LIVERPOOL — When Chloe Lindberg was gearing up for the Liverpool Central School District’s four-week Summer School Program, she expected it to be a rehash of sitting through lectures and chipping away at homework assignments.
“I thought it was going to be normal school, but it has been fun,” said Lindberg, who is entering eighth grade in the fall.
Lindberg and other summer school students at Chestnut Hill Middle spent a month planning a carnival-like orientation fair for incoming CHM seventh-graders. The Hot Sun ‘n Summer Fun Fair was slated to take place the morning of Aug. 11. While the district came up with the idea for the fair, students were in charge of coordinating the event from start to finish.
A group of incoming eighth-graders — Alexis Beck, Kenziyah Brown, Bella Hallowell, Chloe Lindberg and Miracle Ford — sat down with the Star-Review to share their experiences in the program and offer their best advice to new seventh-graders.
“The summer program’s given them real world skills … that they can use outside of the school,” said math teacher Trevor Barbano, who taught part of the LCSD Summer School Program this year.
Each week, the students focused on a different subject. Culinary classes taught the middle-schoolers the history of the Great New York State Fair and how to make fairgoers’ favorite foods. LCSD School Information Officer Meghan Piper stopped by the public relations and advertising classes to tell students about her job and help spread the word to local media outlets. During the engineering rotation — the unanimous favorite of the students interviewed by the Star-Review — the kids built photo booth cutouts and games for the orientation fair.
“We made a video for incoming seventh-graders so they’d know their way around the school,” Kenziyah Brown said.
The students also wrote letters to the Liverpool Board of Education and designed save-the-date cards for the event.
“It was a lot of work,” Miracle Ford said of the summer school program.
Between learning to use power tools and exploring the history of the State Fair, the students also had to learn how to navigate group projects.
“Most of the kids in our group are really, really nice and get the work done,” Lindberg said, “or they are…”
“…Goofing off,” Ford finished.
The students offered advice to incoming seventh-graders. Bella Hallowell suggested trying to resolve conflicts with classmates before going to a teacher, and Alexis Beck cautioned middle-schoolers to “stay out of the drama” and avoid fights.
Having forged new friendships over the summer, the students vowed to be kinder to their younger classmates.
“I’m going to try not to call every single seventh-grader ‘sevvie,’” Lindberg said.
“It makes them uncomfortable,” Beck said.
“My goal is to be a better eighth-grader,” Lindberg said.
Barbano, the math teacher, said he saw his students blossom through participating in hands-on activities during the summer.
“That was the mission of the whole program: to reengage them in learning. A lot of them are here because of a lack of effort, not a lack of ability,” he said.
The summer program has helped students “not see school as a negative and realize that they have the ability to succeed,” Barbano added.
Lindberg said the program has helped her improve her issues with time management and procrastination.
“I’m not going to fall back into that slump of skipping work,” she said of the new school year.
