A team of educators, volunteers and administrators involved with the Gilroy Unified School District’s free educational summer camp want to prove that children born from low-income households and those already struggling in school are not destined for failure.
Between June 23 and Aug. 1, roughly 700 second through eighth-graders read, wrote and completed hands-on projects on a daily basis through the Super Power Summer Camp. Though the program is open to anyone, the experience can propel students who may have been falling behind in the classroom forward, according to GUSD Superintendent Debbie Flores.
“It’s been well documented and researched that students lose learning during the summer,” Flores said at a July 30 open house held at Rod Kelley Elementary School. “We’ve been able to demonstrate that the students who participate don’t have a summer learning gap and they come back and their teachers report back to us they are better prepared than any students in the class.”
At the event, kids with ages in the single digits decorated paper masks, ate tacos alongside family members and showed off the projects they’ve finished over the past six weeks. Children flocked to a table topped with books—on topics including monster trucks, dinosaurs and rocks—by the Gilroy Public Library’s supervising children’s librarian, Sharon Kelly. It’s because they recognize her.
As part of the program, students took field trips to the library throughout July. For some children, their first visit to the library was during the camp and Kelly sees that as a success.
“We’re trying to inspire a love of reading year-round-not just during the school year,” she said, adding students took home their very own paperback book to keep during the program. “Connecting with children, their families and teachers is a great way to spend your day. The earlier kids start reading the better.”
The focus of this year’s program revolved around studying different countries, from China to Russia, and students delved into sciences, technological achievements and cultures.
“It’s all about literacy, writing and keeping their minds in learning mode over the summer,” Flores said. “A lot of the students in this program are economically disadvantaged. Some parents may take their kids to museums, the aquarium and wherever over the summer but a lot of these kids don’t get that opportunity. In this program they do.”
Some program participants built bottle rockets propelled solely by water and showed them off July 30 to their parents and friends.
“The rockets went so high they flew over the buildings,” Flores said, laughing. “It was pretty amazing. It’s physics and it’s fun.”
For the past five years, the program has been largely supported by a five-year grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Though the grant has expired, Flores said the district plans on keeping the program both during the summer, and during the school year with its in kind after-school program called Power School.
“If you ask kids each year who have been through the summer program multiple times, they’ll say it got better and better each year,” said Mandy Reedy, Power School and Super Power School program administrator. “The Packard Foundation invests for five years and focuses on building sustainability and quality so that when they leave, we’re up and running.”
Between the after-school program and the summer program, students within GUSD have shown a great deal of growth, according to Flores.
“Typically, kids coming from disadvantaged homes or those who are below grade-level stay below grade-level. This program has shown we can turn that around,” she said.
The summer program runs between 8 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. from July 23 to Aug. 1 and the after-school program operates between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. during the school year.
