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| Charmaine Turner |
MGP’s professional development helps teachers grow, and thisimpacts hundreds of students beyond MGP. Charmaine Turner called MGP’s 2011 language variation workshop “an eye-opening” revelation. “Those five days were the best professional development I ever had in 10 years of teaching. It was awesome.”
Fresh from the workshop, Turner “applied everything immediately. I was on fire.” She taught her students at MGP’s City Springs/Collington Square/Garrison Forest summer program to “code switch” – that is, to swap one variety of English for another. Middle school slang, a variation on standard English, is a “code” understandable only to members of a group. It isn’t wrong, says Turner, “but you have to know when to speak it and when to switch to ‘school English.’”
Turner’s students listed common terms in their everyday vernacular and defined each one in “school English.” Turner also had her kids identify vernacular in TV shows. “As teachers, we want kids to learn, but unless I connect it to something they already know, they could care less.”
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Brian Higginson
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Boys’ Latin teacher Brian Higginson also praised the MGP workshop. “I’m English,” he explains, “and believed Americans don’t speak properly. This professional development completely wiped out my snobbery. It’s given me a whole new vocabulary with which to talk about language.”
His Garrison Middle School/Boys Latin summer students found a code-switch approach “liberating because there was no judgment about how they speak.” Higginson and Turner both say their students are adept “translators.” Once kids realize their vernacular isn’t “wrong,” but simply a variation, they’re easily in tune with knowing when to switch it off and on.
Middle Grades Partnership student Sabriaya used to get picked on for being a good student at Collington Square School of the Arts. “I have always been a geek,” she jokes, but not fitting in was hurting her self-esteem. So, when she was invited to participate in the Middle Grades Partnership program, she welcomed the opportunity to learn in a new environment.
After three years in the Garrison Forest/Collington/City Springs program, she has developed as an individual, stepped out of her comfort zone, increased her confidence and strengthened her social skills. “I learned how to step up,” she explains, and she does not let people pick on her any more.
During the program, she also worked to improve her reading scores and to select a career path. “We had a lot of career-searching opportunities and this inspired me to want to become a senator,” she explains. But first, she says she’d like to start her career as a family court lawyer.
Sabriaya, who will be a freshman at the Institute of Notre Dame in the fall, credits Middle Grades Partnership for helping her to evolve: “I believe everything comes into your life for a reason—whether it is to strengthen, open your eyes or let you shine. I am happy that Middle Grades Partnership was one of the things that came into my life.”
While Middle Grades Partnership student Kym was always a good math student, the Winston Middle School 8th grader says he needed help with reading and wanted to stay busier during the summer. “It was boring; there were summers where I just played basketball. I did not do anything educationally wise (during the summer) until Middle Grades Partnership.”
For the past three years, he has participated in the Winston Middle School/Park School summer and school-year program. He has been exposed to more reading and math, both in and out of the classroom. Field trips to the Smithsonian and other outside venues have sparked his love of science, and, this fall, he plans to study at Polytechnic High School and to become an aerospace engineer. His friends assume that he’ll play a professional sport, such as basketball or football. He counters: “What if I don’t get to play sports because of an injury? I got a backup plan.”
In addition to gaining skills by participating in the program, Middle Grades Partnership student says he also sees himself maturing and is no longer bored. “(Middle Grades Partnership) can help you stay off the street. You can learn new things in a great environment, and it can keep you active during the summer and your whole middle school career.”
Growing Girls and Gardens Program
The girls in the Roland Park Country-Garrison Middle school Growing Girls and Gardens Program were busy last winter making and selling herb-based products at a local farmers' market.
Growing seedlings, they thought of possibilities for their garden. They want to leave behind a memento of their time with MGP/GGG and are planning and designing a park bench for the garden.
On a recent club day, the girls used herbs to give themselves facials. These girls have truly learned to respect and enjoy their garden.
Girls' Mentoring Program
A wildly successful highlight of the Middle Grades Partnership program at Garrison Forest School is the pairing of high school student mentors with MGP girls from City Springs School and Collington Square School.
Each Garrison Forest School student mentor is assigned about eight MGP girls and meets with them as a group each day of the summer program for discussion, activities, and information sharing.
Mentor groups have lunch together and mentors also help teachers in the classrooms. Both groups of students – mentors and MGP girls – highly value the relationship.
MGP students gain a caring, motivating role model and approachable helper; student mentors gain leadership, teaching, and group skills. Strong bonds are forged and are renewed at Saturday activities throughout the year.
The mentor program is one way in which Garrison Forest School gains as much as it gives through MGP.
In the words of one mentor: “Each and every girl’s unique story taught me something about her as well as something about myself. MGP has changed my life forever, and I am so fortunate for the experience that it has given me.”
Board Game Designing
The students in the Friends School/ConneXions Community Leadership Academy MGP program were asked to imagine having a great idea for a new board game that families would love to play.
They had to believe that this new game would be better than beloved games like Candy Land, Clue, Life, Apples to Apples, or Sorry.
They created a board game that had all the important components of the well-known board games. The students explored the board game by reading the directions and playing each game.
They analyzed the components of the board games, evaluated the games and identified the good, bad and confusing. Finally, students created their own board game and followed up by writing a letter to a fictitious board game company.