Jump in! Let’s learn!
“It’s a swim club as well,” Keegan Dougherty, co-director of Splash, joked.
“It’s an ongoing joke. At Student Activities Day, freshmen came up to ask what we did,” Megan Shein, co-director of Splash, laughed. “When we answered education, they were totally expecting us to be organizing a trip to a water park or something!”
Splash actually has nothing to do with water, unless you’re teaching a swim class, that is.
Splash is a student-run event on campus that brings over 800 high school students from the New England area to BC to take classes taught and created by undergraduate and graduate BC students. The organization is a part of Education for Students by Students, a new RSO.
The Splash movement was started at MIT 30 years ago and has now been picked up by a national organization called LearningU. The BC branch was started by a student who took a Splash class at MIT while in high school on how to create a Splash program and is one of the leading branches. It has been a program for three semesters now.
“We’re proud to be one of the originators,” Shein said. “We’re the cutting edge,” Dougherty added. “We’re really proud,” Shein and Dougherty laughed together.
The purpose is to get high school students interested in higher education, and if they are already interested, to give them a unique college experience. “We give them the chance to act like college students for a day,” Shein said. They register for the various courses offered by Splash in the same way college students would: by selecting the classes that tailor to their individual fields of interests.
“We want to spark a passion for learning!” Dougherty explained.
The majority of the high school students who attend are from the New England area, with a few coming from as far as New Jersey and Canada. This year, Splash set up an initiative called Splash Outreach Representatives. These representatives are students from various high schools who are in charge of organizing groups of fellow students to participate in Splash.
“That way, this year we’ll have more cohesive groups rather than just individuals, like we’ve had in the past,” Dougherty explained.
A class taught at last semester’s Splash event.
Splash offers over 150 classes ranging from “Political Structures and Policies in the World of Harry Potter” to “The Universe: a mind-exploding topic”. The program provides a variety of classes with a more academic basis like math classes and essay-writing classes as well as history classes such as art history. However, not all courses are necessarily academics-based.
“The directors read every description and make sure that everyone has some sort of educational content not necessarily based on academia, but some sort of a mind/body building experience for the high school students,” Shein explained. “So it’s not just ‘let’s play ping pong’ but more ‘let me teach you good form of ping pong’ for example.”
Although Splash at BC doesn’t have a specific program tailored to college-prep classes, unlike the Splash program at MIT, Splash still leaves room for those kinds of classes to be offered. Some examples include “Intro to College Math” and “Beyond the Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay”.
A group of friends teaching a Splash class together.
And just about anyone can teach a Splash class; over 200 students are teaching at this semester’s Splash. It’s also not just an upperclassman thing either; “SO College: How to be a Freshman in College” is taught by a group of freshmen.
“If you’re passionate about a class you’ve taken or an extracurricular activity, it doesn’t matter what, we’ll help you teach it, we provide you with anything you need and a forum for your passion,” Dougherty said.
Although a wide spectrum of topics are taught, there have never been issues with students having the appropriate authority or background to teach a class, according to Shein and Dougherty. Most of the time, students teach something that they are very involved with.
“Last semester we had a class called ‘Sex and Gummy Bears’ and that was taught by current GLC vice-president Josh Tingley,” Shein said. “People teaching more questionable or controversial topics will list down the qualifications they have in that subject area, but no qualifications or requirements are necessary.” Another example is an empowered sex course that discusses the perspectives on women in society, which is taught by teaching assistants of a feminist course at BC.
The co-directors just try to make sure that, based on the course abstracts that Splash student-teachers must submit with their class proposals, the teachers are knowledgeable. “We also have a BC professor or advisor give a talk about what giving a lecture should be like, how you can make it educational and appropriate,” Shein said.
If teaching isn’t something you’re comfortable with, Splash encourages students to teach classes with friends or volunteer. “Volunteers play a huge role in making Splash happen,” Dougherty said. “We have an equal amount of volunteers and teachers.”
Splash volunteers help high school students with registration.
There are five different volunteer teams. Security makes sure that parents are able to get to Gasson Tower for student registration. The student-registration team collects liability forms from the students and gives them their schedules. If any problems occur either during registration or throughout the day, the problem-solving team saves the day. The most common saving-the-day situation comes when a class gets canceled or a teacher doesn’t show up. The team is then responsible for re-assigning the students to new classes.
Teacher check-in volunteers make sure all the teachers are ready half an hour before the start of the event and give out materials needed for the classes. The tech team sets up any equipment needed in the classrooms and sets up signs so that students can find their classes.
“It’s like setting up an entire school,” Dougherty commented about all the behind-the-scenes work. “I actually first got involved with Splash by being on the security team. It was a lot of fun.”
“The reason why it’s fun is because you get walkie-talkies,” Shein laughed. “We’ll say funny things like ‘there’s a student on the loose.’”
“Or we’ll sing Lady Gaga while the classes are in session,” Dougherty added laughing. “We also have Splash codes.”
The actual event happens all day this Sunday on November 13. High school students have registered for five to seven classes and will be experiencing the day as a typical BC student. Shein and Dougherty encourage students to come hang out in the Quad to get a sneak peek of the high school students or to sign up to volunteer!
Become a part of the Splash movement. Teach a class next semester. Spread your love and knowledge of a passion. What could be better than the beauty of spreading your passion for a subject in a fun and creative way with eager high school students? Not much, I say.
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