Students Win Gold ‘Medals’

Thu., Aug. 10, 2000

By Carlos Acevedo carlosa@spokesman.com

Summer school students at Lincoln Heights Elementary are now not only Olympic Games experts, they also are gold medalists.

Members of the South Side Senior Center awarded the 36 students in school gold medals - chocolates in gold wrappers - last Thursday for their efforts over the three-week course, during which they studied the Olympics and the world competition’s next host, Australia.

The seniors sat with parents and staff while the students made their final presentations.

“Kids love presenting to a real audience,” said Principal Rick Haffner. “It just makes it more exciting.”

Having the parents and seniors on hand was also critical for learning, he said. Following statewide education reforms, standards for education are higher and schools need to reach out to the community for help.

“The state has raised to bar and learning is more difficult. (Classes) can no longer be just about teachers and students,” Haffner said.

“It needs to be the whole community - students, teachers, parents, seniors and even local businesses.”

During the summer program, students explored the history of the Olympics, specific games such as judo, and Australian culture and wildlife.

The Olympics theme was designed to provide an interesting subject with which the students could delve into the meat-and-potatoes subjects of math, English, science and social studies.

Student Andra Alspaugh, 12, worked with other soon-to-be seventh-graders on a class assignment to make a trivia-quiz game about Australia.

“That was kind of hard,” she said. “We had to make up the questions and then find the answers.”

She and her team researched the continent down under using magazines, books, the Internet and even their teachers.

To make the summer school experience more positive, teachers promoted Alspaugh and the other students to their next grade level during the summer school as a way to recognize them. So children who were first-graders last year were called second-graders during the summer school. Second-graders were recognized as third-graders, third as fourth and so on.

“We want the kids to feel that this is a head start, not a punishment,” Haffner said.

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