Summer camp students with disabilities create displays for Idaho Museum of Natural History exhibit
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POCATELLO — A group of summer campers with disabilities have created displays that will teach museumgoers about Idaho’s water through the ages.
The students at the ISU Academy NExT Camp created four separate dioramas that will be on display for a new exhibit at the Idaho Museum of Natural History called “Waters of the West.”
“The idea here is to have these lifelike replicas of what life would have been like back then,” said Robert Gay, education coordinator at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. “A dinosaur skeleton tells one story, but seeing dinosaurs hanging out on a riverbank — that’s a different story.”
NExT, or New and Exciting Transitions, is a camp that provides experiences to students from 14 to 21 that help them transition into college and post-secondary education independently. The camp is run in partnership with ISU and the Idaho Division of Vocational Rehabilitation.
The camp, which wrapped up last week on Friday, allowed students to stay away from their parents and guardians in the ISU dorms for five days. Joel Bocanegra, the department chair of School Psychology and the co-director for the camp, said that the student campers with “exceptionalities” become more independent over the course of the camp.
“A lot of these youth have never been traveling or been away from home,” Bocanegra said. “We try to help that process too so that they can get away for a little bit and become more independent.”
Jennifer Gallup, associate professor of special education and primary director of the camp, started because she hadn’t seen programs that allowed her son, who has autism, to fail and learn.
“At Academy NExT, we allow the students to fail in a safe environment. They get the opportunity to make choices for themselves,” Gallup said.
Gallup said that people with disabilities often struggle in the workplace due to a lack of communication and problem-solving skills and the ability to work as a team. The camp emphasizes practicing these three skills through trial and error.
For Tyson Parkhouse, a 14-year-old at Century High School, it was his first time attending the camp and he said that he had an “awesome” time.
“During camp, I made so many new friends, and I worked with so many great staff members and had so many adventures,” Tyson said.
The student campers participated in a variety of activities during the week, like visiting the Idaho Museum of Natural History, riding horses and petting baby goats.
This was the first year that the camp teamed up with the museum to add to an exhibit. To create these models, the students made landscapes out of foam bases, formed the animals with 3D printers and then painted them.
The first diorama shows Idaho 300 million years ago, covered in water with swimming buzzsaw sharks. At this time, there was an ocean over what would one day become Idaho.
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The second shows what Idaho looked like when the ocean was gone and dinosaurs roamed the landscape 100 million years ago. The third diorama jumps forward to 100,000 years ago when there was a lava rock dam that blocked the Snake River, forming a lake similar to the American Falls Reservoir.
The last diorama depicts the present day, showing how people and animals both interact with the the water system in a recreational way.
Miranda Stearn, a 17-year-old at Century High School, said that her favorite part of the camp was when they got to ride horses, closely followed by painting the dioramas.
“I never thought of anybody seeing my art, but when they see it, they think I’m a really good artist,” she said.
Miranda, who had never been to the museum before this, was thankful for the opportunity to work on these dioramas.
Both Miranda and Tyson said that they planned to attend the camp again next year.
Gallup hopes that more parents will hear about Academy NExT and decide to give their kids the opportunity to learn and fail around a professional, well-trained staff.
“The value behind what we do is allowing them to the exploration autonomy,” Gallup said. “They come back sometimes messy, but they’ve had the opportunity to learn and make those choices.”