Public Education Foundation - Partners for Strong Schools

A Student's Story: Passport to Wyoming

This summer [2009] the Passport Scholar program sent me to the Teton Science School where I was part of a class of 19 students. For the next three weeks I would spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with these people, it was only after doing this that I realized I don’t even spend that kind of time with my family and I live with them! It was the other 18 students at the camp and the counselors there that helped to make the most of Wyoming.

When I first got to Wyoming I stepped off the plane and saw the smallest airport ever. It was maybe a tenth the size of the Atlanta airport. Not only was it small, but also the doorways were adorned with antlers. The first thought that came to mind was, “What have I gotten myself into”? When I actually stepped into the airport I met one of my future advisors, Laurel.  She had a little sign that said “Teton Science School”. The next person I met was Alex, a fellow student from Cape Verde, Africa, but had recently moved to Boston.  His accent made it hard to understand him at first but soon I was used to it. As the day went on the other students came. You could tell some were comfortable with the outdoors. Others had never been outside the city, but no matter where we had come from, we all had one thing in common: we were here in the middle of Wyoming, and all our lives were about to change.

Our first week at camp was spent on campus. We slept in cabins, and we ate breakfast and dinner at the dining facility. Lunches were packed and eaten wherever we happened to be at lunchtime. One of the first things we got to do that week was teach a 4th and 5th grade class how to paint landscapes with acrylics. Some of us had never even picked up a paintbrush before the beginning of the week. Now we were using the skills that we had been taught only a couple of days before to teach younger children, all the while learning to see things in a whole new way. We also visited museums, and saw some of the most beautiful, untouched wilderness that Wyoming had to offer. I went there to hone my writing skills, but I was taught so much more. I learned to paint, to take pictures, to classify insects and flowers, to make collages, to work with clay, and to use what is around me to make my art better. I learned to be inspired by nature’s grandeur, and to place what I saw in intricate patterns made of syllables. As we moved from the campus to tents at the Field Research Station, and then on to Yellowstone National Park, I found that my eyes were opened and my mind was enriched far beyond what I could’ve imagined they would be when I first came to Wyoming.

If it had not been for the Passport Scholars program I would have never gotten the chance to go to Wyoming. Passport provided everything I needed for the trip and even helped me fill out the applications to go to the program this summer. It was through Passport that I was able to experience what I did in Wyoming. Wyoming has changed me, and through Wyoming, Passport Scholars changed me. I cannot find the words to express my deepest thanks to the Passport program. I can only hope that I will use the doors that were opened by Passport Scholars to the best of my ability, and through this open the doors for many others. Thank you Passport Scholars!

 —Xanadu Locey, now a student at Norwich University, a military college in Vermont.