Inchelium Schools and Mary Walker Schools Summer Programs

In 2000, ESD 101 and the Tri-County Consortium of Inchelium, Nine Miles Falls, Northport, Mary Walker, and Newport School Districts received a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant to provide expanded-learning opportunities in a safe, drug-free, and supervised environment for children. Grant program activities include summer school programs.

Two school district's programs—Inchelium's Rez Stop and Mary Walker School District—are profiled here. Both were highly recommended by the ESD 101 21st CCLC coordinators and evaluators.

Author Jennifer Railsback had the opportunity to visit both programs in July. The following profiles are based on these visits and data from the 21st CCLC evaluations (Phillips, 2001).

Program

Inchelium Rez Stop
21st Century Community Learning Center
Inchelium School
P.O. Box 285
Inchelium, WA 99138-0285

Contact

Carmen Peone, Rez Stop Director
Phone: 509/722-6181

Rez Stop at a glance:

• Grades 5-9
• Rural
• Culturally congruent activities for Native American students
• Activity-based
• Parent/community involvement (job shadowing, family events)

Background

Inchelium is located on the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation about 40 miles north of Spokane, and 40 miles east of Grand Coulee Dam on Lake Roosevelt. The reservation covers more than 2,000 square miles, one of the largest reservations in Washington. The area is prime timber country, and inhabited by abundant wildlife such as elk, deer, and grouse.

The community strives to give their children the best possible opportunities for educational and spiritual growth. One major accomplishment toward these goals has been the Rez Stop 21st CCLC Program. Rez Stop is short for Raising our Educational Zone, Standing Tall On Pride, which means:

• Raising our academic and social standards to higher levels.
• Providing educational support through tutoring and enrichment activities that focus on educational games and hands-on projects.
• Students in the Zone have respect for one another and positive attitudes. Hornet bucks are given to students who work hard, offer assistance to others, work well as a team, or exhibit other positive social behaviors. An auction is held at the end of the year for children to redeem their Hornet bucks.
• Students learn that they are in control of making positive choices and are guided in standing up against bullying, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and other unsafe behaviors.
• Standing Tall on culture means respecting all cultures and learning about their own Native culture.
• Moving On to bigger and better accomplishments with the support and guidance of community members, parents, staff, and an advisory board.
• Rez Stop teaches the students pride in self, community, and country.

Rez Stop offers a summer program for students in grades 5-9. Ninety-one percent of the students who attend are Native American, and most students are in grades six and seven. The summer program provides students who are at an age where they are most susceptible to negative social influences with safe, drug-free, enriching activities. Rez Stop offers a nurturing, supportive, small-group environment with personal attention from staff members. "We focus on the whole person," comments one staff person, Kathy Jimenez, "We let each child know they are special."

Programming

Each week of the 20-day summer program has a theme that incorporates all Rez Stop principles and goals. During culture week children work on projects related to their culture, such as beadwork or making breastplates and cradleboards. The children go on field trips to area museums. During sports week, the children participate in water play, a basketball tournament, canoeing, kickball, croquet, and board games. Enrichment week activities this year included a luau, survival training, and water safety. Every Thursday is field trip day. Children have been canoeing and swimming, and some went on a campout.

During activities week children paint T-shirts, and create puzzle sugar cookies. At the end of the day, before lunch, the teachers judged each cookie in the categories of "best teamwork," "most creative," "most detailed," and a special category for a cookie that depicted the Titanic as "the most sinkable."

The creative energy the staff put into designing, planning, and coordinating these activities is quite evident. Peone emphasizes that the children also take part in the planning, that this is their program, and their input is valued. "We listen to what the kids like and don't like in group and one-on-one sessions."

Unlike some other summer programs that focus on specific academic goals, the 21st CCLC Grant programs are purposefully oriented toward providing enriching and challenging activities, hands-on thematic learning, and having children enjoy learning with constructive use of their time outside a traditional school setting. "Our summer program is about enrichment, not about forcing kids to do their homework," says Peone. The summer programs are not viewed as isolated events but as just one part of a whole school-year program for the students. The activities and goals for the summer are aligned with goals for the entire year.

One challenge in coordinating this summer program, admit staff members, is not knowing how many students will attend from day to day. Some days there might be 10 students, other days there might be 30. But staff members are easygoing about the schedule. "We just learn to be flexible with our plans," says Jimenez. Another challenge is the variety of age differences in the program. Sometimes older kids don't want to hang out with the younger ones, commented one staff member. But older children are encouraged to come, especially when they can participate in activities they can tailor to their interests and skill level. Also, the older children enjoy mentoring the younger ones. "We try," says Peone, "to keep them busy with activities but also try to recognize the need for down-time, especially for the older students who need to just sit and visit with their friends for awhile and not have to think after a hard day at school."

The staff members believe one important goal—teaching children positive behaviors—has been very successful. Many of these children are from "at-risk" families where they are used to having unstructured time on their hands. Children learn the basic rules of common courtesy, and learn to respect each other's opinions. "We have complete turnarounds in social behavior," says Peone. "Positive adult interaction is a big reason these kids choose to come to this program rather than other programs," says Jimenez. "They feel safe and respected here."

Parent and community involvement is another reason this program is so successful. Chaperones for field trips are different each time and there are plenty of them. For job shadowing week, community members and parents volunteered to have children visit their workplaces at the community clinic, tribal health office, Boise Cascade lumber mill, the local restaurant, and store. One parent told Peone during lunch that the job shadowing was a wonderful opportunity for these children to experience the world of work. Additionally, the program has wonderful collaboration from the many tribal and local organizations such as the Tribal Health office, Fish and Wildlife, the 4-H club, and the forestry departments. Says Peone, "Inchelium is one big family who care about and look after one another's kids."

See the evaluation of the Inchelium program at the end of this page.

Program

Mary Walker School District Summer Program
500 N. 4th St.
Springdale, WA 99173

Contact

Wendi Lind
21st Century Community Learning Center Program Director
Phone: 509/258-7357

Mary Walker at a glance:

• Grades 1-8
• Rural
• Enrichment-focused learning activities emphasizing hands-on learning and cultural understanding

Background

Springdale, Washington, is a rural community of about 250 families located an hour's drive northwest of Spokane. The road to Springdale winds through forested and farming country. The town's main street is lined with a few boarded-up buildings, one or two taverns, and a grocery store.

With fewer amenities than larger towns, Springdale also has few extracurricular summer activities for children, and most families can't afford to send their children to expensive programs out of town. As a result, Springdale school, community members, and families have sought resources to create supervised, enriching, educational—and yes, fun—activities for their children after school and during the summer. Says coordinator Wendi Lind, "This has been a wonderful benefit for the entire community. We provide the only structured activities for kids—many of whom would otherwise be watching television or playing video games."

Programming

Now in its third year of operation, the summer program runs from June 10 through July 12, from 9:00 to 12:30. About 65 children in grades 1-8 attend each summer. Grades K-4 and 5-8 are grouped separately for sports activities and academic lessons, but come together for other events.

Lind works with a staff of six to coordinate cultural and sports activities. The staff includes two instructional aides; a teacher; the school's coach, who organizes the sports activities; bus driver; and high school volunteers. This past year, the children took a breathtaking "around the world in 20 days" tour of different countries and states. During their visits, they had a lesson in the history and culture of the region, a cultural feast, and worked on projects related to the culture. On the day I visited, the class was visiting New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The children's excitement and interest in the theme was apparent. When I walked into the classroom, older children were providing the finishing touches to the "floats" that they would exhibit in the parade.

Later in the morning, all the children gather for a review of the lessons they have learned. First, attendance is taken (about 35 children were counted). The teacher, Ms. Shelton, then asked the students what facts about Mardi Gras they remembered from the day before. Most of the kids remembered that Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday, and that the official colors had special meanings (purple is justice, gold is power, green is faith).

After the review, the teachers passed out the food for the feast. Ms. Shelton reminds the children to start eating only after everyone has been served. She also asks the children to taste each item before they decide they didn't like it and not to denigrate the food—"Remember, no icks," she says. Many of the children looked dubiously at the food, especially at the shrimp jambalaya, but almost everyone cleaned their plates. Two children who had a special frosting color on top of their "King Cakes" were to be crowned Kings of the Mardi Gras (according to tradition) and lead the Mardi Gras parade.

After the feast the children assembled for the parade, with their decorated masks and floats. The children paraded into the gym past the judges, who judged for most creative mask and float, and best theme. The children all received small Mardi Gras gifts wrapped in colorful tissue paper.

The focus on cultural enrichment and project-based learning involves the children in a way that a stricter academic focus did not the previous year. Even so, this does not mean that summer activities are just "fun and games." Two of the most important goals for the program are to increase constructive use of time and to increase youth commitment to learning. The staff members are encouraged by the students' enthusiasm for the learning activities.

Evaluation of Mary Walker and Inchelium

Programs that receive a 21st CCLC grant are required to have an evaluation done of the whole program. Feedback data from students in both Inchelium and Mary Walker show a high degree of satisfaction. In the draft of the 2000-2001 report (Phillips, 2001), the top three benefits of the summer program as reported by students were following the rules better, working better in groups, and getting better grades. This emphasis on working in groups was evident to me when I observed the students collaborating on projects. At Inchelium, all the students said that the summer program would help them follow rules better. As Inchelium staff have said, children knowing how and why to follow rules is a crucial step to their success in school and in life. "Doing better in school" and "getting better grades" received higher than 68 percent at Springdale, and higher than 75 percent at Inchelium.

The draft of the evaluation report for both sites indicated that an important part of the summer program was children connecting with other children and adults. "It was interesting to note that the students found connecting with adults almost as enjoyable as being with their friends. This may indicate that the program had indeed hired the right people to run the summer program" (Phillips, 2001, p. 9).

Because the program is an entire school year program with homework center, supervised after-school activities, goal setting, and 4-H enrichment classes, much of the evaluation focused on how the program benefited students throughout the year, rather than just the summer. The data for both Inchelium and Mary Walker indicate that students who attended the programs for more than 30 days during the year showed a greater progress in academic and school performance measures compared to students who attended fewer than 30 days. Overall GPA and mathematics and English grades improved steadily throughout the year and were higher for students who attended more than 30 days.

The report indicates that regular attendance in these programs is associated with an increased likelihood of success in school. "Nationally, at-risk middle school students show a trend toward lower test scores on almost all measures from Fall to Spring; regular attendance in the Rez Stop programs appears to decrease the impact of this trend" (Phillips, 2001, p. 15).

The most important result, according to the evaluation report, was that "Rez Stop and Mary Walker programs have helped disengaged students find a means of participating in the school culture, as measured by teacher rating scales, with the results that classroom participation increased along with regular program attendance" (Phillips, 2001, p. 15).