Enriching Education: Call to Inspire

Nicholas Domingo is Co-Director of Call to Inspire, a youth program that cultivates a positive mindset in the ways kids think and act. 

With global stay-at-home orders firmly in place due to the arrival of the pandemic, Nicholas, as Captain Encouragement, is pivoting away from in-person school activities and providing new resources for parents to assist in the home schooling of young children.

The uptick in virtual learning has left many parents struggling to balance their work and making sure their children don’t fall behind in school. Since the inception of Call to Inspire, Nicholas has dedicated his time to spreading kindness inside schools. Now his primary focus is ensuring that all children are able to learn at home. He believes this can be achieved by giving parents access to interactive resources. Mr. Domingo’s company Called to Inspire has created the alter-ego Captain Encouragement to keep kids riveted while simultaneously teaching a variety of educational topics. Kids can:

• Fly through space with the Captain and learn math, as well as other video adventures on his YouTube channel!
• Kids can follow through with the videos with free printable worksheets, ages K-3.
• A Captain Encouragement video game is currently in development as well!
   

COVID-19 has shaken education entirely for young children, however this situation presents an opportunity for parents to keep their children learning in exciting ways. I had a chance to interview him to learn more.

• Why was Call to Inspire created?

Call to Inspire was created out of what I believe is necessity. The main face of the organization to carry out this mission was the character, Captain Encouragement. A hero that would challenge everything in society. Children are being inundated with content, primarily

through videos, video game, online social media platforms and other multimedia content. Most of the content coming out was violent, taught vulgarity, reinforced negative social norms and didn’t teach people (primarily children) how to be kind, how to help others,

how to cope with real life situations. We began teaching these lessons along with core principles of leadership, teamwork and anti-bullying. We teach these to young children so they can learn these habits at a very young age with the goal of early intervention.

• What kinds of things does it typically do?

Call to Inspire/Captain Encouragement typically does large-scale elementary school assemblies with individual schools or entire districts of schools at a large auditorium/venue. We also have a children’s comic book series, a live musical and Jr. Musical performance

we do, Getting Active With Captain events that we do at fairs and festivals that combine healthy habits, exercising and mental health. All of our programs shifted due to COVID-19 as our programs are in person events.

• What has been the biggest surprise with switching to at-home learning?

The biggest surprise from the transition that we as an organization have learned from, is that having a plan helps. We knew early on that we needed to develop online content, such as videos, to reach the demographic we serve during and after the stay at home orders. We found that children loved the content we were posting on YouTube! We began converting our content to having ASL interpreters in the videos to help make it accessible for hearing impaired students. We instantly heard back from parents that their kids loved it and it made them feel included in something. We are working on accommodations for students who are visually impaired.

As a parent of 2 boys, the biggest surprise to my wife and I, is how resilient my boys are in the face of problems. They seemed to take the transition in stride and have worked extremely hard as if school was still in session. 

• How can parents leverage the time at home to help cultivate a positive attitude? Time at home can be many things

This is a good opportunity for parents at home to learn with and from their children. I encourage parents to find projects to work on with their children to keep spirits up. We planted a very large garden that our children help with (they enjoy eating it mostly!) and we also made sure to get 3 chickens and 2 ducks. They have other things to focus on during this time and it’s been incredible. Also looking into new hobbies and things to develop on individually and as a family.

Finally and most importantly, reminding each other when our verbiage gets negative or reflects defeatism, to change it to reflect a more positive outlook and ensure our brains don't focus on the negative.