SANTA MARIA, CA – When it comes to summer school, getting
students to attend can be a daunting task. They’ve studied all school
year long, and now they just want a break, a chance to sleep in and turn
their minds off for a while. And that’s just the average student.
When it comes to children of migrant workers, the task
to accelerate them academically can at times seem almost
insurmountable. “That population, because of the farm workers and
the labor workers, they kind of come and go,” said Caleb Gonzalez, a
Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) for Santa Maria-Bonita School
District in California. In addition to spotty attendance records, migrant
students often have language and socioeconomic barriers to contend
with, making school a constant difficulty.
The Santa Maria-Bonita School District, with a population of migrant
students hovering around 75 percent, took steps to combat the summer
school blahs for those students by piloting Pitsco Elementary and Secondary
STEM Units in 2016. Gonzalez, who coordinates the migrant program for the
district, was familiar with Pitsco curriculum from when his wife was part of a
Pitsco lab at Standard Middle School in Bakersfield, California, and wanted to
try something different, something that would engage the students.
“We were using the same curriculum over and over again,” he explained.
“The kids have been there; they’ve done that. So, I wanted to bring some of
the fun activities that I remembered from Bakersfield with the Pitsco lab.”
The summer school program, which has expanded from one to
four sites, serves 3,300 students from Pre-K through eighth grade. At
each grade level, students are divided into three groups – Intensive,
Strategic, or Benchmark – depending on their intervention needs.
Wanting to start small, Gonzalez decided to use the Pitsco STEM Units
for Benchmark students, those who needed little or no intervention. So
instead of their regular curriculum, Benchmark students in Grades K-4
engaged in hands-on activities involving topics such as Exploring Flight,
Exploring Structures for Animals, Exploring Structures in Literature, Bridge
Structures, and Air Engineering Challenge, while Grades 5-6 explored
the Bridges and the Model Airplane STEM Units and Grades 7-8 did Air
Rockets and the Unconventional Flight STEM Units.
HANDS-ON ENGAGEMENT BOOSTS ATTENDANCE
Pitsco STEM Units – whole-class, cross-curricular activities designed
to get students using problem-solving skills to explore a variety of topics
– have made quite an impression on the students and teachers of the
summer school program. Maintaining enrollment during summer school
is a common challenge, and it is not unusual for classes to begin with high
enrollment only to see attendance quickly dwindle. But the collaborative
engagement and the daily wow factor of the Pitsco activities kept student
attendance high from start to finish in Santa Maria-Bonita.
“The kids being able to explore, to manipulate, to move around, to
get together in small groups or partners, or even whole class, and work
on these experiments and these activities, that just really captured their
attention and made the attendance go up,” said Gonzalez.
Focusing on a STEM-based enrichment program that fosters development
of academic language rather than a traditional remedial intervention
experience appears to have significantly boosted students’ skills and
confidence in a way that typically occurs only in more affluent communities.
“I just love Pitsco!” said Mario DiCarlo, who taught second and third
graders in the summer program. “Pitsco is the greatest thing!” DiCarlo, who
teaches sixth grade at Taylor Elementary, has helped with the summer
school program for 16 years. “I’ve seen a lot of curriculum,” he said. “And I
have to admit, a lot of it is boring. They’re all worksheets or workbooks.”
The STEM Units, though, were anything but boring. “They have
everything,” said DiCarlo. “They have the materials, the kits. The first day we
did a structure activity, and the kids were all engaged. They were excited!”
One student in particular exclaimed to his mother, “Mom, look what I
built! I did this, and I made it this tall! My structure’s a pyramid. I learned
about pyramids – I wrote it down. I cannot wait to come back to school
tomorrow!” “I’ve never heard that before,” said DiCarlo. “Ever.”
ENJOYABLE AND ACADEMICALLY RICH, ESL FRIENDLY
The STEM Units are all encompassing, he explained. “It wasn’t
just a workbook or worksheet, but it also wasn’t just hands-on, make
something and forget it. You had to document why. You had to use the
scientific method to investigate what you learned and what you made
and how you can make it better. All those components made it a richer
lesson than just building something or doing a craft.”
What’s more, the hands-on component of the units led to deeper
language arts learning for ESL students because the actions corresponded
with what they were reading. “Usually I give them a workbook and they
have to struggle through it,” said DiCarlo. “But making something hands
on, it made more sense. They could piece it together a lot better. They
not only read about it; they made it. They would say, ‘Can I see what it
said again?’ and then go back to their instructions. The building part
helps them understand the curriculum, and they’re reading more.”
UNLIMITED POTENTIAL
With one successful summer of Pitsco STEM Units under their belt,
both Gonzalez and DiCarlo said they’re eager to expand the program
beyond just the Benchmark groups. “I think that the program was
really successful,” said Gonzalez. “I look forward to using it again and
hopefully expanding it. Toward the end of the year last year, we were
talking about not only offering it for the Benchmark classes but maybe
even for the Strategic classes next summer (2017).”
Kenji Matsuoka has already begun his own expansion of concepts
from the Pitsco STEM Units. A third- and fourth-grade teacher at Alvin
Elementary, Matsuoka taught third graders about bridges during the
summer STEM program using the Bridge Structures Elementary STEM
Unit. “I loved that,” he said. “What a great program!”
Matsuoka is one of those teachers who takes everything to the next
level. “I like to go very deep into a subject,” he explained. “And STEM is
something I’ve always wanted to teach. So when I heard that the migrant
program was going to be using that for Benchmark students, I jumped at it
right away. I love the whole Pitsco program. I think it’s very well laid out.”
He enjoyed teaching STEM so much that he has expanded upon the
original concepts in the Pitsco STEM Units for a before-school class he created
for his third graders at Alvin Elementary. “In the summer, I’m following the
Pitsco program as it’s laid out. In my morning program, I go deeper. But I
based of lot of it on the way Pitsco has its STEM laid out for the third grade.”
He envisions expanding his morning program into fourth grade
next year. “I always tell the other teachers, ‘You have to enjoy it as
much as the students enjoy it. Just make it fun.’”
With the help of the Pitsco STEM Units, the Santa Maria-Bonita
School District seems to have cleared the attendance and engagement
hurdles for migrant students and made summer school a desired
destination rather than a dreaded task.