{"id":18165,"date":"2020-10-01T11:13:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T16:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/?p=18165"},"modified":"2021-01-06T10:42:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-06T16:42:08","slug":"growing-in-unexpected-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/2020\/10\/01\/growing-in-unexpected-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing In Unexpected Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-18272 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/nclhx5yj.tinifycdn.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/btcwpstory.jpg\" alt=\"Ishika and other students playing charades\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" \/>by Ishika Muppidi, MPA senior<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Ishika spent her summer with Breakthrough Twin Cities (BTC), a local organization closely partnered with MPA. Breakthrough is a challenging academic enrichment program for highly motivated, under-resourced students, where all the teachers are high school and college students.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I chose to get involved with Breakthrough for a number of reasons, one being that I had heard of it from a variety of different people. I thought it would be a good way for me to see what being a teacher felt like, as that&#8217;s always been something I&#8217;ve been interested in. I&#8217;ve had such good experiences at MPA with my teachers and I wanted to be able to give similar experiences and support to other students. When I was in Mexico, my options were limited because I wasn&#8217;t fluent in Spanish, so I couldn&#8217;t really join any programs that allowed me to help younger students, and I often just ended up helping my peers. I had a lot of fun, but when I came back and heard of Breakthrough, it was an opportunity for me to do what I hadn&#8217;t been able to do before. I&#8217;ve always loved helping people, even with the smallest of things, and Breakthrough allows me to do that with those who really need it.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I think my MPA experience has shaped my ambition to do right in the world because even at a very basic level, it has taught me morals and what&#8217;s right and wrong. My experience at MPA has definitely played a part in how I view the world and the way I think about things. My teachers have never shied away from talking about public events and what&#8217;s going on around us, never failing to educate us on the matters at hand, and I think that&#8217;s played a huge part in my ambition to do right in this world. Outside the classroom in MPA, I hear the opinions of everyone (classmates, friends, faculty, parents, etc.) and I&#8217;m able to shape my beliefs out of everything, and use that, as well as the basic morals I was taught, to &#8220;do right in this world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I learned so much this past summer. Not just in terms of content\u2013which I did because I had to research for my classes\u2013but in general. I was teaching science and mythology\/superheroes, so I learned content in that area. But I also learned how to plan a unit, individual lessons, and manage students, schedules, and classrooms. I learned how to guide advisees, co-teach, teach groups of students, and form relationships with co-faculty, staff, students, and even parents. I learned how to plan events, work in a committee, and what all goes on behind the scenes of a school day. I think I&#8217;ve changed in the sense that I have so much more respect for teachers. I already respect them a ton, but just going through lesson plans and prep for hours and hours just gave me a whole other perspective. So, I think I was able to see the other side and understand teachers better. I also think I&#8217;ve grown in the way that I&#8217;m not afraid to &#8220;come out of my shell&#8221; anymore. I&#8217;m normally a bit quiet around new people, but going through the experience of Breakthrough and all, I feel like I&#8217;m much more comfortable and open around new people now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Ishika Muppidi, MPA senior Ishika spent her summer with Breakthrough Twin Cities (BTC), a local organization closely partnered with MPA. Breakthrough is a challenging academic enrichment program for highly motivated, under-resourced students, where all the teachers are high school and college students. I chose to get involved with Breakthrough for a number of reasons, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":18273,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,28,10030,24,29,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-current-families","category-deb","category-featured-posts","category-homepage","category-middle-school","category-upper-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18165"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18274,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18165\/revisions\/18274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moundsparkacademy.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}