College for Kids

Enrichment program to offer unique opportunities in January

By Katie Thisdell, staff writer
Posted on November 12, 2007

This January, Memorial Hall will be full of kids playing steel drums, building robots from LEGOS, creating stained glass and learning to become millionaires. For six Saturdays, students from fifth to ninth grade can be like college students and enroll in special exploratory classes.

College for Kids is an enrichment program offering unique opportunities for young students. JMU created the partnership with Harrisonburg City, Rockingham and Page County schools, as well as the Harrisonburg Children’s Museum to develop the program. It is beginning its second year.

“There’s a whole lot of cool stuff that the average kid doesn’t get in Harrisonburg because of our size,” said Nick Swayne, coordinator for external relations in the College of Education and director of College for Kids. “As a public institution in a community we have a responsibility to enrich the community.”

The program runs each Saturday Jan. 19 to Feb. 23 from 9 a.m. to noon. There are 16 different classes spanning a wide range of topics this year. Professors, JMU students and other community members volunteer as instructors to share their expertise.

Senior art education major Jennike Horacek enjoyed teaching art to middle school students at last year’s College for Kids. She incorporated a broad range of materials and techniques into her lessons to expose the kids to new ideas.

“It was really exciting to see them get into [it] and be so enthusiastic about what they were learning,” Horacek said while describing how the kids were reluctant to leave their sketchbooks at the end of each day. “Middle school kids are young enough to be excited, but old enough to do higher learning at the same time.”

After formally partnering with the three school systems, the program will be able to offer more opportunities for more students. Last year, only three classes were offered.

“We were on a shoestring budget last year,” Swayne said. “We just broke even, but it was so popular. We also couldn’t have pulled it off without the Children’s Museum.”

Registration began on Nov. 1 and will continue until Nov. 16. Enrollment will be capped at around 240 students.

“If we’re successful this year, what I call our inaugural year, then the imagination is the limit,” Swayne said.

Michael Overman, a music instructor at JMU, will teach the steel drums class again after positive results last year. Kids will learn how to play steel drums and other handheld percussion instruments using simple melodies.

“I think it’s great that they learn there are lots of ways to make music and to have fun making it, even if you’re not necessarily great at music,” Overman said. “It’s a different environment than a typical band class where you focus on doing it the ‘right’ way.”

Swayne and Overman see a vital connection that College for Kids makes between JMU and the community.

“It’s something kids get to do that they’re not going to do anywhere else,” Overman said. “Without JMU’s participation it would involve a great deal of expense and limit the possibilities. With this program, we have all these people coming here and forever they’ll have a connection in their mind that they learned these cool things at JMU. I don’t care if they don’t become students here, but this is an invaluable experience that they’ll never forget, and it’s connected to JMU.”

Matthew Gardner, a sixth grade student at Montevideo Middle School, was in the LEGO robotics class last year.

“I learned stuff about gear ratios and how to build cool robots,” Gardner said. “My favorite part was competing against the other teams in the class, even though we lost.”

He wants to be in the steel drums class this year, and thinks his friends should come too. Why?

“Cause they’d probably learn lots of cool stuff.”