Students in the Cherokee County Schools will have the opportunity to accelerate and improve over this summer with academies at various campuses.
The academies will be similar to summer schools, except they will be open to all students at the school who want to get ahead. Superintendent Jeana Conley said she hoped the academies would help to change the largely punitive reputation of summer school.
However, some students will still be required to attend in order to receive remediation and retake state tests.
Lots of times, summer school is considered extremely punitive and only for those who don’t get to go on summer vacation,” Conley said.
Conley also said the struggles of students during virtual learning through the COVID-19 pandemic had forced the district to find more creative ways to help students.
“It’s been a silver lining of COVID that we’ve looked at learning differently,” Conley said. “We’ve always traditionally thought in terms of finite grade ‘if you’re not ready in first grade, you don’t get to move on to second grade,’ and not look at those individual skills.
“Lots of times a student will be flourishing in math, but not flourishing in reading, and they should be in third grade in their math, but not quite there in their reading, so busting this up into pockets of learning that you master in grades is forcing us to look at learning differently, and that’s just really exciting.”
Murphy Elementary School Principal Dane Rickett and Andrews High School Principal Lance Bristol both gave presentations on the plans for summer academies at their schools.
Rickett said although the program would include a substantial amount of instruction, it would be set up as a summer camp to keep the participants interested. The first half of the camp will be ocean themed, and will culminate in a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, Tenn., while the second half will be sports themed and end in a field trip to see the Atlanta Braves play.
“It will be creative learning,” Rickett said. “Everybody will be pushed ahead. Some of the students who are there for remediation will be regrouped into a higher grade level, so we can continue to push those skills.”
At Andrews High, the program will be called the Wildcat-emey, and will offer students the chance to take certain classes, completing credits and accelerating their high school careers. Courses offered will include Spanish I,
health and PE, environmental science, physical science and world history.
“We have students who feel like they will do better in a small group in freshman PE,” Bristol said. “This will be perfect for that.”