Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007
by Maya T. Prabhu | Staff Writer
About 85 William Wirt Middle School students sat in the cafeteria on their last day of the Free Minds Collective summer program Friday, buzzing with anticipation. They had less than an hour before their closing showcase.
‘‘I know a lot of you are asking if you can get some more time to practice before the showcase,” said Victorious Hall, one of the program’s coordinators. ‘‘Let me just tell you, you’re going to be great. Don’t worry.”
The showcase capped off a four-week summer program designed to give William Wirt students an opportunity to participate in creative and experimental learning. The program — developed by the middle school, the Engaged University at the University of Maryland and the Maryland Multicultural Youth Centers — offered enrichment workshops and classes such as bike repair and gardening.
Kristen Holbrook, 13, who is going into eighth grade, took classes in photography, bike repair, cooking, gardening and break dancing.
‘‘[The teachers] said [the program] was going to be lots of fun and I wanted to try something new and meet new people,” she said.
Holbrook said she had never tried break dancing before.
‘‘I’m used to hip hop [dancing] so this was fun and kind of hard,” she said.
Sonia Keiner Flynn, community education coordinator with the Engaged University, said this was the first year the program was held at William Wirt.
Some participants were recommended by teachers and administration, some were selected from honors classes and others simply applied on their own. Rising seventh-graders from some feeder elementary schools, like Bladensburg and Port Towns, also were recruited, said Hall, an eighth-grade U.S. history teacher.
‘‘The name of the program is Free Minds Collective, so we hope to give students a different outlook on education that’s both fun and challenging,” he said. ‘‘It’s something different from the normal curriculum ... and gives them the want and need to learn.”
Each day of the program was split in half, with a ‘‘Joy of Learning” component in the morning and ‘‘creativity” component in the afternoon.
Students were to choose four of the eight morning classes offered, which included teachings in psychology, Latin American and African history, humanities and creative writing through hip hop.
Students then chose one of eight afternoon workshops, which featured instruction in mural painting, break dancing, spoken word, photography, bicycle repair, gardening, cooking and drumming.
Each Wednesday, students went on all-day field trips, or took part in outdoor adventure education, Flynn said. They went to the Jug Bay Natural Area of Patuxent River Park, Harper’s Ferry, Sandy Point State Park and Sugarloaf Mountain.
Hall said he could already see a difference in the program’s participants.
‘‘The children have grown dramatically from the program. One student told me [during the field trip to Sugarloaf Mountain] that she was smelling the air and she said to me, ‘The air doesn’t smell like this in Riverdale,’” Hall said.
E-mail Maya T. Prabhu at mprabhu@gazette.net.
