Teaching Away The Summer; 4-H Agriscience in the City’s 5th Quarter at Rothenberg
Most kids finish school in May and rejoice at the prospect of no school for 3 months. Some students, however, attend a 5th quarter of school in the month of June either because they had a lack-luster performance during the year or they just need a safe place to be for the summer. These students have all the classes they would have during school, but in classes with other kids from their grade that need extra help.
The day begins at 7:15 with breakfast, and then the morning consisted of math and language arts, testing both reading and computational skills. Then came lunch that led to the afternoon Imani program. That is where OSU extension 4-H Agriscience in the City comes into play. The afternoon consisted of 5 40 minute periods where students would go through different classes. There was gym, music, art, world languages, culture club, gardening and, of course, science. At 3:40, the students came back together for dinner and then went home.
4-H Agriscience in the City or just 4-H aims at developing career oriented skills in students in poverty stricken urban areas. Its founder and main developer, Tony Staubach, works at Rothenberg during the year teaching science as part of an external partner with the school. For this summer program he is joined by two summer student assistants, Sammie Chamberland and Max Hartley.
The Imani program’s theme was the world and each age group was a different continent. 4-H’s theme for their science program was water, especially water conservation. They tailored each lesson to the continent that the students were assigned to. Each lesson began with an introductory video to a certain water subject, such as the struggle for clean water, water wildlife or water conservation. From there, the main teacher, which started out with Tony then slowly phased to the summer assistants, would probe the class with questions. Whether or not they remembered everything from the video, as long they walked away knowing just a little bit more about water, then the videos had been a success.
For the last 25-30 minutes of the period, 4-H’s goal was to keep the students interested, and what better way to do that in science than with cool experiments and activities. Some of these included something as simple as mixing Kool-Aid and discussing how dissolving works, to making lava lamps out of water, oil and an Alka-Seltzer tablet. That’s not all the students accomplished with 4-H. Another goal of this month was to have artifacts to showcase afterwards. In science, the students made multiple artifacts, which included a fishy landscape, water baskets made out of weaved magazine clippings, desalination kits and water filters. The fishy landscape was created by taking the student’s drawings of fish and underwater plant life and pasting it on a blue backdrop. The other crafts had real results, the water filter actually made dirty water clearer and the desalination kits, when put into sunlight could change salt water into a little bit of fresh water. These activities captured students’ attention and hopefully sparked an interest in learning more about water, science and 4-H.
While going to school for an extra month may sound boring and unfortunate, and for some kids it was even mandatory, the 5th quarter program at Rothenberg gave many students a brighter future. Learning about everything from science to language arts and everything in between can only help these students in the long run.