PrimeTime Scholars, through San Diego Unified School District’s Extended Learning Opportunities Department (ELO), provides students with an opportunity to participate in a five-week program where they build critical thinking skills, self-confidence and decision-making skills through public-private partnerships. The students receive 10 hours of rich and rigorous classroom instruction with a credentialed teacher, four to six hours of outreach and 12 hours of hands on experiences at various museums/programs in San Diego County.
Euclid and Garfield’s PrimeTime Programs took advantage of the opportunity afforded them through these amazing partnerships. Euclid’s third graders collaborated with the Living Coast Discovery Center and the San Diego Zoo while Garfield’s fifth graders with the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) and the Children’s Museum. In order to share in the excitement PrimeTime Scholars provides to the students, ELO tagged along with Euclid and Garfield’s PrimeTime Programs as they went on one of their many adventures.
Euclid’s third graders visited the San Diego Zoo where educators from the San Diego Zoo spent an hour with students talking about adaptations and provided students an opportunity to engage with some really cool biofacts, a king cheetah pelt, hippo lip, and porcupine quills, to name a few. They then took a guided walking tour of the Zoo looking for different adaptations; the highlights, sitting up close and personal with an orangutan and feeding a giraffe, experiences they will never forget.
Garfield’s fifth graders had an opportunity to visit Irving Penn’s photographic exhibit at the MOPA. There a docent provided them with information pertaining to the different periods of Penn’s lifelong photographic journey. In his own words, “A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.” Students discovered style techniques and then in turn practiced what they learned through using a photo booth as well as making postcards with photos they had taken.
PrimeTime Scholars provides students opportunities they may otherwise not be afforded and the smiles on their faces as they engage with those they are partnered with is priceless.
