Eclectic education in Lamont

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Jennifer Ochoa waited for the sticks to land as Ashley Franco happily counted the beans she had just won on her toss.

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Luis Paragas and Octavio Valdovinas made a joyous noise on their makeshift drums while learning about musical characterizations.

If you had dropped by the Lamont Boys & Girls Club the week of July 6-10, it might have caused you to scratch your head for a moment. One room had children throwing sticks in the air. In a neighboring room, youngsters were beating on empty laundry detergent containers, cans and boxes. A third area featured students juggling calculators with geometric cutouts. It may have seemed a bit eclectic, but every activity had a clear learning purpose for about 75 students taking part in summer camps offered by the Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ Migrant Education Program.

Although all the students were in one location, each room consisted of a different camp or “learning festival” intended to increase knowledge and literacy for students learning English as a second language or who need supplemental instructional support. Many of the students enrolled in the camps face disruptions in schooling during the year, as their families move to earn a living.

Let us start with throwing sticks. Students in this classroom were taking part in a Great Explorations in Math and Science class with curriculum supplied by the University of California, Berkeley. Each of the six tongue depressors had color on one side and none on the other. Children would take turns tossing the sticks in the air in an attempt to win beans from their playing opponent. If all the sticks came down with the colored side showing, it was a three-bean win. A complete absence of colored scored two beans. And if it turned out to be half and half, a single bean was the reward. Any other combination would result in no beans won.

"It’s an exercise in learning probabilities and statistics,” said summer teacher Hector Deleon. “They get to see how many ways sticks can land and what happens as a result. Everything is intended to help them have fun reading and using math, while improving their vocabulary and writing skills.”

Walk a little further down the hall and the sound gets deafening. A cacophony of percussion produced on makeshift instruments is taking place around a pool table that now serves as a platform for the instruments. If you shut your eyes and pretend real hard, you can hear how laundry detergent containers, tuna cans, boxes, and empty bottles have been transformed into drums, xylophones and tubas. Directing their efforts and pointing out subtle nuances was summer teacher James Hendricks. There was purpose to this freelance symphony.

David Lloyd, Arts Council of Kern assistant executive director, on behalf of Arts for Leaning, has collaborated with Migrant Education to provide this program that “uses the arts to leverage literacy.” “The goal is to focus on inference,” Lloyd said. “Each character in the literature they are reading speaks in the first person in each chapter of the book, “Seedfolks.” They concentrate on listening to the words and learn to infer what the character is about. Then, they learn about music and see how tempo and pitch can be used to infer the same character qualities as the spoken word. Through the process, they develop how to transfer those skills inferred in music onto text in the form of written expression. The final exercise will be for them to develop a percussive piece, using their own original music in rondo form to describe the characters in their book.”

Lloyd said last year there was evidence to support that the kids in the program did have their language awareness raised, as well as interest and reading curiosity.

Entering the third room of this learning trifecta, one slipped into the realm of “Polyhedraville.” It is to become a city of the future, but right now it was represented by small geometric cutouts, hand calculators, marking pens and mathematical shopping lists. At the head of the table sat the guru of this undertaking, summer teacher Jesse Apperson. He asked for the number of squares contained in small rectangles, cut from graph paper, which sat on the table in front of his dozen students. Immediately, the students began counting rows and columns. In short intervals, the answers were shouted out by various students, until the correct response was heard. Then, the process began again, each time with a different shape.

“We are building a city using different shapes in this exercise,” Apperson said. “The students learn how to calculate the area of different shapes. Then, they budget the cost at $25-$26 per square centimeter for each polygon and have to keep the cost under $100,000. It really helps their math skills, learning how to plot the area of a polygon and calculate the cost. Even their oral language skills are put to the test, as they have to present their construction ideas and plans to a committee of their fellow students, teachers and aides.”

“These camps are fun for the children, but they also serve as a pilot for us to measure the students’ success and see which concepts can be used as a quick learning pick me up over the summer,” said Migrant Education Program coordinator Philomena Hall.


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