IN JANUARY of 2021, Tennessee began providing funds for public school districts to give summer learning opportunities to rising first through eighth grade students. Westwood Middle School has taken full advantage of that funding, with a four day a week, four-week long summer camp. \u201cThere are about 30 students at the school regularly,\u201d said Principal Jim Stone, \u201cand there is a much smaller student-teacher ratio.\u201d Stone is in his first year as principal of Westwood Middle School, but he has had experience with school summer camps before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little more relaxed than a normal school day,\u201d Stone said. \u201cYou\u2019re working with a much smaller group, and so you tend to be able to focus on a lot more and work with each individual student a lot more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stone said the purpose of the camps was to encourage students who need assistance in primarily English and math, and work with those students to fill in some of the areas where they struggled throughout the year. Veteran math teacher Kim Woods said that the best part of the camp was the closer relationships that she has been able to form with the students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c<\/em>You can give them that more oneon- one time… you can get to know them better, and you have more fun with them,\u201d Woods said. \u201cIt\u2019s just more personal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The summer camp program is only in its second year, as the funding was enacted in response to learning loss during the pandemic. Stone said he hopes the funding will continue for a third year as there have already been clear benefits for those students who attend, both in behavior and academics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLast year we had some that had caused problems during the school year, but because they had had a couple of us as summer school teachers, there were no discipline problems at all,\u201d Woods said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Woods said she thought the change in behavior was because of the more relaxed atmosphere and the fostered relationships, and she expects that change in the children attending camp this year. The camps also provide an opportunity for the teachers to grow closer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think the kids really like it a lot, and I say that because some that didn\u2019t sign up originally, ended up coming to the camp,\u201d Stone said. \u201cWe had students showing up for summer camp that hadn\u2019t even really signed up for summer camp.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhile students are doing school work at the summer camp, the camps are not like school,\u201d Stone said, \u201cand the students may not have expected that.\u201d The teachers at Westwood have also been impressed by how well the summer camps work in preparing students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI talked with a lot of teachers at the beginning of this school year that said they were able to get more out of a student than they did the entire school year,\u201d Stone said. \u201cDuring the summer camp they got a student progressing even more than they had, an entire ten months during the school year. So I think we\u2019re going to see some of that this year with students as well.\u201d GN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" IN JANUARY of 2021, Tennessee began providing funds for public school districts to give summer learning opportunities to rising first through eighth grade students. Westwood Middle School has taken full advantage of that funding, with a four day a week, four-week long summer camp. \u201cThere are about 30 students at the school regularly,\u201d said Principal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":68,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n