I have always dreamed of being an educator. I wanted to be an educator to make a difference and change some lives. When educating, you can often see the impact you are having. You see scores improve, essays get better, and you hear the students’ tell you about their learning. This makes the hard days worth it. But how do you know if you are making a difference if you can’t even interact with students?

The pandemic has made this my reality in my service. I am currently serving at spectrUM Discovery Area, a science museum in Missoula, as an AmeriCorps Leader. In a normal year, I would be interacting with kids every day at our museum, showing them the exhibits and helping them engage with STEM concepts. Due to the pandemic, our museum is closed and has yet to re-open. Thus, so far throughout my service, we have not been able to interact with as many students. In an effort to still make a difference, spectrUM has been making thousands of science kits that get sent off to students around Montana. This means lots of days filled with putting vinegar in individual bottles or folding construction paper to fit into a bag. After days, weeks, and months of doing these tasks, it gets hard to remember the actual reason you are doing it.

When making these kits, I often don’t think about the kid on the other side of this kit, opening the bag and getting to engage with a fun science activity. But I have to remind myself that we do this work to spark curiosity and get kids excited about STEM. Not being able to see the students or the classrooms buzzing with joy from the activities make it hard to feel the impact. Nonetheless, I know it is there. I just have to believe that I am indeed making a difference. It is much harder to feel the impact in a distanced world. You don’t get to see kids’ eyes light up every day or see a shy kid come out of their shell when engaging deeply with an exhibit. The impact is there even if I don’t see it.

The best and most rewarding feeling is when we do get to see glimpses of the impact you are making. These are little nuggets of joy and they come to us in adorable videos or messages that kids and teachers make and send to us. Each frame and word reminds me of the impact that we are having. In these videos and messages, we can see the excitement the science kits are bringing to classrooms around Montana. Luckily, some of the work we are doing now allows us to interact with kids, such as our work with Parks & Recreation camps or our ‘Kids Club’ at EmPower Place. This has been a great way to see our impact in person and reminds me every day of the importance of service. Service is crucial to Montana communities and I am lucky to be a part of it.