“In school, you don’t always have a chance to communicate with lots of different people but in Breakthrough, everything we do is focused on how we all make up one strong community.” – Thens Thens Duviella, Boston Campus, Class of 2019
My name is Thens Duviella and I am an 8th grader at TechBoston Academy and a Breakthrough student. I joined Breakthrough for many reasons. I didn’t want to waste my summer just goofing off, not learning much, and forgetting many of the things that I recently learned. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to be one step ahead of my classmates once I started school again in the fall. I also looked ahead and realized that if I did Breakthrough, they would help with my college applications later in high school.
Honestly, when I first started Breakthrough, I was skeptical – it was school for five days a week during the summer! But, in the middle of my Breakthrough summer, I began to realize that it was fun and actually really helpful to me in many ways – not just with my academics. One of the best parts of Breakthrough for me is learning from young teachers and having fun while doing it. Breakthrough is different from school. There are more hands-on activities and teachers can connect with us because they are young and understand the things we do. In school, you don’t always have a chance to communicate with lots of different people but in Breakthrough, everything we do is focused on how we all make up one strong community.
I know Breakthrough will help me with many of the things on my journey to college. It helps keep me stay organized, helps me adapt to a schedule, and helps me control when to play around and when to get to business. Breakthrough will also help me stay around others who have the same goals as me – those who put school first. Through Breakthrough, I learned that when I show excitement for things, I can influence my peers to be excited about them too. When everyone at Breakthrough gets together for community meeting, I cheer loudly. By cheering, I show others it’s okay to cheer. Breakthrough helped me learn to lead by example through both my words and my actions and has helped me become the person I am now.