LA GRANDE — The school year at La Grande High School is still a few weeks away, but for almost 30 members of the school’s new summer Freshman Academy, they have reason to feel like the school year has already started.

And in a very real sense it has for them.

Almost all students participating in the three-week program are earning an elective credit that can be applied toward high school graduation. The program, which concludes Thursday, Aug. 19, spans three hours each Monday through Thursday and has students making things like small rockets and carbon dioxide-powered cars as they learn about math, science, English and writing concepts.

“Our teachers are doing a great job of showing students how much fun learning can be,” said LHS Assistant Principal Eric Freeman.

The elective credit academy students are earning, and the added instruction, will help at a time when they can be vulnerable to falling behind the necessary pace needed to graduate. Educators often lament that freshmen sometimes do not take the first year of high school seriously and end up not passing some classes, putting them in a hole they may spend the rest of their high school career trying to climb out.

Those attending LHS’s Freshman Academy will start high school with an elective credit and extra instruction.

“They are starting ahead,” said Larissa Prosch, Freshman Academy teacher and an LHS special education teacher.

Other programs in the district

The timing of the start of LHS’s Freshman Academy, which is open to all incoming freshmen, is excellent, said Freshman Academy teacher John Vollinger, who will be teaching English at LHS this fall. Vollinger said students have had reduced in-person interaction with their friends over the past 1-1/2 years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Freshman Academy is providing a valuable opportunity for more interaction.

Freshman Academy instructor James Akers, a math teacher at LHS, said it is easy to see that students like the new program.

“They are energetic and are enjoying it,” he said.

LHS’s Freshman Academy complements the school district’s new JumpStart program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, which helps grade-level transitions.

Brett Smith, principal of Island City Elementary School, said teachers at his school providing JumpStart instruction are doing a good job of helping children discover that learning math, reading and writing can be a fun experience. Smith said a second grade parent told him that her child said, “I’ve never had so much fun in school.”

The Island City principal said JumpStart is helping children because it provides the opportunity to learn in small class settings, allowing students to have questions answered quickly and have more one-on-one interactions with teachers.

Preparing students to help teachers

Kelly Oliver, a sixth grade JumpStart instructor at La Grande Middle School, said the program’s students will be in a position to help teachers and classmates in the fall, especially because they will be familiar with the LMS building. She said, for example, if she needs to have students get something from the LMS copy room, some will already know where it is.

Sixth grade JumpStart teacher Kindi Irvin also sees a benefit to the program.

Irvin, who is an LMS sixth-grade teacher during the regular school year, said if she is instructing students about the meaning of a word like “adjective,” her Jump Start students will understand and be able to help their classmates learn what it means.

Alexa Yohannan, also a sixth-grade JumpStart teacher, said the goal of teachers is to show students how enjoyable and exciting education can be. Yohannan used the game of Pictionary to help children develop math, art and writing skills. For example, one Pictionary exercise calls for a student to draw a math term and then another student must write what it means.

“We want to come up with different ways to make learning engaging and fun,” said Yohannan, who will be teaching sixth grade during the regular school year.

JumpStart and Freshman Academy are funded by federal grants the La Grande School District received through the state for developing programs that help students whose academic progress has been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to La Grande School District Assistant Superintendent Scott Carpenter.