Melodee Kinyon-Davis, a secretary at Langston Hughes Elementary School and the mother of a second-grader at Franklin Square Elementary School, said she expects a lot from an after-school program.
“I can?t get off of work until 5 p.m. sometimes,” she said, and an after-school activity should not be “just for fun.”
That?s why Kinyon-Davis is so fond of the Parks and People Foundation, which encourages youths to get involved in sporting activities, a summer camp and, most importantly, a program called KidsGrow.
KidsGrow is an educational after-school program at both Franklin and Harlem Park elementary schools to encourage learning inside and outside of the classroom.
Monica Logan, coordinator of youth enrichment programs at the foundation and director of the Superkids camp, said she is proud of KidsGrow and the impact it has.
Since the beginning of the school year in September, the students at Franklin?s KidsGrow program have participated in hands-on learning. They have taken part in a 100-book reading challenge and gone on field trips to the Maryland Science Center and the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
“I feel like we are one of the best after-school activities in the city,” Logan said. “We?ve even been recognized for our academic component, [especially for our] ecological curriculum.”
The Institute of Ecosystem Studies has created a specific curriculum for KidsGrow, and Janie Gordon, Baltimore ecosystem study education coordinator, said the curriculum supports the students? daily classroom learning.
“We?ve been working on [this program] for a couple of years,” Gordon said. “We developed a long unit on ecology and food and agricultural production.”
Gordon and Logan said the students at Franklin do a lot of investigative study. They planted a garden in early April to learn about nutrition, and on Friday the KidsGrow students at Franklin had their open house and closing ceremonies, where they presented to their parents and onlookers everything they had learned throughout the year. After the ceremony was over, some students harvested the vegetables they had planted.
