Susan is a regular volunteer with field trips on Liberty Street and we are so lucky to have her walk in the door on Wednesday and Friday mornings. These field trips require many different roles to be filled, several of them theatrical. Not only is Susan a dependable volunteer, but she is willing and excited to leap into many of these roles and in doing so, build a better program for students.
In one capacity, she is a wonderful illustrator who brings our students’ complex and bountiful creations to life (for example Jeff, a coyote, and his companion, a werewolf named Jeff Turner). Our field trip students are always so excited to see the characters and settings from their imaginations manifest into reality through Susan’s pen. She’s also done remarkably accurate and quick suspect sketches during our Strange Mysteries! field trip, so that students can reference an image of each wildly suspicious suspect in their case files.
Susan has been an assistant to our infamous and grumpy boss, Dr. Blotch. “Blotching”, as we call it, is truly an art, and Susan can channel a wide range of emotions in her character creation, engaging the class and encouraging them to be invested in the story they write with her encouragement. Recently, Susan also participated in our Field Trip Leadership Lab dialogue, taking notes, reflecting on program strengths, and contributing wonderful ideas that have taken shape in concrete ways in our programs (for example, helping volunteers and students connect right away during the program through small group work).
Susan helps in every way, always paying attention to the details. She has brainstormed directly with students during small group work at Storytelling and Bookmaking, facilitated discussions of plot twists during Choose Your Own Adventure, typed student stories for multiple field trips, wrestled with our nefarious staplers in our bookmaking process, remembered to pass out crucial paperwork before the end of a program, and jumped into copy-editing, too. No matter the role, Susan is eager to learn, connect, and take on new adventures. Susan models the courage we talk about in our Fully Programmed conversations — as someone who is ready and willing to push past her comfort zone for our students, we greatly appreciate all of the strengths that Susan brings to our field trips!