HERMISTON — Hermiston School District’s wildly successful free summer camp program, running from June 21 to July 31, is reintroducing children to the fun of learning after a year of online and hybrid school.

The program, which is broken up into two sessions and open to all students grades K-12 enrolled in the Hermiston School District, has been a smash hit with both parents and students. Along with free meals and childcare, the program offered a more hands-on and experiential learning focus after a year disrupted by COVID-19.

The classes were centered on matter the students don’t normally experience and tried to cover more subjects than the usual slate of academics, such as math and English. Some of their offerings included opportunities to learn about physics by building a rollercoaster or solving a crime scene for a forensic science class.

“So just lots of different activities and learning than the traditional classroom,” said Tanya Kennedy, a summer program coordinator and dean of students at Desert View Elementary School.

Student built bridges and catapults for civil engineering and construction, had the chance to try different sports or even take an Ethiopian culture and history class. Some also learned how to code, build solar race cars and learn about history through simulations to give them a hands-on approach to learning.

One such hands-on activity for third grade had students excavate chocolate chips from soft cookies as if they were digging for fossils during their dinosaur-themed week.

On top of this, the district offered sports camps every other week that high school athletes and coaches run while first through third graders got two weeks of free swim lessons. Additionally, each elementary grade went on two field trips during the six weeks, from places such as Three Mile Canyon Farms in Boardman to Fort Walla Walla.

Fun learning experience

According to Melissa Doherty, the middle school summer program coordinator, the summer school program was “really focusing on making education fun and the learning experience fun.”

The program was made possible by a $250 million “Summer Learning and Child Care Package” that Gov. Kate Brown, Senate President Peter Courtney and House Speaker Tina Kotek introduced in March 2021.

“Our children are being really affected by this pandemic,” Courtney said in a press release. “We’ve introduced these summer programs because it has never been more urgent to invest in our kids. This summer, we want them to go outside. We want them to have fun. We want them to learn. We need to support their mental and physical health. These programs will get our kids back out doing the things they love.”

The funding is broken up into different categories, including summer enrichment and academic programs for grades K-12, summer activities, child care grants and early learning programs.

When the Legislature announced these pockets of money, Hermiston School District Superintendent Tricia Mooney began thinking about the needs of the community and started conversations as a district.

“We have some staff members that put in a ton of time coordinating because it’s something different than we’ve ever done,” she said.

The resulting program took a lot of different partners coming together, Mooney said. The coordinators at the elementary, middle and high school levels spent considerable time building the program, trying to be creative and thinking about ways to engage with kids in different ways to get them excited about school.

“It wasn’t just the Hermiston school teachers,” Kennedy said. “There was a mix of the teachers, our licensed subs, our classified staff, our classified subs, we had some EOU teachers involved and then we also had high school students. So it was a big collaboration of lots of different people from our community.”

Lots to offer

After COVID-19 had taken away many in-person activities, Mooney said the district didn’t want the program to be all academic and strove to make it feel less like “summer school” and more like a summer program with a lot of different offerings.

Doherty agreed that many students didn’t want to attend “summer school” but said children are loving the program the school district put together and they’ve had really positive experiences. She mentioned that parents such as herself have had a very positive experience with the program as well.

Doherty’s daughter, who is in the program, didn’t want to go to summer school either, “but she loved it every day,” Doherty said. “She saw how fun it was and is looking forward to attending the second session.”

According to Mooney, there were an estimated 600 students who enrolled in the program at the elementary level, 300 between Hermiston’s two middle schools and 300 at the high school level. It was so popular, Kennedy said, that some families that signed up for two weeks asked if their children could attend more.

“I think the kids have really enjoyed what they’re doing,” she said.

Additionally, the free child care starting at 6:30 a.m. with Champions, an after-school program that partnered with the school district, has been a draw to parents who work and aren’t able to watch their kids all day. When the academic portion of the day finishes at 1:45 p.m. parents also have the option to enroll them in Champions after school as well.

According to Kennedy, Champions has hit a new level of popularity with the summer program. “Champions usually didn’t have too many students enrolled, but on any given day there’s about 200 students there at the after-school program with Champions,” she said.

And, when the program finishes Friday, July 30, the school district will continue working with Champions to provide care for kids until the first day of school on August 30.

Bridging the gap

The summer program also is providing a bridge for students who are moving between elementary school and middle school. Normally, students have a move-up date between fifth and sixth grade, however, this couldn’t take place with COVID-19. While it can be an intimidating experience for students to move up a grade, the summer program helped bridge that gap, said Doherty.

While in past years there were often different requirements for summer school, this year it was open for all students enrolled in the Hermiston School District.

“This year it doesn’t matter who you are,” Doherty said. “What matters is you want to have fun.”

With the strong success of the program, many are hoping to take some of the lessons learned into the school years ahead by implementing more hands-on and experiential learning activities into lesson plans. And a summer program similar to the one taking place this summer may become a more permanent fixture for Hermiston School District.

Mooney said the district wrote in an extended summer school into their student’s investment account plan for next year and are taking lessons they’ve learned this year to provide opportunities for kids again.

“I anticipate that we will offer something similar next summer,” Mooney said, “that’s an expanded opportunity from what we’ve traditionally been able to offer with summer school.”

Kennedy and Doherty agreed they would love to see something like the summer program continue and believe it has been beneficial for both kids and parents.

“Learning is fun,” Doherty said. “Learning doesn’t just have to be in the confines of the book. Your only limitation is your imagination.