Girl Scout Creates New Learning Resources For Students

Sarah Ou (left) building her portable shelf to store new books she collected for students at the After School Program. (Photo courtesy Sarah Ou)

  FREEHOLD – A girl scout is completing her last steps to receive the Girl Scout Gold Award with her involvement in a local after school program and providing academic support to elementary students.

   Marlboro high school senior Sarah Ou has been a girl scout for over 12 years. As a girl scout, Sara is working towards receiving her Girl Scout Gold Award, which is the highest achievement offered by the Girl Scouts of the USA.

  The Girl Scout Gold Award represents a commitment to community service. Girl Scouts must spend at least 80 hours leading/working on a service project that benefits their community in order to receive the Gold Award. Their project must also be sustainable, meaning that it can continue even after the Girl Scout’s involvement.

  Sarah’s Gold Award project involves her working with the Open Door After School Program in Freehold. The program supplies disadvantaged students from second to fifth grade with tutoring and additional academic support.

  Not only can students receive tutoring from the program’s volunteers, the After School Program also allows students to participate in other activities, such as writing articles for the annual student newspaper and playing educational games with their friends, once they finish their homework.

  “I’ve been volunteering at the After School Program since the ninth grade, and working with the students was one of my favorite parts of high school,” Sarah said. “I liked that through this project, I could do something for the After School Program that would last even after I left for college.”

  Along with tutoring the students, Sarah has also helped improve the program’s reading and writing education/practice resources. She organized their classroom library and created a reading comprehension practice program for the students.

  “While volunteering at the program, I noticed that some of the students struggled a lot with reading and writing,” Sarah stated. “So I talked to some After School Program leaders and we decided that creating support materials in these areas would be helpful. I created a reading comprehension practice program, a set of worksheets that the students can complete at their own pace at the program.”

  “I also organized the After School Program’s classroom library, because before students often had a hard time finding books that interested them in it,” Sarah said. “I grouped books by genre and difficulty so that students can easily find appropriate and interesting books to read.”

  In addition to creating new and better learning resources, Sarah also collected new books for the program and built them a portable rack to store these new books. Unfortunately, the After School Program is not running at the moment due to COVID-19, but that’s not stopping Sarah from finding ways to help the program and the students in it.

  “I built a small magazine rack and collected some books from family and friends. I plan to give those to the After School Program when it starts again so the students can enjoy some new books to read.”

  “The program’s goal of supporting education is important to me, and I thought my Gold Award project would be a great way to support the After School Program and the students.”