Making whipped cream. Building model bridges. Staging the War of 1812 with Legos. These are just a few scenes from the new Summer Enrichment Program for middle schoolers!  Launched this summer, the program is built on the premise that students can discover what they love, build on that passion, and express it through a creative outlet, while refining critical-thinking and decision-making skills. Based on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, which will expand to 10 schools next year, the goal is to awaken or nurture students’ talents and love of learning while empowering them to change their worlds.

At both sites, Hardy and Kelly Miller Middle Schools, students work on projects on topics of their own choosing while also attending educational field trips, such as to the Newseum and National Building Museum. Here are some scenes from this exciting new program:

Mornings at the Kelly Miller site begin with competitions between “clusters”, or groups with an academic focus, to get students energized for the day. On this particular morning, the three clusters had to build a pyramid of cups as fast as they could and pass it on to their fellow teammate.

Afterwards, students headed to their classrooms to break out their creativity and get to work. One cluster focused on mapping out and creating a new civilization, “Aipotu”. Another focused on arts and technology.  Some students painted, others rehearsed their script they had written while two student “cameramen” looked on and practiced filming.

In the classroom next door, Mr. Dabney addressed his cluster focused on food, science, and math. A former chef, he held up a blue mixing bowl filled with fresh whipped cream. “What kind of energy am I using to whip cream?” he asked. “MECHANICAL!” everyone yelled. Two “accountants” worked on the food receipts while the rest of the class looked at a recipe and wrote down the items, prices, and weights of ingredients and calculated the totals.

Across the city at Hardy, students were immersed in their tasks at hand—in the architecture/engineering cluster, students studied maps of DC and organized different buildings into land use categories. They were surrounded by Styrofoam model bridges that they had made the week before. In the social justice cluster, students had created signs bearing their most passionate causes (global warming, religious freedom, lower taxes, to name a few) and mock CD cases that described the “soundtrack of their life.”

In the Generation Z cluster, students were busy at work creating vision boards depicting what they thought their generation—Generation Z—stood for. Together, they’ll create a short video about “Can anything good come out of Generation Z?”

In the computer lab, students were glued to their screens. The history/”We the People” cluster was intensely focused on researching for the projects they’ve chosen—everything from a Lego reenactment of the War of 1812, to a segregation rap, to a stop-motion claymation scene depicting the Gold Rush.

 “This is the first time I’ve drawn something other than shoes!”  exclaimed Steven, whose project was a sketch series of historical battles.

“Students asked me how long their paper should be. I told them they can be however long they want. Or they didn’t have to write papers at all. They were skeptical.” said Ms. Sommerville, who teaches the history cluster. “At first, the freedom was confusing for them,” she said. “But then it became liberating.”

She continued: “I never have to tell them to stay on task. As soon as they get here, they want to jump in immediately.”