Holley’s summer school camp gives students an academic boost
This is one side of a two-sided bookmark created by middle schoolers at Holley. The other side includes a photo of Myron Holley and facts about his life.
HOLLEY – A summer school program for Holley middle schooler help students boost skills that they had struggled to learn during the regular school year, Holley Board of Education members were told this week.
Michelle Roman and Nick D’Amuro, both Holley teachers, shared highlights of the program with the Board of Education.
“For the most part, all showed some growth in skills,” Roman said. “We need to make plans for more support and we will follow-up with students during the school year. We made goals for future summer camps.”
The three-week summer program included a half-dozen 7th and 8th graders who focused on Math, ELA, Science, Social Studies and critical thinking skills.
“I call them self-sufficient skills,” D’Amuro explained. He said students can take the skills they learned during camp and use them to teach themselves new skills in the future.
Roman said summer camp enabled her to uncover reading skills deficiencies in her students. She said the program, “allows us to build relationships and develop a love of learning” with students.
The program also included community service at the Holley Community Free Library, and guest speakers including Clarendon historian Melissa Ierlan and a presentation by GCASA about making better choices.
The students walked to the library from the school campus for their community service work which included devising the most efficient way to clean books in the Children’s section. Students also designed a bookmark which featured information about Myron Holley.
Holley, a Rochester abolitionist who served in the NYS Assembly in 1816, was an Erie Canal Commissioner and founder of the Rochester Freeman, an anti-slavery newspaper which sparked the Underground Railroad in western New York. The Village of Holley is named in Myron Holley’s honor, although he never lived there.
D’Amuro and Roman encouraged Board of Education members to consider requiring students who fail core classes to attend the skill-building summer camps in the future to provide them with an opportunity to receive additional support for academic success.
Board President Brenda Swanger thanked the teachers for their presentation. “The extra caring,” which the summer camp provided, “is what they also need,” she said of students.
