Principal, teachers seek to revamp summer school
Students thank faculty for exciting opportunity
By Harrison Keely, Editor

EXPERIMENTING: Sheriff Joe Shook takes a ride with the students of Hayesville High School's summer school program after conducting velocity experiments, measuring acceleration.

Students are having a blast at summer school, two Hayesville High School teachers told the Clay County School Board at the meeting June 23.

Principal Matt Rogers said that the program was recently set up to allow kids who had violated the attendance policy to make up time and academic credit. When the school asked for teachers to volunteer Elissa Gilgen, Mark Vaughn, Teressa Woodard and Emily West stepped up to the task.

Rogers said that the program was difficult to plan for because the summer school was not mandatory, allowing students to determine if they wanted to earn the credits back.

"I wanted something that was hands on, something that was fun," Rogers said. "I didn't just want kids to come in for five or six hours and do worksheets."

He said that much of the problem with traditional summer schooling is that the students involved have no desire to be there and learn in the first place. Rogers told the teachers that he wanted students to be involved in experiments and to work with technology.

The plan for the program became two-fold: To make-up time, giving students the opportunity to feel like they earned their credits, and to make the students feel better about themselves. Rogers said that he believed the program would lead to success for the students in the fall.

"I think we've probably prevented at least three [students] from dropping out of school through this program," Rogers said.

Gilgen, a science teacher at the high school, said she had looked forward to the prospect of team-teaching with Woodard, a math teacher, as their field of expertise blended together.

"The kids don't realize how much they're learning when they're learning," Gilgen said. "They have so much fun... and they're learning calculus."

Gilgen expressed the difference that she was seeing in the students as they "earned the realization that they can learn."

"If they give us a little, we'll give it back," she said.

Vaughn was recognized for his work teaching children technology concepts during the program.

Woodard showed a video of a PowerPoint presentation created by student Alex Hill.

Hill emphasized that students were learning to meet and get along with new classmates and that the students in the program realized the importance of moving on to the next school year.

Her quotes were followed by a collage of photographs from the program set to Queen's "We Are the Champions."

The students involved in the classes spent a week taking part in what Woodard called challenging experiments, including laying black marks in a MX-5 to test Newton's laws for acceleration, repeating Galileo's work by throwing dummies out the window to measure "g", cooking bananas in a thermal stove and changing water to wine. Students also performed skits to recount Archimedes and Galileo's work.

"I really enjoyed the week," student Randi Reeder said.

"Summer school's cool," Hill said. "I hate to see it end."

Woodard showed the school board a video of the "burning rubber experiment" filmed by the students. Clay County Sheriff Joe Shook was on hand at the time.

The students taped a camcorder to the seat of the car and secured a stopwatch to the speedometer to measure velocity. The rear of the vehicle was loaded with two cases of 80 pound books, allowing the tracking of acceleration with varying weights.

"This was actually a very controlled experiment," Woodard said, noting that the students were never in the car.

Vaughn measured the distance betwen the black marks and the students analyzed the data with their own calculations.

Woodard thanked the school board for providing the funds for the program and the sheriff for his role.

"They've seen the greatness inside themselves, they've found out what they can do. And I believe your investment is going to pay off.... Handsomely," Woodard said. "Even if you save one of them it was worth it, every bit of it. Just to see the kids enjoy school and get excited about learning is worth it for me."

Gilgen said that the students also drew posters of Isaac Newton and Archimedes.

After the first week of summer school had finished, Rogers said that an upcoming senior who would have lost her credits went out of her way to thank him for the summer school program.

"I really think we need to do more of this," Superintendent Scott Penland said, noting that opening a new school building would allocate more space for such fun activities to help retain students.

Woodard said that while the teachers were evaluating the program with the class, four of the 13 students were crying.

"We were just sharing our hearts, being as real as we could be with them," she said. "I know that some of these kids have turned around during this week...."

Video courtesy of Teressa Woodard.

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