The Minnow Cup, an after-school program for middle-schoolers, opened the school year with a monthly calendar featuring new activities including bocce, volleyball, and a variety of community service projects. The Minnow Cup was established last year and offered students a chance to do art projects, play billiards or table tennis, use computers, and socialize from 3 to 5 p.m.
Parent Kirsten Wright organized the new range of activities in cooperation with Principal Jim O’Shea, community education director Judy Cavanaugh, and Minnow Cup coordinator Gayle Bruning. Although Wright is also a School Committee member, she emphasized that she is doing this project as an individual volunteer. Wright sees the new activities, which will all be led by volunteers, as making the after-school program “a little more structured.”
“Middle school students want to make a difference. They are really primed to take part in community service,” Wright told the Press in a telephone interview. “And it lets them be leaders at a young age.”
Among the community service projects scheduled for September, the Minnow Cup calendar includes cooking lasagna for an area soup kitchen, tackling projects on the Bromfield School campus, and offering help to senior citizens at Hildreth House.
Wright said she sees the program as an opportunity for middle-schoolers to take part in a bigger world. Reeling off a list of possibilities that ranged from service opportunities to just plain fun, she mentioned detailing cars for senior citizens, knitting caps for premature newborns, photography, cooking, Zumba, and perhaps even rock climbing.
The biggest obstacle, Wright said, is the need for almost all activities to be within walking distance.
With help from Bromfield students in the upper grades, Wright also hopes to introduce middle-schoolers to some of the activities that will be available to them in high school. Older students will be invited to offer mini-workshops that familiarize the younger students with Bromfield’s clubs and activities.
Like last year, the Minnow Cup is open to students in grades six, seven, and eight. The fee for the full year is $50.
