Andrea Meller Õ99 has worked with children and peers in ways relating to both education and social development. In high school, she was a peer counselor for three years, a group skills leader for tenth graders, and also a Big Sister. Through Swarthmore, she has worked with children and adolescents in Chester in two CIVIC programs, the Urban Gardening Group and Trekking and Leadership in Chester. She also worked at the New York Botanical Gardens as an instructor for six year olds and as an intern to school groups for two years. Andrea hopes to further develop her interests in outdoor education and self-expression through theater in the curriculum for this summer project. As a result of preparing for this program, Andrea is now especially fascinated by the gender roles that adolescent girls are forced to undertake and the ways in which alternative education methods can address these strict gender roles and the discrepancies many girls face in education and life. Through this program, she hopes to learn even more about how girls feel about their adolescent years and show them the options they have despite the differences they face in education.