Ava Van Straten had been awarded the rank of Eagle Scout through Scouts BSA, Boy Scouts of America as the first female Eagle Scout in the Voyageur District of the Bay-Lakes Council, and member of the national inaugural class of female Eagle Scouts named in February 2021. In addition, Van Straten is also the recipient of the prestigious Gold Award from Girl Scouts of the USA. Having both awards as a female now places Van Straten in an even more elite group nationally.
As part of her Eagle project, Van Straten wrote a children’s book, Parker’s Path, published by Ephraim Publishing and printed by Worzalla Publishing, the same printer for books like Oprah, Marvel, National Geographic, and the Diary of a Wimpy Kids series. In addition to Van Straten’s book, she has created a curriculum for elementary school-aged children, grades 1-4. The book and curriculum are intended to promote empathy awareness at a time when empathy development is reduced with less in-person interactions and increased use of screens and technology.
Through extensive fundraising including a grant by The Pollination Project, more than 11,000ドル in funds and services were raised. As a result, 4,000 copies of Parker’s Path and curriculum were distributed for free to Wisconsin schools, libraries, scouting troops, and not-for-profit organizations supporting youth, in collaboration with St. Norbert College’s Cassandra Voss Center initiatives. Books were also distributed in MN, CA, NY, and CO to reach a total of 110 school districts representing 400 schools and their 1st- 4th grade students as well as additional troops, Boys & Girls Clubs, and county libraries. To support online learning during COVID-19, Van Straten also created a video version of her book, along with the curriculum, for area school districts that were teaching either fully or partially online.
This was Van Straten’s second book. Her first published book, Mary’s Heart, is on kindness, and over 1,000 copies of this book and curriculum were previously distributed as part of her Girl Scout Gold Award and over 6,000ドル in funds and services were also raised, for a total of over 17,000ドル in funds and services raised by Van Straten, to-date.
According to Van Straten, "while learning science along with math, language arts, and the other components of the Common Core have been important in my life, one of my other important educations has been outside of the classroom through Scouting. The character, leadership, courage, and emergency preparedness skills I have learned through Scouts BSA offer me what I call my ‘Common More,’ — character, social, and emotional learning (SEL) skills that will be in my toolkit for life. I am also pleased to have had an Eagle Project where I can help spread another important life skill, empathy, to even more youth."
Van Straten is currently a Junior psychology major at Yale University where she conducts research at the Yale School of Medicine at its Center for Emotional Intelligence, Child Study Center, related to the Social and Emotional Learning Observation Checklist for elementary schools (SELOC-ES). Here she helps refine discrete SEL pedagogies, codes classroom observation footage from around the nation in participating classrooms, and catalogs discrete SEL pedagogy examples for the SELOC-ES training. It is Van Straten’s intention to pursue her doctorate in child psychology. She is also contemplating attending law school to better refine her advocacy skills, gain knowledge and a better appreciation of education law and public policy, and best position herself to join the national conversation on U.S. education to bring it to a level where social and emotional intelligence training and learning is commonplace.