Rising fourth-graders Kylan Terry and Owen Autry are all smiles as the latter finishes up pasting stickers to the arm of his partner, and the duo check out their computer screen to watch what happens.
“Cool!” The boys light up watching Kylan’s heart’s electrical activity make line tracings on the screen.
Around them other campers – called “scholars” in this particular program – are following suit, some jumping or jogging in place to watch how physical activity affects the line tracings in their EKG lab.
The boys point to different parts of the lines on the screen, showing the pattern that reflects when blood comes back into the heart, the heart pumps and then relaxes – repeat. They fire off a number of terms associated with what they’re learning: P waves, SA nodes and the QRS complex.
Needless to say the scholars are pretty smart – and they got a lot out of the weeklong cardiovascular system course through the Dorchester Scholars Program.
The boys said they loved their course and gushed over the projects they got to do earlier in the week – like dissecting a sheep’s heart.
“I think it’s probably one of my favorite courses I’ve done so far,” Owen said.
Hanna Beckman, who teaches sports medicine and biomed at Ashley Ridge High led the cardiovascular group – called “This is My Heartbeat Song.” Beckman said they also did a Play-Doh model of the heart and a heart pump lab where they used equipment to pump water from one flask to another.
“They’ve been awesome,” she said. “Lots of activities, they’re having a great time.”
These are labs, she said, that students do at the high school level at Ashley Ridge.
In fact, all of the rising third- through seventh-grade scholars in the Dorchester Scholars Program are doing activities that are not only geared toward their interest, but on a higher level of thinking, which makes the summer program unique.
The program
Gem Thomerson, sixth-grade social studies teacher at Rollings Middle School of the Arts, operates the summer program. She said they are in their third summer running the Dorchester Scholars Program.
It is a two-week program and this year it was held at Gregg Middle.
Thomerson said she was asked by Superintendent Joe Pye to design the program; at the time Thomerson had just come back from Vanderbilt University where she worked for a talent development model. Thomerson said it is in Pye’s plan to grow the program every year for this specialized population – the profoundly and highly gifted GATE students in DD2.
The program serves the top 4 percent of rising third- and seventh-graders based on aptitude. Anita Collier, coordinator of DD2’s gifted and talented programs, uses a program called GIFT from the S.C. Department of Education, and she is constantly inputting testing data from state tests, the cognitive reasoning tests and GPAs to see if students qualify for DD2’s GATE program. However, the Dorchester Scholars Program looks specifically at the aptitude test.
There are about 95 students enrolled in the program per week. They receive 25 hours of course content and application per week during their time in the program.
The students in the summer program are led by high school instructors. Every January, Thomerson sends out a request for course proposals and she seeks out teachers who have an advanced degree in a content area outside of education. In the proposal, Thomerson asks prospective program instructors what unit of study they are passionate about, but don’t necessarily get to teach during the year or in the depth they want to.
“So they’re doing something…that they’re passionate about and have expertise in,” Thomerson said, adding, “and that’s what our scholars need; this specific population needs a person that knows their content in-depth, because they’re going to ping this person with questions.”
There are also two teaching assistants who are GATE elementary teachers to support the instructors and students.
Thomerson said these students want to go in-depth with their learning.
“That’s what challenges these students’ minds…they want the depth of thinking, they want the complexity of thinking and they want abstraction, and our instructors can do that,” she said.
All of the courses being offered in the program are different. This first was held July 17-21 and the second week is July 24-28. Some students sign up for one week, some sign up for both sessions. The program has both returning students and returning instructors, but there are new courses every single year.
The students, Thomerson said, “hit the ground running” with the courses on day one of the program and on the last day the students showcase everything they have learned to their families.
Thomerson said they want the students to know content in-depth and have the experience to be with similar-ability peers, and to know “it’s OK to not know, but to pursue knowledge.”
Collier said the research has shown that talent development programs like the Dorchester Scholars Program retain children, so that when they go through high school and they start getting into college, they may go into an engineering, mathematical or technology-driven type field of study, so the program is also giving the students exposure to an area they are interested in early on.
“At least you get to experience it and decide, ‘Yeah, this is exactly what I was thinking, this is right up my alley,’ or ‘You know what, there’s another area of interest that I really kind of want to try too,’” Collier said.
The courses
The courses promote a lot of STEM-related education.
Rising third- and fourth-graders are grouped together and the rising fifth- through seventh-graders are grouped together, so the program has a “higher and lower academy.” All the grade levels mingle during recess.
The courses are very hands-on with the students’ learning experience. In “CHEMAgIC” students spent a portion of their Thursday morning roasting marshmallows as a way of learning about chemical and physical reactions.
Rising third-grader Caleb Haugh said they had been learning about mass and matter. Caleb showed how when he roasted his marshmallow it got thinner and thinner and warmer – “and it didn’t catch on fire.”
Lindsey Jutzeler, who teaches college prep chemistry and AP chemistry at Ashley Ridge High, led the course, and said her students were doing really well with their experiments.
“They’ve come up with some pretty cool things this week,” she said.
One group of rising fifth- through seventh-graders learned about astronomy in the “Capturing the Night Sky” course.
Elizabeth Simpson, rising seventh-grader, said they have been learning about the stars and how they are able to watch them. She said they’ve talked a little about next month’s solar eclipse and how residents need to observe it wearing special glasses.
Elizabeth said she likes how the teachers interact with the students and how the students get to do a lot of activities. She said she did a coding course and an oceans course in the program last year.
“’Fun’ would be getting to compete with the other kids a little bit with how much we know,” she said, adding that she likes doing the group activities together so the students get to put their own ideas into what they are learning, and “getting to interact with a few different age groups, because when you’re in school you get one age group.”
Another group was doing a “Do You Speak Computer” course where they learned about coding. Thursday morning the students were making their own mad libs games on the computer.
Rising sixth-grader Nathanael Litton said he was creating his mad libs game with a “Friday the 13th” theme.
Nathanael said he loves coding.
“A, it’s the laziest job in the world, and it also it helps you with life skills in the future,” he said. “Some things can help you with spelling.”
