Aliyya Swaby Photo
Erika Moye and Regina Santana at Saturday school.
Regina Santana spent Saturday morning speeding through a series of online reading exercises — instead of her usual routine of cleaning her room and watching movies on her phone.
Santana was one of about 50 students who showed up at Roberto Clemente School Saturday for two extra hours of self-directed reading and math, and two hours of character-building social emotional games and exercises.
It was the second session of a new Saturday Academy, which the city launched to run through the rest of the academic year to offer extra help to students at schools with low test scores.
About 250 students attended the academy at Clemente and three other schools — Troup, Wexler-Grant and Fair Haven — across the district. At Clemente, twice as many students enrolled in the academy than actually showed up on the second day.
Some students had transportation glitches. Clemente Principal Pam Franco rushed through the halls trying to find out why Bus 2 showed up without any students. Other students forgot to come or made last-minute decisions to stay in bed at 8 a.m. Staff made follow-up calls throughout the morning reminding parents of their bus times and pick-up locations.
To begin the day, teachers and paraprofessionals led students in a set of two activities, intended to foster teamwork and wake everyone up before classes started.
An ECHO coordinator facilitated the games at the start and end of the day. ECHO stands for “empathy, character, hope and opportunity” and is intended to build those values in students.
Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, the district’s chief of youth, family, and community engagement, said the academy was intentionally designed to ensure students have fun and ease into academic activities. “Going right from breakfast to work for kids is hard,” she said.
On one side of the room, students broke out into groups of six and stood one behind the other on a “sled,” each with a foot on two pieces of wood. Clemente teacher Ron Coleman cheered them on as they attempted to move together in unison across the gymnasium.
“Left,” he called out, urging them to pick up their left foot and pull the left handles forward.
Kids squealed as they all picked up their left feet and tried to keep their balance. One student fell on the back of the sled with a thud and immediately hopped up and back on. Finally gaining their rhythm, Coleman’s group finished second. And just in time before they had to head to the classrooms to work on math and reading.
Coleman’s 16 sixth graders split into two groups. Students in one started with a math pretest to determine their skill levels. Those in the other signed into the online “Lexia Strategies” literacy program and began to work through a series of comprehension and phonics exercises starting at a beginner level and quickly progressing.
Santana sped through the exercises. Near the end of the first hour, she was deftly plugging in words into sentences in a paragraph, testing reading comprehension, way before her grade level.
“Go as fast as you can through the easy part. There’s no way to skip it,” Coleman said.
Erika Moye came to the academy because she had “nothing to do on Saturday.” She wanted to meet new people and try new things. On her first Saturday so far, she said, she had succeeded.