Tippecanoe Valley Students Visit Grace College for ‘Walk Into My Future’ Event
AKRON — On Friday afternoon, Sept. 23 the Grace College campus in Winona Lake looked a little different than usual. Instead of college students milling around the grounds, elementary students in color-coded t-shirts from area schools, including Akron and Mentone Elementary, flooded the campus as a part of Kosciusko County Promise’s “Walk Into My Future” event.
This is the second year that Kosciusko County Promise, a program of the Kosciusko County YMCA, has hosted the event, which aims to inspire young children to begin thinking about and saving for college.
The day was a jam-packed one for Tippecanoe Valley students. After gathering in the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center for lunch, classes of students made their way to various stations set up around the campus, where they made savings banks and learned about different careers they might like to pursue, among other things. Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation Superintendent Brett Boggs, who spent time with students as they learned, believes that events like this one are essential to starting the conversation about college and what path students might like to take when they grow up.
“The ‘Walk Into My Future’ event at Grace College is important because it helps our young children dream for their future. Many have never visited a college campus and experiencing this event with their peers, teachers, college students, and college staff members helps build a positive picture of what their education could look like beyond high school,” he said. He went on to thank all those involved with a program that, in his words, “helps build that ‘future picture’ that is so important in the development and future success of each and every child.”