Enrichment at Maya Angelou Schools

ScienceClass

Enrichment Programs, like STEM Support, Engage Students

On a busy winter afternoon, Samantha Koonce, physics teacher and MAPCS’s enrichment coordinator, stopped by a sunny classroom of students. Inside, a group of girls were sitting Socratic seminar style, enthusiastically engaging in a conversation about self-esteem. The conversation was facilitated by Samantha Southall, a special education teacher and founder of the enrichment program, Class Act.

Class Act’s mission is to teach young women self-advocacy and self-worth, promoting positive interactions between young women through conversation—like the ones Ms. Koonce observed that winter day. Ms. Southall modeled the program after her experiences in leadership conferences, like Girls Lead, when she was a student. When the opportunity arose this past year to submit enrichment programming proposals at Maya, she jumped on the chance to create a similar program, where MAPCS’s young women can learn they have the right to be “heard and listened to.”

Ms. Koonce, stresses the importance of programming like Class Act. It offers students a place to “feel safe and loved, and that they are worthy.” At an alternative school like Maya Angelou, where students often come to school with outside experiences telling them the exact opposite, this feeling of worthiness is critical to student success.

Jennifer Piechoski, academic counselor and founder of the enrichment program, STEM Support, sees this fact play out daily. “It amazes me every day how resilient these kids are; they regularly survive the kind of things which would knock me out for a month. But big deal, they still come to school.” Ms. Piechoski’s STEM Support offers after-school tutoring for students who are struggling in STEM subjects. Its students, however, learn far more than math equations and the scientific method. They develop personal relationships with their tutors—college students from GW Scholars and experts in the field from DC Scholars—and create strong connections with Maya staff in a smaller setting. Ms. Piechoski, herself, regularly calls students’ homes to encourage ongoing attendance in STEM Support and impress on their parents the importance of engaging in school.

The bottom line is, as Ms. Koonce noted, enrichment programming is “necessary programming.” Students often “stop learning when they leave school, and we need to continue working with them to build the skills they need to succeed.”

-Yifan Zhang