Staying After School, and Enjoying it

Darin Havens takes his turn at bowling on the Wii as part of a school-wide tournament being sponsored and organized by the afterschool program at Baker Middle School. Teacher Larry Morrison is hoping to encourage more students to take advantage of the program, which is funded by the Union-Baker ESD and aims to help kids finish homework and improve their grades.(Baker City Herald/S.John Collins)

The exercise restores energy after a regular school day, and soon they will settle down for a couple hours worth of homework, and maybe a science project, in Room 13 at Baker Middle School.

These kids are spending three extra hours at school from Monday through Thursday to finish homework and improve their grades.

This is the afterschool program, operated and funded by the Union-Baker ESD thanks to a five-year, $1.8 million federal grant.

There are three programs in Baker School District 5J — at BMS, South Baker Intermediate and Brooklyn Primary. To be eligible, schools must have at least 50 percent of the student body qualifying for free or reduced-priced lunches. The afterschool program, though, is open to all students.

The ESD supplies the staff — a head teacher and an assistant — and the schools provide space, as well as dinner.

At South Baker and Brooklyn, the afterschool program is from 2:45 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. At BMS, it’s from 3:15 p.m. to 6 p.m. or until the work is finished.

“We do homework until their homework’s done,” said Larry Morrison, who heads the middle school program.

The requirement is 12 hours a week.

“It’s not a drop-in, it’s not babysitting,” Blackford said. “It’s designed to help these kids improve their learning.”

There is space for 25 at each center. So far, BMS has eight to 13, Brooklyn has 22 and South Baker averages 17.

Each program begins with exercise. At BMS, Morrison calls his a “walk and talk” as he takes the kids on a jaunt around town. He also submitted a request to the ESD for a 52-inch plasma TV and a Wii system to be used when the weather’s nasty.

(To recruit more interest in the afterschool program, Morrison started a schoolwide Wii bowling competition Monday. He said he’ll have the afterschool students develop the tournament format for a project.)

After exercise, the next hours are passed with homework, a sack dinner, and “project-based learning.” At the elementary schools, that means working on DestiNation Imagination projects, and at BMS Morrison challenges the kids with science problems.

“We built a tower — and crushed it,” he said.

“It helps me get my homework done, and it’s fun,” said Justin Ball, 13.

At Brooklyn, head teacher Joan George targets math skills with the first-, second- and third-graders. The younger ones work on addition while the older students practice multiplication. At one point, the kids made a congo line and weaved through the tables to “The Double Song” (the tune is catchy — “two plus two, four! three plus three, six! four plus four, eight!”)

“One of the ideas behind the program is to improve their math and reading scores,” George said.

At South Baker, teacher Chelsea Hurliman takes her students to the computer lab to access “online programs that reinforce what the kids are doing in the classroom,” and then works on the DestiNation Imagination projects.

Blackford said another goal for the afterschool program is to create a garden at each center — mirroring the new Farm to School programs in Union County (please see story on Page 3A).

He said he hopes to get help from Andi Sexton of Haines, who is coordinating that program, as well as find local senior citizens willing to volunteer at the school gardens and work with the kids.

“That’s our goal,” he said.