We want to congratulate our phenomenal students for completing virtual summer school! Thank you to our Summer School Partners, City Forward Collective & the National Summer School Initiative for funding our summer program. Our five-week Summer program provided four hours of daily instruction to our 3rd-6th grade scholars. Virtual summer school continued our students’ academic growth and helped them reach their long-term goals!
The summer school curriculum really dove into problem solving skills and discourse around novel studies. Our third and fourth grade students read historical fiction, such as, “One Crazy Summer” by Rita Williams-Garcia. While our fifth and sixth graders read, “The Night Diary” by Vera Hiranandani. Each MAS scholar spent 25 hours in virtual discourse about applying literary themes like grief, social injustice and cultural differences to better understand the challenging times of 2020.
Our MAS teachers wish they had more time to spend with their students. “We have had many in-depth and insightful conversations. I wish I had more time to keep these conversations going!”, says Megan Peterson, 6th Grade ELA Teacher. Parents have also been vocal about their student’s great experience in virtual summer school. Nadia Northern mother of Niah and Zamar Northern says, “I appreciate my children having the opportunity to learn during these uncertain times. I admire their teachers for sacrificing part of their summer to teach my children! Overall it has been a great experience…I think the best part is that my children are eager to get up and sign on!”.
One of our 6th graders said, “The main idea is to not judge a book by its cover, in this case, people. You learn stuff every day and just because a certain race or gender does something, doesn’t mean that should affect the whole race or gender”. Along with literary studies, some of our scholars were able to learn more about STEM. Our 4th graders truly rocked the math programming and logged 101 minutes a week on Dream Box Math Supplemental Learning!
It has been a great summer, full of wonderful moments. We would like to thank all of our teachers and staff for supporting the MAS mission virtually. Once again, we want to give a special shout-out to our MAS scholars for doing a great job throughout these past five weeks.