Teen Scene: 'What We Did for Summer Vacation'

DAYTON – When teachers at Dayton High School ask their students to write an essay on what they did over their summer vacation, more than two dozen will have a ready answer: Teen Scene.

Teen Scene is managed by leaders and volunteers with Blue Mountain Counseling, who also run the Summer Youth Program for younger children in the community. Both programs this year took place from the last part of June through July 31.

This isn't the first year of this summer recreation program for older youth, but it was the first time in a long time that local teens were able to go on a number of field trips and have experiences outside of the community.

"We always try to do at least as much with the kids as we were able to do the summer before, if not more," said one of the Teen Scene leaders, Jennifer Mathews, who works as an administrative assistant at Blue Mountain Counseling.

Funding the two summer youth programs is always a challenge, she said. This year, the team wasn't able to secure enough grants to run the programs, so the Columbia County Commissioners stepped in and awarded them one tenth of one percent of the sales tax that came into the county from wind farm construction, Mathews said.

"The commissioners really thought we needed the programs – we need for the kids, and the teens, to have something to do during the summer," she said.

Teen Scene participants this year got to play Daytonopoly at the Columbia County Courthouse, throw glowin' Frisbee at the city park, tour Hell's Canyon in a boat, visit the Clarkston Waterpark, swim at Lyon's Ferry, play Cougar Laser Tag in Pullman, hike Middle Point Trail in the Blue Mountains, watch Jurassic World at the Liberty Theater in Dayton, see a Walla Walla Sweets game, golf at the Touchet Valley Golf Course, tackle the ropes course in Walla Walla, and enjoy late-night movies at the city pool every Wednesday with Flick-n-Float.

"The point of Teen Scene was to have a fun summer, but also, in a way, it was to go and make new friends and to learn about the value of others," said Dayton teen Corra Smith. "It gave me opportunities to go out and do things this summer I otherwise wouldn't have been able to do."

Other Teen Scene leaders included Laura Tolman, a preventionist with Blue Mountain Counseling, and Dianne Schultz, who was the leader for the Summer Youth Program at the elementary school and helped out as a chaperone on Teen Scene expeditions. Dayton School District donated the use of the elementary school for the youth program and a district bus for the teen outings. Columbia County Public Transportation took the teens when they went to the Snake River, Mathews said.