Our Programs
Summer Enrichment — Arts and Life Skills for Middle Schoolers
The Summer Enrichment Program is a University-Assisted Community Schools initiative.
In summer 2005 and summer 2006, the Engaged University partnered with two Prince George’s County schools and Maryland Multicultural Youth Center to offer a month-long afternoon Summer Enrichment Program at local middle schools and at the University of Maryland Center for Educational Partnership. The program dovetailed with the County’s mandatory morning academic program for low achieving students and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students. We engaged students’ minds, bodies and imaginations, stressing mutual respect across ethnic, racial, social, cultural, gender and economic differences.
Though a variety of stimulating activities, we strengthened participants’ academic, communication and social skills while teaching local youth how to live a healthier life and acquire a specific art or craft, such as photography, spoken word, gardening & cooking, mural-making, drumming, bicycle repair, and turn-tabling. We helped students develop the sound judgment, self-discipline and critical thinking they will need to excel in school and engage with their families and community. We teamed experienced artists and educators with University students to teach our classes and to advance middle school students’ work on the project of their choice. A weekly field trip complements the program.
Summer 07: The Free Minds Collective
In our third year, the summer ’07, we expanded and deepened our program. Collaborating with Principal Wendell Coleman, afterschool programs coordinator and history teacher, Brother Victorious, and ten teachers at William Wirt Middle School, along with staff from the Maryland Multicultural Youth Center, community artists, University of Maryland students and Parkdale HS students, the Engaged University helped to form ”The Free Minds Collective.“
The Free Minds Collective offered a comprehensive selection of morning and afternoon classes designed to expand the knowledge and experiences of 100 emerging student leaders attending William Wirt in the fall. The program included weekly excursions to area parks and recreation facilities. Small intensive morning academic classes (in play reading and writing, psychology, the history of the colonization of Africa and Latin America, music appreciation, Ancient civilizations and cultures, writing through hip hop) were followed by afternoon arts and culture workshops (in mural making, bicycle riding and repair, acting, photography, capoeria, breakdancing, gardening & nutritious eating, drumming, and spoken word performance poetry).
A weeklong pre-program training for all collaborators in democratic, multicultural learning and teaching practices preceded the program, and a weeklong evaluation and assessment workshop followed the program.