I have attended third space programs for as long as I can remember. From the age of 5 to 12, I participated in LA’s Best, a program that caters to under-resourced schools by providing free enrichment opportunities during the academic year and summer, ensuring that youth are active and engaged. During my time in this program, I made life-long friendships, received homework assistance, and stayed active.
For six consecutive years, I was a member of my site’s drill team. In fact, my favorite childhood memories are attending LA Best’s Dance and Drill Team Showcase—an opportunity for each site to perform a routine the students and staff choreographed throughout the year. It was not only exciting to perform the routine I spent blood, sweat, and tears on, but to also watch all the other sites perform their routines. Plus, who doesn’t like some friendly competition?
Aside from the amazing opportunities afforded to me by LA’s Best, more importantly, this program and other third spaces gave me an escape from reality. Coming from a low-income household, I saw my parents constantly fighting over money—a fight that would often last for days. And since I shared a room with my mom, I was reminded of these arguments as she recapped them to her friends over the phone. The fights were memories played on repeat in my mind over and over again.
One morning in second grade, my parents got into a horrible argument forcing me to walk to school alone for the first time with tears falling down my face—wanting to desperately flee from the situation. I couldn’t flee but, in LA’s Best and other third spaces, I found a distraction from the issues at home.
In these programs, I was just me. I didn’t have to worry about my family’s issues. I didn’t have to worry about my parents’ finances or their relationship. I wasn’t in the front row, watching my parents’ stressors consume them. I wasn’t holding the sinking ship together. I didn’t have to worry.
At LA’s Best, my biggest concern was “when was play time?” I was able to simply be a kid.
At home, most weekends consisted of my brother and I watching television. When we were not in front of a screen, my stay-at-home dad would take us with him to hang out with his friends where they smoked cigarettes while chatting and my brother and I were bored out of our minds, waiting to go home. Occasionally, my mom took us to the park when she had a day off. I realize now that if it wasn’t for LA’s Best’s summer program, my summers would have either looked like this or my brother and I at home unsupervised.
In these programs, I was just me. I didn’t have to worry about my family’s issues. I didn’t have to worry about my parents’ finances or their relationship. I wasn’t in the front row, watching my parents’ stressors consume them. I wasn’t holding the sinking ship together. I didn’t have to worry. ... I was able to simply be a kid.
I’m thankful for my experience in LA’s Best. I was fortunate I wasn’t on a waiting list. An experience too many Vermont youth know all about. For every Vermont youth in an afterschool program, there is one who is on the waitlist. It’s disheartening to think of the kids who are in tough situations who don’t have the needed support system. Parenting is hard. Parenting is even harder when there is stress in your life. Oftentimes, parents need support like the kind of support that’s accessible through afterschool programs.
I probably wouldn’t be where I am today without LA’s Best. As a pretty shy and quiet child, I wouldn’t have developed the communication skills to cultivate loving relationships or develop other protective factors. I wouldn’t have excelled academically in K–12 and graduated as salutatorian of my high school. And I wouldn’t be attending a rigorous higher education institution.
My childhood would’ve been much darker without my experiences in the third space. Fortunately, LA’s Best was the light in the tunnel of darkness—my oasis from the stressors at home—helping to shape me into the person I am today and giving me a chance to succeed.
