By Stephen Smoot
Children rising into grades first through sixth in Mineral, Grant, and Hampshire counties have benefited for years from a program that is now seeing its inaugural summer in Pendleton County.
Energy Express has come to the area, the 48th site in the 26th county since the program commenced over three decades ago with two pilot locations. Mineral County has the longest running Energy Express program site in the state.
Tanya Wehrle and Corrie Wagoner assist in organizing and running the program for WVU Extension Service. Wagoner shared that “the kids are having fun. They don’t know they’ve learned.”
Wehrle followed by saying that Energy Express does not resemble “a traditional classroom where it’s work, work, work.” That said, as Wagoner explained, the program started as one wedding child nutrition with enrichment of reading skills. The goal all along has lay in “preventing the summer slide by use of colorful and captivating books,” as well as art and vocabulary development.
Each summer brings a new set of broad themes around which activities center. This summer focused on each person’s relationships with others. In week one, students focused on “Myself.”
Pendleton County participants also enjoy the benefit of WVU Extension Service partnering with Experience Learning and the Pendleton County Library. Students go to a weekly library program on Wednesdays. Experience Learning takes the children on field trips all day on Fridays to learn at sites such as Sweetwater Farms near Sugar Grove and Spruce Knob Lake.
AmeriCorps volunteer college students serve as “mentors” that lead classes, teach, and engage the children. This year, 154 college students throughout West Virginia assist the program. They receive an educational award, a living allowance, and credit for community service hours.
They are joined by seven junior volunteers, mostly in middle school grades, but some as old as 17. “We did a lot of training in the first two days,” said Wagoner, “so they’d understand what’s expected of them.” Wehrle and Wagoner recruited them in the months preceding the program. Two have siblings participating.
After reading to the group, one of the mentors in a group of rising third and fourth graders worked on vocabulary. She asked, “What do we think formidable means?” This inspired a brief discussion, after which she said, “Yes, it’s about inspiring a fear.” They also discussed the meaning of “compassion.”
Next to reading, art takes a main stage in the daily activities. Wehrle, who has organized art shows at Franklin Elementary School, explained that the focus lay on “found art,” or objects one can make from items that most people would otherwise toss in the trash.
Earlier, children in one class found a millipede on a sidewalk. Fascinated with the creature, they reproduced it by using “found art,” including popsicle sticks to represent its myriad legs.
She explained that the art uses very broad themes. The children, however, have wide latitude in how they use art to express themselves within the themes.
Energy Express boasts tremendous success in achieving improvement. In 31 years, the program has served 1.7 million healthy meals to approximately 84,000 children.
Nearly 90 percent of children involved increase or maintain their reading level, ensuring that skills learned remain in place going into the next fall.
In the opening days, the students were read to from a book called “Magic Ramen: the Story of Momofuko Ando.” This work shared the origin of ramen noodles and the story of the culinary craftsman who created it. Some classes recreated ramen with Play Doh, but a more ambitious challenge awaits.
For the open house on July 16, toward the end of the session, the children will make homemade noodles for inclusion in a spaghetti dinner. They will not be ramen, and they will have more original character than uniformity, but they will help to tell in a unique way the story of those who enjoyed and learned from their time in the program.
Parents and others who come will also see the walls of art that accumulated during the several weeks. Wehrle told of how the program does not send art home until the end of the term. “They can see all the art of the whole program,” she added.
