community Center. 

YUMA - This summer, high school students are becoming better future leaders in the workplace by helping elementary students.

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) runs through Arizona Western College with the In-School Youth Program to work with low-income students from local high schools.

“We want to provide activities and occupational skills to help improve the quality of our work force,” said Elizabeth Arturi, coordinator for WIA programs.

From May 25 to July 2, students from Antelope High School who are part of WIA worked with the city of Wellton to put on a daycare workshop for the local children. The program is also designed to help the students meet six leadership goals by the end of the summer.

“We work closely with instructors and staff to make sure they can be successful in helping the students reach their goals,” Arturi said.

The students sent out fliers to the community of Wellton advertising for their four-week summer program that catered to younger children ranging from 5 to 12 years old.

“I liked seeing the kids intervening with the younger children and giving them a chance to be busy and occupied,” said Lorena Martinez, one of the aides who assisted the high school students.

Martinez explained that during the school year, the students were also given tutoring opportunities on various subjects once a week.

During the first two weeks of the six-week program, students had a planning period where they brainstormed with their instructors on what types of activities they could do with the children. Each high school student was in charge of their own day of activities, and they had to plan all of the supplies and books ahead of time.

“I liked being able to interact with the kids outside of the craft time,” said Felipe Dalle, who has been in the WIA program for the past four years throughout his high school years at Antelope.

Dalle has also been involved with the Border Patrol Explorers. He explained that this experience has helped him gain more confidence when leading the children to do different activities that he is in charge of.

Another student, Kayla Cunningham, had been with WIA for the past two years now and was able to get a paid baby-sitting job because one of the parents saw how she was interacting with her daughter.

“It's good for the community since there is hardly anything out here and they are so far away from Yuma,” said Hallie Pelfrey, an instructor with WIA.

Pelfrey explained that the students showed impressive amounts of patience with the younger children.

“I liked making log cabins because we got to put them together ourselves,” explained 7-year-old Trent Pelfrey.

The high school students helped the youngsters make various crafts during the program like sun catchers, vases and mosaic pottery in addition to learning about different subjects from snakes to airplanes.

This is the first summer that the group has worked at the Wellton Community Center. Previous programs were at different schools in the area.

Sarah Reed can be reached at sareed@yumasun.com or 539-6858.

Read more & See more photos: http://www.yumasun.com/news/students-62219-school-high.html