Learning Academy 2018: Building Bridges

Reading Academy had begun three years earlier to give second- and third-graders in Borrego Springs an intensive summer boost in literacy. In its third summer, the structure was familiar and the results were, again, strong: thirty-one students enrolled, and every one of them completed the twenty-day program.

Full-day classes began July 12, 2018 and ran for four weeks at the Steele-Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center, providing over 100 hours of instruction in a small-group setting. The engineering builds — bridges out of toothpicks and candy, towers that had to hold weight — sat alongside the reading and language-arts work, a way of keeping a month of full days from feeling like more school.

The attendance rate held at 98.5% overall. On the reading side, 91% of students improved their comprehension and 75% reached grade-level expectations; 83% grew in reading fluency, with half reaching grade level outright.

The third summer, in one photo

By the end of July, the group that had built bridges and worked through reading passages together stood for the same photo the program takes every year — proof, mostly for themselves, of a month well spent.