Weekly Media Roundup: June 17, 2020

Boys & Girls Club Keeps its Members Active Through Summer, Independent Herald (Tennessee)

The Boys & Girls Club of the Cumberland Plateau in Oneida, Tennessee will host 72 students ages six to 18 for a ‘Summer Brain Gain’ program this summer. Students will work with college student mentors, engage in project-based learning, read new books each week, take part in hands-on literacy activities and more. The Club is implementing extensive safety measures due to the coronavirus pandemic, including social distancing in classrooms, regular temperature checks, and smaller class sizes. In the Summer Brain Gain Program, “Each module takes a project-based learning approach: Youth engage in a process of learning through discovery, creative expression, group work and a final project or production. As a result, kids develop higher-order thinking skills through the Summer Brain Gain modules while staying on track for the coming school year,” Chief Professional Officer Justin Sharpe told the Independent Herald.

SHINE After-School Program to Offer Virtual Summer Camps, Times Leader (Pennsylvania)

Students will write poetry, study Pennsylvania’s history, explore different fields of engineering, perform science experiments, learn about meteorology and outer space, do yoga and more at virtual summer camps hosted by the SHINE afterschool program in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The camps will run from June 22 through July 30 via Zoom, and SHINE will provide all necessary materials at curbside pickup sites. “Like the program itself during school, the camp experiences are free to SHINE students,” the Times Leader reported.

When Parents are Essential Workers, What About Their Other Critical Role? This is How Child Care Looks During a Pandemic, Winston-Salem Journal (North Carolina)

When schools transitioned to online learning in mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Expanded Learning Program at Imprints Cares stepped up to provide a safe, enriching environment to children of essential workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. At six locations, children from more than 120 families have worked with certified teachers and college students on homework and fun activities between 6:30 AM and 7:30 PM each weekday. A $100,000 grant from the COVID-19 Response Fund for Forsyth County made tuition assistance available for parents. My daughter “seems to love it, and I like it a lot,” parent Andy Williard told the Winston-Salem Journal. “It’s something for her to do and hang out with other kids all day, like if we had normal school open.”

Students Who Don’t Speak English as a First Language Are More at Risk for Summer Learning Loss. Madison Has a Solution to Help., WHNT-TV (Alabama)

This summer, elementary and middle school students in Madison, Alabama for whom English is a second language will participate in fun, engaging virtual camps. Sponsored in part by the Summer Adventures in Learning initiative, the camps are designed to develop students’ English skills while helping prevent summer learning loss. “Many of our students are brand new to the country, they just enrolled now [or] a few months ago and without having any access to English at home or academic language at home they are losing their language academic skills twice as fast as their peers. This is critical,” Madison City Schools Federal Programs Coordinator Natalia Dooley told WHNT-TV.