Summer of enrichment

Pilot program takes flight at Sunset Park Elementary

By Shawn Cetrone - Shawn Cetrone

Nicholas Anderson looks nervous.

The 8-year-old sits on the floor in Sunset Park Elementary's cafeteria. With his back to the wall, he stares at the floor.

He's preparing to take on the role of Crispus Attucks in a play about the Boston Massacre. In a few minutes he'll stand on a chair in front of classmates and teachers to give the martyr's last speech.

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"I was scared I was just going to mess up," he says after a flawless performance.

Nicholas is one of 44 kids in the school's new summer enrichment day camp. It's open to Sunset Park's rising third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. Parents drop off kids at 7:30 a.m. The students spend the day in a mix of classes, activities and field trips.

Students take courses in math, social studies, English, character development, foreign language, physical education, poetry and dance.

To keep things interesting, teachers incorporate fresh twists on standard lessons.

Teacher Phillip Moree, for example, has his students build model planes to illustrate the Wright brothers' first flight.

During a lesson on the Industrial Revolution, he lets kids devise their own inventions.

Aside from the language, Spanish teacher Terry Kampa brings Hispanic culture to class. One afternoon, she teaches students to make cascarones -- confetti-filled, hand-colored eggs, common during Mexican holidays.

"When you're done, you gently crack it on someone's head," she tells them.

The class responds in unison: "Cool."

Launched as a pilot program in June, the camp is meant to prepare kids for the next school year. Kids study what they'll learn in their fall classes.

"We didn't want it to be a traditional summer school," says Richard Pickering, Sunset Park's accelerated studies coordinator. "We focus on enrichment, not remediation. We want to take kids where they are and move them forward."

The camp is intended to help students shift from a year-round schedule to a traditional one.

For four years, Sunset Park's academic calendar was broken into nine-week chunks with three-week breaks in between. The idea was to give students shorter vacations so they retained more of what they learned.

This year, school officials, citing poor test scores, said the schedule didn't work and adopted a traditional calendar.

The new camp and calendar are the first steps in a move to radically change Sunset Park. The goal is to make it a magnet school for gifted and talented students. They plan to reintroduce the campus for the 2009-2010 school year as a "center for accelerated studies."

Sunset Park's low test scores make it a school of choice. Parents can transfer kids to higher-performing schools. Over time, the campus has lost more than half its students.

The district hired Pickering to help bring them back.

"I want to be part of changing the culture," he says. "I'm just tired of this school having a bad reputation, when there are so many great things going on."

Pickering and Principal Tammy White plan to spend this school year finalizing what the accelerated studies effort will look like.

The plan is to offer numerous innovative and attractive programs so families will send their kids. They're working on ways to identify students' strengths so teachers can nurture them, Pickering says.

"We're looking for a more diverse gifted population," he says.

Students already zoned for the school will get first dibs, but enrollment is open to anyone in the district.

The school hired several new teachers to help launch the program.

Rock Hill schools Superintendent Lynn Moody says she views the effort as a "pilot program to take all of our students and find their talents."

Sunset Park campers seem to like the new atmosphere.

"It's cool because of Spanish and German and learning all these new cultures," said Chantielle Clark, 8.

"I like it because we get to invent stuff like robots to do your homework and clean your room," said 10-year-old Keon Smith.

"It's not as boring as other schools I've been to," said Phillip Parker, 11. "Here ... it's all fun."