Collected Item: “Socially distanced and socially safe summer camp”
Give your story a title.
Socially distanced and socially safe summer camp
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
News article
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
The attached article is something that is probably not well known. In Seattle, Washington there is the Pacific Science Museum, a fun educational museum for all ages, but focused on kids. Every summer they run educational camps for K-8 graders. It was unclear if after months of distance learning (early pandemic, 2020) students would be physically or emotionally ready to do a group activity in person. PacSci’s camps were able to run while students were socially distanced and masked. This matters because there has been a lot of rhetoric about kids not being able to wear masks for a variety of reasons, but this article proves that kids were able to understand social distancing and mask-wearing so they could have a safe and fun thing to do. With these practices in place, combined with low group sizes, and the use of a lot of outdoor time, they didn’t have any transmission cases for the whole summer. Not included in the article but they had the same success the next summer, 2021, and are on track to continue again the summer of 2022. The significance is not just to a collection focused on children, but also to the service industry since this is a less formal education setting that leans more toward front-facing customer service.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
HST580, Arizona State University, PacSci, Seattle, summer camp, science, education, K-8, service industry
Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.
https://www.geekwire.com/2020/pacific-science-center-ran-safe-successful-summer-camps-person-despite-covid-19/
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Lisa Stiffler
Give this story a date.
2020-08-29