Event Caps Never-a-Dull-Moment Summer School
It’s hard to know what exactly to call the program that’s been going on for the last six weeks at nine DMPS middle school sites, the one that culminated Thursday afternoon with a celebration at Goodrell.
Oh, it has an official name: 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC). But the centers are schools and it’s summer, so is it summer school? Kind of, but summer school still has a stigma to it in some quarters that this never-a-dull-moment operation doesn’t deserve. There were lots of fieldtrips and hands-on activities, like at summer camp, so was that what it should be called?
How about we just call it a great idea and a lot of fun?
Take just the last week and the cohort at Meredith Middle School as examples. They held a carwash to raise money for a longtime cafeteria worker at the school who was recently diagnosed with ALS (service learning is a key component of the program at each site). Monday she brought them all ice cream to say thank you. The next day they were at the Knapp Center shooting hoops with NBA champion basketball player Harrison Barnes. Thursday they sounded first like a thundering herd and then like a marching army as they spanked away on West African drums called djembes (jambayz) during one of the workshops at Culture Day in the Goodrell auditorium.
Holy smokes, it’s obvious they were having a good time while simultaneously expanding their horizons but the 1,000+ kids that participated (plus another 600 or so at ten 21CCLC elementary sites) are probably due for some downtime, not to mention the 75 teachers (100 more at the elementaries), 35 AmeriCorps staff and 30 cultural ambassadors from CultureALL that made it happen.
“Last summer was year one of a five-year grant that funded expansion of 21CCLC from the elementary to the middle school level,” according to Heidi Brown, District Grant Coordinator. “It was great and this year enrollment was up at all of the sites.” That’s because pretty much everybody came back and brought a pal along. And it’s no wonder.
Let’s see, there were workshops on everything from Native American rites of passage into adulthood in the library to salsa dancing in the gym to Irish jigging in Room 1020 besides the hypnotic West African beats resonating from the auditorium. Japanese calligraphy, Eastern European music, Brazil, the Philippines, an Indian sitar, China, Mexico…touring them all was an around the world in forty minutes whirlwind. Then it was time to break and rotate to round two before the grand finale assembly.
That led off with a thumping demonstration on the djembes by a group from McCombs under the direction of Fonziba Koster, an expert who lives in Fairfield, Iowa. She learned from masters in Guinea and Mali and has been sharing what they taught her for twenty years.
The unconventional drumline spent the second workshop block fine tuning a routine they’d only learned two days ago. First they spoke the different beat parts back and forth in Simon Says fashion. Then they took it from the top. Midway through came the solos. First Gisselle and Elizabeth with some hand-clapping accents; then Johnny, Joseph, Keegan and Anthony…Cole, in his Vikings jersey, kept drumming out a bassline.
“Well, you know what they say,” Koster thought out loud to no one in particular. “‘When the dress rehearsal’s a little iffy, the performance goes great.’”
And that’s exactly what happened. The audience filed in from the workshops scattered throughout the building. After Koster explained that the djembes traditionally accompany dancers and oral historians in West African tribal ceremonies, the kids killed it. Koster got the crowd into it with some “body percussion.” Head bobbed. Toes tapped. Hands clapped, rhythmically during the music; wildly when it finished.
All that was left for the rest of the ambassadors to say was thank you and good-bye…until next summer!
