Teen-Run Non-Profit Group Champions Service and Academic Excellence
By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer
This summer students are jumping up and down, not because school is out, but because they think they’ve got the right answer to Ms. Belinda’s math problem.
“It’s four, it’s four!!” shouts a student trying to get the teacher’s attention.
Belinda Cheng is not your typical teacher. In fact, she’s not much older than her sixth through ninth grade students, and also on summer break.
Cheng, 17, attends Mark Keppel High School and is one of 30 members of the student-run non-profit service club Simply Savant. Their club is dedicated to “academic excellence,” according to the club’s 17-year old president, Jane Liu.
Simply Savant’s biggest project to date is Camp Savant, an academic summer camp held at five different Boys & Girls clubs around the San Gabriel Valley
“We just learned some of this stuff ourselves,” Liu says of how they came up with the lesson plans for subjects such as English, math, science, and even dance.
On a recent camp day, students learned about literary devices such as “irony,” wrote in their journals, and reviewed “math-tastic exponents.” The subjects depend on what the members can contribute. Last year, the camp also offered physical education and art, Liu said.
Liu says Simply Savant is unlike most other high school clubs which usually just raise money and hand it off to a charity, though they do as many charity fundraisers as they can. They also hold frequent, if not weekly, fundraisers for their own activities and can come up with as much as $500 a month.
In high school there are plenty of service clubs, but not many “actually go out there and do stuff,” Liu says. “It’s the interaction with people that’s important.”
Simply Savant members dedicate time during the summer to the Monday through Friday classes at Camp Savant. They often get to the Boys & Girls club at 8 am and work into the night on lesson plans, Liu says, all the while juggling their own summer studies and SAT prep classes.
Simply Savant’s projects don’t seem like things people her age would be interested in doing during their summer break, but Liu says when she tells her friends about it, “they become amazed.”
Aside from two advisors who don’t get too involved in their day-to-day activities and a lawyer to work out the “legal stuff,” she says high school students run everything at Camp Savant.
Liu says if it were not for the club, she would “just be sitting around at home doing nothing” this summer.
Liu says the members decided to publish their own lesson plan book, with plans for a second edition next summer. They did not have a lesson plan the first year and things were a little “chaotic,” Liu explains.
At the end of camp last year, the club gave out $75 scholarships to students who exhibited “academic excellence and endurance.”
When they first started Simply Savant, members invited a teacher to give them tips on how to teach and command respect from young students. Some of the club’s freshman and sophomore members are “fairly immature themselves, but after they start teaching, they learn that they have to step up as leaders,” Liu says.
The teachers’ youth is a strength, Liu says. One student, ten-year old Kayla Collins, said her favorite teacher is science teacher Bronte Yang, who conducted an explosive demonstration by dunking a Mentos, a mint-flavored candy, into a can of soda.
Liu says many of the camp’s students from last year came back because they enjoyed getting ahead on subjects before they are taught in school.
During the school year, Simply Savant members, from high schools in Alhambra, San Marino, Arcadia and Pomona focus on building libraries for anyone who needs them.
“We provide the labor,” Liu says. They also go door to door asking for book donations, fundraise to purchase some of the books themselves, and buy ready-to-assemble bookshelves at Wal-Mart and Big-Lots.
They started with Boys & Girls Clubs, including the East Los Angeles and Salesian branches, then moved on to preschools and elementary schools, community and education centers, and childcare facilities. Since they started the project, they have completed 20 libraries and donated 3000 books, according to Liu.
Simply Savant members often cite the feedback and gratitude they receive for their work, as well as the relationships they develop with each other and those they help, as the reasons that keep them going.
Cheng says she enjoys teaching at Camp Savant because of the bond she develops with her students, especially when she finds her own life experiences reflected in the students’ lives. “You’re not just a teacher, you can relate to them and how they feel,” she says.
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July 29, 2010 Copyright © 2010 Eastern Group Publications, Inc.
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