DYC STUDENT LEADER SPOTLIGHT
Name:
Adhya Kasamsetty
Location:
Cupertino, California, USA
Award:
PVSA Gold Award
Contribution in Year:
2021
Hosting a workshop in DYC helped me foster my leadership skills as well as to validate my own skills in the subject I was teaching. My students challenged me to think deeper and explore parts of the topic that I never had looked into before. There was also a great sense of satisfaction I felt as I saw these kids gaining knowledge, asking questions, and actually applying the skills in real time. I loved how curious everybody was, and how excited and ready they were to learn something new. Overall, it was a great experience teaching this workshop–not just to teach other kids, but for myself as well. I truly encourage all to join the DYC growing community.
About Me
Hi everyone, I’m Adhya Kasamsetty, a sophomore at Khan Labs High School. In my free time, I enjoy reading murder mysteries, writing short stories, as well as general journalism, and watching movies. A fun fact is that I love jalapeno bagels! I’m also super into video editing, which is what inspired me to create this workshop in the first place. I’ve done a lot of video editing work in middle and high school for my school’s video announcements, and for projects on my own time. I actually recently created a 10 minute murder-mystery/comedy short film using these skills as well.
Clearly, I knew I had a love for video editing and DYC gave me a chance to spread my knowledge and help others realize they love it too. The reason I got into DYC was because I had already started doing a sort of ‘casual teaching’ of video editing and graphic design at school and summer camps. It was an informal setting, and mostly me just helping other kids with some specific skills. I realized that teaching this skill was something I loved to do, and found DYC where I could take that interest and turn it into a formal and regular class. I started a video editing and graphic design workshop at DYC with over 15 students. We used multiple different softwares, such as Canva, Imovie, Adobe Spark, etc. Over the course of the workshop I asked for feedback and implemented it, changing my lesson plans to benefit the students the most. For example, in the beginning I was expecting less experienced kids to be joining, however the kids who joined were more experienced with video editing. Knowing this information, I adjusted my lesson plans to make it less basic and go deeper as this to benefit them the most. I have learned a lot doing this workshop about leadership, time management, teaching, and about video editing and graphic design as well. This experience helped me learn more about this skill and go deeper and explore different areas in video editing and graphic design. My students pushed me to explore new things with their curiosity and persistence. Other than this workshop, I also did a lot of fundraising for DYC and raised about 350 dollars.
I really liked DYC specifically because of how much control I had–I was able to establish my own times for classes as well as create my own lesson plans. DYC provides enough support so I always have someone to talk to with any questions, but also gave me enough independence and trust to run my class the way I wanted to. I also liked the amount of support I got from the DYC team. I was always able to ask any questions I needed or get something clarified. I really have enjoyed my journey with DYC and want to give a big thank you to the DYC Team for giving me this incredible opportunity.
