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About Us In 1993, OurStory was founded as a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit youth organization. It was created through an Independent Study course in the University of Texas’s Graduate School of Business. The nonprofit’s founder, Nicole Eutsey, was a graduate student at UT. She worked long-term substitute teacher assignments for Austin Independent School District and instructed alternative high school diploma programs for Austin Community College. She observed that an alarming number of students were not completing their educations. For many young people, school challenged them for a variety of reasons that had little to do with intellect. A premise of the nonprofit plan rejected the term at-risk because all children can be susceptible to not achieving their full potential. With this basis, programs would be focused on children’s strengths and not their weaknesses. Nicole was passionate about performance and believed in its ability to be used as a teaching tool. This is why programs initially produced drama and literary events which could show youth educational relevance in the past, present and future. As the organization grew, it gained support from a variety of sources such as The Austin Community Foundation, Dell, Holt Rinehart & Winston, Capital Spectrum, LCRA, The RGK Foundation, The Lola Wright Foundation, The Pacey Family Foundation, The Casey Family Program, The City of Austin, Austin Independent School District, 3M, Southwestern Bell, IBM, Guaranty Bank, ATT and The Dwight Rounds CPA Firm. Community based organizations like OurStory strove to close knowledge gaps. School concepts were presented in isolation. Students did not receive relevant frameworks that could facilitate deeper understanding of concepts. OurStory wanted to create lifelong learners. Thus, it expanded to include various disciplines. OurStory implemented after-school math, science, reading, drama and entrepreneurship programs. The expansion allowed children opportunities, they otherwise might not have received, to explore core knowledge skills. Innovative and imaginative frameworks encouraged students to learn while pursuing their interests and talents. Next, OurStory began implementing multi-disciplined science, technology and the arts summer camps. Young actors participated in theater skills training and produced a show. In the camps, children received instruction in classroom settings and then were given opportunities to reinforce their knowledge through discovery and exploration. Instructors taught math and reading. During computer lab times, students used Reader Rabbit and Knowledge Adventures software to reinforce what they had been taught. These animated learning applications were innovative teaching tools in the early 1990s. Participants were taught music and also played musical keyboards with midi technology. They connected the keyboards to the computers and learned to play piano and compose music. Children had art classes. They painted the backdrops for the shows. They also were taught how to use Microsoft Paint Brush on the computer to create graphic art. The science labs were so alluring that OurStory was featured on the local news demonstrating a volcanic eruption. Children reinforced science skills using computers as well. Integrating technology into the instruction helped bridge the digital divide. The camps facilitated creativity and critical thinking. OurStory continues to harness the strength of integrated lessons to produce deeper comprehension that leads to sustained knowledge gains.
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