Spring 2004

For some, enrichment classes beat Saturday cartoons

By Wendy Leopold

On Saturday mornings, 10-year-old Naomi Essome does what for many fifth-graders is the unthinkable. As a participant in Project Excite, she rises early, downs a quick breakfast and goes off eagerly to class.

Rita Fallon (left), fifth-grade teacher at King Lab School, works with fourth-grade students (from left) Shawneen Spencer-Hunwick of Lincoln Elementary School; Naomi Gray of Timber Ridge Magnet School; and Maia Korman of Lincoln Elementary School. The students are measuring and comparing weather conditions over a period of time.

photo by Stephen Anzaldi

To hear the Lincoln School student tell it, her Saturday enrichment classes at Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development are a far more attractive option than the lure of Saturday cartoons. “I’ve learned so much about science, engineering and math,” Naomi enthuses. “And the cool part is that you learn stuff in a really fun way.”

That’s music to the ears of all involved in Project Excite, an unprecedented collaboration between Evanston-Skokie School District 65, Evanston Township High School (District 202) and Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy and Center for Talent Development.

Now in its fourth year and with approximately 80 District 65 students participating, Project Excite provides enriching science and math experiences to academically talented minority students from a variety of Evanston public schools in an effort to help close the academic achievement gap between minority and non-minority students.

In particular, Project Excite aims over seven years to prepare these students from the third through ninth grades for honors and advanced placement (AP) classes at Evanston Township High School (ETHS) and for the high school’s highly respected, rigorous Chemistry/Physics Program, whose graduates go on to top tier universities and colleges.

Project Excite exceeded its own expectations last year when 11 of its 19 then-fifth graders qualified to take the Gateways pre-algebra course this year. Taking the pre-algebra class in sixth grade puts the students in line to successfully complete 1 Algebra Honors and Geometry before they enter Evanston Township High School.

“We were blown away by the large number of Project Excite fifth graders who qualified for pre-algebra,” says Randee Blair, math curriculum coordinator for District 65. “We now have more minority middle school students taking pre-algebra than the district has ever had before.” The 11 students represented a 300 percent increase of minority students qualifying for pre-algebra from the same schools the previous year.

Those Project Excite sixth graders who are not in pre-algebra this year are expected to qualify this year to take the Gateways course next year, when they are in seventh grade. “That would put all of the them on track to take calculus and participate in the (high school’s) Chem/Phys Program,” says ETHS physics teacher Mark Vondracek.

Project Excite grew out of discussions between District 202’s Vondracek, ETHS teachers John Benson and Ron Sellke and Northwestern’s Center for Talent Development director Paula Olszewski-Kubilius some six years ago. The three ETHS teachers had experience teaching summer enrichment courses at the Center for Talent Development and were convinced that the Center could help provide minority students with the solid science and mathematics foundation that they needed for advanced ETHS courses.

Professors, teachers, and administrators from Northwestern, District 65 and District 202 developed Project Excite, a seven-year pilot project designed to help close the well-documented minority achievement gap that exists not just in Evanston but also in school districts across the nation. The University pledged $300,000 for the first four years, three-quarters of the project’s costs. It secured additional money to put a computer into the home of every student participant in the fourth grade or higher.

“Reaching the Top,” an influential 1999 report by the College Board, concluded that the national gap in achievement between minority and non-minority students was pervasive at all socioeconomic levels, not just for low income, minority children.

Efforts to close the minority academic achievement gap often come too late and without adequate support, experts say. By starting in third grade, Project Excite works with students at a young age and develops student who grow up together thinking that math and science are exciting and worthwhile and who support one another’s intellectual achievements, says veteran ETHS mathematics teacher John Benson.

With success in preparing Project Excite students for the first hurdle – pre-algebra — that appears to be happening. “What we hope to see in another few years is a change in the profile of our uppermost level classes, with more students of color taking part,” says Benson, who has taught AP math and college level math classes at ETHS for 35 years.

Olszewski-Kubilius oversees Project Excite with help from Northwestern’s Center for Talent Development staff Mephie and Daphne Ngoi. (Mephie Ngoi taught AP Chemistry and in the Chem/Phys Program at ETHS for 22 years.) All three point to the pressures on academically talented children at critical junctures, particularly in middle school, not to appear “nerdy” or “too smart.”

Using minority student mentors from the high school and Northwestern, Project Excite works to instill confidence in its student participants. It not only lets them know that there is nothing wrong with being curious and bright, it also works with Project Excite parents to help them support their children’s intellectual activities and high expectations.

In March, educator Theresa Perry, author of “Young, Gifted and Black,” talked with Project Excite parents, teachers and administrators about the importance of supporting student expectations for high achievement.

This year sixth graders in Project Excite will choose from summer courses in computer programming, engineering, physics, forensics, algebra and statistics when they take part in the Center for Talent Development’s summer program for academically talented students.

In the fall, a new cohort of third graders will be selected for Project Excite and many of this year’s sixth graders will begin taking algebra.

“The proof is still a few years down the road, but if we succeed in increasing the number of minority students in our accelerated classes, this could be a model for the rest of the country,” says ETHS math teacher Benson. “We have high hopes for Project Excite.”