Giggles and joyful shouts echo through the Kiddo Land Learning Center as kids play together, and senior Gemma Chan scurries behind them. Every day is a new adventure, and Gemma finds herself both shocked and in awe of the growth the kids are making: new words, new lessons, a new sense of maturity.

Even more rewarding than witnessing their tiny yet monumental accomplishments, Gemma relishes her own role in their development while working at Kiddo Land. 

“This past summer, I really solidified how, though working with any age group is great, I enjoy working with little kids more,” Gemma said. “There are more chances to see them growing, and it’s a quicker development than older kids. You get to see their progress a lot clearer. It feels like I contributed to it. It’s very rewarding.”

Alongside witnessing the children’s personal growth, Gemma has come to appreciate each child’s unique traits and personalities. She’s been able to apply this approach to her teaching.

“I like watching how everyone interacts so differently,” Gemma said. “I like thinking about how different interactions or situations in the children’s lives have contributed to how they behave now and how they’re developing, especially how their relationship with their teachers or with their parents contributes to how they learn things.”

While working with different kinds of children, Gemma initially struggled to find ways to enable kids to open up. After successfully overcoming them, she was able to shift her perception of the world toward a more positive light.

“I’ve definitely found that I’ve started seeing the best in things more often,” Gemma said. “I used to be super pessimistic and would always think the worst possible outcomes for everything, and that’s probably impacted by my anxiety too, but after interning the past two months, I feel like I can approach any difficult situation with a countering thought. When I’m working with a client and they get frustrated because they aren’t able to do something, I try to shift how I’m guiding them and make sure they understand that they’re still doing great to build up their confidence to keep going.”

Senior Kylie Anderson, Gemma’s close friend since first grade, saw Gemma’s love of coaching firsthand after working with her as a junior staff member at the Lower School Harker Summer Camp. 

“She is amazing with kids,” Kylie said. “That’s her goal in the future: to work with kids in psychology. You can see it in the way that she interacts with everybody at camp. The kids gravitate toward her, and you can tell that they enjoy being around her, and they can talk to her about anything. Everybody enjoys her presence.”

Gemma’s interest in childhood development was sparked when her younger sister, Guilianna, was born. From that moment, her passion for teaching truly took hold.

“I remember every single part of the day she was born,” Gemma said. “I’d be so hyped to come home after school and hang out with her. Now that I’m thinking about it, I focused more on how she was developing than how cute she was. I was so interested in how she’s building words or how she’s learning to walk, the different habits that she developed. I enjoyed watching her grow up.”

As she grew up, Guilliana developed the same condition as Gemma’s oldest sister: an Auditory Processing Disorder that made it difficult to operate on what she heard, making it especially demanding in school. Inspired by both of her sisters’ struggles and perseverance, Gemma started a research project that sought to derive the causes of her sisters’ disorder.

“I’ve always wondered what it really is, because it’s pretty unknown, and they don’t have a cure for it,” Gemma said. “They don’t know the cause of it. They don’t know a lot of things. So my siblings definitely inspired it.”

Gemma built a foundation for her research, starting off by first talking with her sisters and her mother to learn about the different ways APD affected them. Then she reached out to Dr. Robert Creighton in hopes of joining his research group.  

“I assessed their data, and then I applied it to my research, because a lot of the drugs and medications that they use from the zebrafish impact hearing and memory,” Gemma said.  “They’re in a lot of eczema medications and medications that any kid could take over the counter.” 

Senior Naiya Daswani, a close friend of Gemma, first met her during their frosh year when they played together on the high school basketball team. Both share a strong interest in psychology. Naiya has seen Gemma’s passion for the subject up close and especially admires her enthusiasm during psychological discussions.

“It stems from how much she cares for people,” Naiya said. “Because when she does research for psychology, it’s also centered around children. And so she’s always trying to see how she can think of others through what she’s learning. With psychology, she applies that lens to child behavior and how she can study that further and support people overall in her life.”

Gemma’s interest in psychology was also founded by her struggle of being misunderstood by teachers at school. Often in class, Gemma would find herself fidgeting and moving during instructions, leading her teachers to remark about how “she’s not paying attention” or “she has trouble focusing”. Confused by the disparity between her teacher’s perception and her own, Gemma went to a psychologist for a solution to her problem.  

“Why am I thinking all these things?” Gemma said. “Why am I feeling this after I’ve done something that I love doing? So I researched what I was feeling myself because I couldn’t classify what I was feeling because that’s not something that they teach us in school.”

Within the classroom, journalism yearbook adviser Kevin Oliver appreciates Gemma’s contributions to TALON. Over the past two years, Oliver has watched her grow and noticed the consistent dedication, work ethic, and attitude Gemma brings to the publication as a reporter, section editor and managing editor. 

“She didn’t have as far to go as a lot of students do to progress from where she was then to where I would expect her to be as a junior and senior,” Oliver said. “She exceeded expectations in terms of becoming more of a leader and just deepening understanding and awareness of the different challenges that she faces and that her classmates, her teammates on TALON, face. She’s able to continually improve her own work while also helping her fellow TALON members.”

Even as a frosh in the Intro to Journalism class, Gemma knew she wanted to be a part of the yearbook. She appreciated the way it fostered her creative freedom and highlighted her interests in photography, design, and community. As a senior, Gemma’s role has progressed to being the Managing Editor, where she oversees the production, scheduling, and deadlines of the book. 

“I always knew I wanted to be on Strat and that I wanted to have a bigger commitment to yearbook, because I love it,” Gemma said. “I could organize a page however I want to, and you can’t really do that if you’re just writing an article. I also liked how you could meet a lot more people, and you could see the different things people are interested in. As the managing editor I really enjoyed the scheduling part of my job and making sure everyone’s workload worked with their schedules.