SUMMER CAMP Success Lasts All

Year

by Christine Berardi

June marks the end of the school year. July and August signal that it’s summer camp time. Although the seasons have changed, students are proud of their accomplishments. Success knows no time of year. Say Yes Buffalo, Fiver Children’s Foundation, Phillips Academy and Boys & Girls Club Stoneham & Wakefield held summer camps in New York and Massachusetts. Students made new friends while learning, exploring, discovering, and keeping up with their reading and math skills.

Say Yes Buffalo – NY

As a new National Grid Foundation partner organization, Say Yes Buffalo, in partnership with Buffalo Public Schools, the City of Buffalo, Erie County and community organizations, was excited to hold its Summer Camp initiative. For six weeks at 27 sites across Buffalo, camps served 1,400 K through 7th grade students. To prevent summer learning loss and remedy unfinished learning, camps implemented literacy and math curriculums. Extracurricular activities included sports, cultural dances, yoga, gardening, cooking and field trips. Say Yes Buffalo Summer Camp began only months after the May 14th tragedy at the Topps supermarket. Mental health counselors were available to support the students at the camps.

Fiver Children’s Foundation – NY

Camp Fiver’s Environmental Education program introduced young people to nature and taught them to develop a comfort and understanding of unfamiliar environments. Students learned about their relationship to nature, and how one’s actions can impact the environment. Camp Fiver welcomed 366 students ages 8-18. Fiver youth reside in underserved Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods and Madison and Chenango counties in Central New York. Campers explored various camp trails, creeks, lakes, and beaver dams on the 129-acre property. They learned how to fish on the lake, the importance of environmental protection and how to care for the environment. A total of 65 high schoolers participated in the Wilderness Program and climbed a mountain, purified water and more. ❧

Phillips Academy – MA

Phillips Academy offered MS2 (Math and Science for Minority Students) a five-week summer program that helped 100+ under-resourced high school students from New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. These students excel in math and science and developed the competencies required for success in college, and beyond. The summer program included academic classes in math, science, English, computer science; college advising and visits; social and cultural awareness sessions; and recreational activities. Program goals included supporting students’ sense of personal and cultural identity; empowering students through confidence-building workshops; and developing a sense of community as alumni who support each other academically and professionally. ❧

Boys and Girls Club of Stoneham and Wakefield – MA

The Boys and Girls Club of Stoneham and Wakefield offered a No Screen! Environmental Education program to students up to 18 years of age. It’s an environmental education program for economically disadvantaged youth that takes children away from their phones and tablets and teaches them about the world. No Screen Summer! had 4 parts: Environmental Leadership: where members are challenged to think critically about the environment, their actions and behaviors; Local Conservation: where students hiked and learned about the local ecosystem and participated in service projects from trail and water cleanup to invasive species removal; Agriculture & Gardening: where children learned about ecosystems, local food systems and access. Children participated in site selection, seed starting and transplanting, weeding, harvesting; and Wildlife Preservation: Partnering with Zoo New England, children learned about wildlife from around the world, how to protect them, and how to do our part locally. ❧

Teachers Describe the Wade Institute’s Hands-on, Inquiry-based Professional Learning as ...