Inspiring Education: Jack's Story

Welcome to our Inspiring Education series, where we post blogs and stories about women who have, in some way, played a part in inspiring education for others. For our first blog, we have Jack Pearson’s story. Jack was inspired by a woman called Lily, whilst he worked at Camp America. Take a read, and get in touch if you have a story you’d like to share!

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Lily, a woman who inspired my education.

A little under a year ago I worked at Camp America in The United States. Camp America is a summer camp which hosts a diverse body of children and teenagers from across the world. One particular group of teenagers who attended, came from Israel, and had very minimal knowledge and experience of the English language.

Lily was a second generation, American member of staff, who spoke English fluently as well as a small amount of Hebrew (the Israeli national language). The children immediately gravitated toward Lily as she was among the very few who could converse with them.

Camp America is a consistently busy working environment so it was a rare occasion that staff members were lucky enough to get an hour or two in the evening to ourselves. Most staff would head to the bar or the sports fields, but when everyone else left Lily remained on campus with the Israeli kids and sacrificed her free time to teach them the basics of English.

Almost everyday, Lily would spend the little recreational time she had to better these kids overseas experience. She enabled them to interact with others, make new friends, create memories and afford them opportunities that would otherwise have been impossible.

Lily’s selflessness not only influenced the learning careers of the Israeli kids, but inspired my own educational journey as well. Currently, I have a degree in English and teaching, but I am now planning to take lessons in Vietnamese with hopes of teaching English in Vietnam and changing the lives of children there, just as Lily did.

~ Jack