“I came to CTY and...” - Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth ...

elonged
Showing Promise
Last year during his first weeks of eighth grade at Iao Intermediate School in Maui,
Hawaii, Bryan Benz stood out to his English teacher, Kristin Carlisle, for all the wrong
reasons: He was disruptive in class, didn’t listen to his teachers, and often didn’t
complete assignments. Some days he didn’t come to school at all.
Carlisle saw promise in the dark-haired boy with the shy smile. She was intrigued when
Bryan scored extremely high on a standardized test early in the year. Then when she
began doling out challenging writing assignments, his stories and poems blew her away.
She knew 14-year-old Bryan could benefit from CTY and arranged for him to
participate in the Talent Search. “Once Bryan qualified for CTY in March, he really
started to change,” she says. “His grades started to go up. There was a light in his face.”
Bryan’s foster family was unable to afford CTY Summer Programs tuition, and because
he qualified for CTY so late in the season the Center’s financial aid funds had already
been allocated. Carlisle didn’t give up. “Bryan had never left Hawaii, never set foot on
a university campus,” she says. “I wanted him to have this opportunity to see
what was possible for him.”
To learn more, please visit: CTY.JHU.EDU/ANNUALREPORT
She shared Bryan’s story with their community, and a local foundation and several
private donors stepped up to donate $3,500 so he could go to CTY Seattle and take
a class in mystery writing and film.
When Bryan stepped off the plane in Seattle in June, he was concerned that he would
stand out, as he had in school, for all the wrong reasons. Would he fit in?
Less than an hour into his first class, his fears disappeared. “I wasn’t sure that I would
be able to keep up, but the work came pretty easy to me,” Bryan says.
Over the next three weeks, Bryan succeeded in class, made friends from all over
the world, and began dreaming of college and a career in film. And he came to realize
that he didn’t just fit in at CTY. He excelled.
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