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Stemming summer learning loss
Stopping learning loss through
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
While many of their classmates spent their summers watching television and playing video games, 52 scholars at the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School at Tabernacle Baptist Church aimed at reading.
“It’s about stopping the loss of learning in the summer months,” said Lois Thornton, project director. “That’s the focus.”
Students in second through sixth grades, called scholars, spent six weeks in the program reading and then discussing, writing, performing skits and acting out what they’d read. They also learn and practice songs and chants of encouragement, self confidence and improvement and take field trips.
Thursday marked the finale event for this year’s school where parents, city and elected officials got to see some of what the school does in action.
Allan Irizarry-Graves, the site coordinator, said that besides reading, the program offers a civic-engagement piece.
This year’s civic engagement was about child poverty.
“We wrote letters to Congressman [Tim] Ryan and Sen. [Sherrod] Brown,” Irizarry-Graves said.
Scholars also learned about things they can do to make a difference in themselves, their families, their community, country and world.
The school is free to the children funded through donations from the church and its members and organizations, businesses and individuals in the community.
Bray’Den Little, 12, a seventh-grader in Chaney’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics program, enrolled in the program both years it was in the city. She likes reading books about people who are like her and said last year’s school helped her in school.
“I don’t like math, but I learned to find something that I do like in math and to work hard,” Bray’Den said.
Deven Thomas, 8, a third-grader from Uniontown, Ohio, is staying for the summer with his grandmother, Darlene Fason of Liberty. Fason learned about the program through a Vindicator article and rushed to register Deven by the deadline.
Deven said his favorite book read during the program was about Satchel Paige.
“He was a black baseball player,” Deven explained. “He reminded me of Martin” Luther King Jr.
Six interns led groups of students, based on grade levels, through the lessons. Each day, the time from 9 to 11:45 a.m. is set aside for reading, and nothing gets in the way, not even the project director.
“I went into a room one day to see how things were going, and they told me, ‘Not now,’” Thornton said.
She had to make an appointment outside those hours.
“Nothing, but nothing, distracts from reading time,” Thornton said.
Pastor Christopher McKee Jr. of Tabernacle said that when he learned about the program, he believed it was a good fit for the city and the church. Many church members are teachers or retired teachers, he said, and education is rooted in the congregation.
“It’s a deep part of what we do,” he said.
The Children’s Defense Fund was founded by Marian Wright Edelman, a civil-rights lawyer. Interns spend a week in Tennessee learning the curriculum and philosophy of the program.
Donielle Lisbon, a social work student at Slippery Rock University and Tabernacle member, spent her second year as an intern with the Freedom School.
She said she sees a change in the scholars from the beginning to the end of the school.
“The change varies for each student,” she said. “But I see an openness and a willingness to try.”
Lisbon likes being able to help students at a young age.
“I love, love, love outreach for kids,” she said.