For most kids, June marks the end of school and the beginning of a long, lazy summer, one often heavy on late mornings and video games.
But for many elementary and middle school students at Omaha’s Sherman, Lothrop, and Lewis and Clark schools, it meant something else entirely: a month of learning, designing, crafting, mathing, reading, gardening, programming, dancing, and exploring.
In early July, dozens of students, their families, and teachers assembled at Sherman and Lewis and Clark for a showcase of the learning opportunities that Civic Nebraska had helped coordinate throughout June. Children led their caregivers through throngs of poster-filled tables (and crowds) until they arrived at those highlighting their own labors of love, play, and discovery.
Some of those tables detailed field trips to the Henry Doorly Zoo, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Children’s Museum, and Schramm Park. Others displayed jewel-encrusted artwork, tubular rollercoasters, or robot obstacle courses. Still others summarized lessons on the history of communication technology or the journeys through long division and improper fractions.
“When we have a showcase, it solidifies that we do prioritize having a partnership with families, with parents,” said Civic Nebraska’s Ayanna Almaguer, site director at the Sherman Elementary Community Learning Center. “It’s showing off the skills that students are learning or refining during the summertime. But it can be fun, too. This is just a great way for them to display what they’ve learned.”
Ashley Grady, a second-grade teacher at Sherman, who spent her June working with first graders, said her students especially took to growing plants when they weren’t attending to the robotic dogs that adorned multiple tables.
“I really liked how engaged the kids were and how immersive this was,” Grady said. “They really enjoyed exploring all this material, and then being able to take it home and show their parents. That was a big component.”
Almaguer cited the value of hidden skills that students pick up while becoming engrossed in an activity. A fishing trip to Lake Cunningham was a particular hit with the kids, she said. But the acts of learning to bait a hook and thread fishing line through a pole were simultaneously lessons in patience and attention to detail.
And if the number of farewell cards and hugs received were any indication, the bonds formed during these summer programs are already etching themselves into childhood memories.
“I just love the fact that the kids are excited to come to summer school,” Almaguer said. “A lot of them have been saying, ‘I’m going to miss you.’”
– by Scott Schrage, Civic Nebraska
