Westbrook Interact members gain much from RYLA experience

Posted by David Rolfe 
on Oct 28, 2014
 

Bruce Dyer, WHS Interact Club advisor, and two students who attended RYLA joined us for our lunch meeting on October 28.

Bruce briefly mentioned some of the many Interact activities going on this year. These included Halloween on Main Street, Child Care (Place at the Table), Salvation Army bell ringing, Festival of Trees, baking apple pies for Thanksgiving, etc. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the charter of the Westbrook club. Bruce has done a great job with this club as demonstrated by these activities.

 

Bruce handed over the podium to 2014 RYLA students from Westbrook High School, Courtney LeClair and Josh Minor, who related their experiences at Camp Hinds this past spring. Some comments about the RYLA experience:

  • Being thrust into groups where no one knew each other was the start of a great experience.
  • There were no cell phones allowed, quite a change for teenagers these days!  A guest speaker was completely blown away by this fact alone.
  • The experience honed leadership skills in many ways.
  • Josh is involved in mentorship and found RYLA applicable to this endeavor.
  • Each day they faced a multitude of new challenges, exposing different leadership styles.
  • Many tasks took members out of their comfort zones (i.e. ropes course)
  • From the start they were confronted with activities designed to develop and test trust in one another. (i.e. Falling off table to be caught by teammates.)
  • They were tasked to set goals and wrote down goals for themselves before leaving, forcing them into doing some deep and serious thinking.

When asked about some major changes RYLA made in them, Josh said he learned to listen more (he tended to be a take action type and was greatly affected by an activity where his group was blindfolded and traveled into the woods). Courtney said she learned that she can offer opinions and take charge when needed.

Each year these reports from our RYLA students resoundingly show what great kids we have in Interact and what a great investment we are making when we support Interact and RYLA.