Weekly Media Roundup  April 1, 2015

Tapping Their Potential: Sports Mentorship Academy Serves Winona Youth (Winona Daily News, Minnesota)

Twice a week, 10 middle-school boys practice shooting, passing, layups and free throws as part of the Sports Mentorship Academy (SMA); a free afterschool program teaching young people to make better choices through basketball. Students with behavioral and performance issues are referred by school staff to the academy. SMA intern Mike Iyobhebhe was recruited from Winona State University to serve as a mentor, so the boys could see that someone like them can make it to college. “I see them as untapped potential,” Iyobhebhe told the Winona Daily News. “They just need something they can relate to.” Staff members discuss social issues with the kids and act as tutors and mentors, leading study hall sessions that teach the boys how to take notes, study, and manage time.

Students Launch Transatlantic Balloon (Manchester Union Leader, New Hampshire)

On Friday evening, a group of Windham High School students launched a balloon with a lofty goal: to have it and its electronic payload cross the Atlantic Ocean and make landfall in Europe. jagSAT-4 is the fourth student-designed and engineered high altitude probe sent off by the afterschool program, but the first to focus on distance rather than altitude. jagSAT is one of several afterschool science programs available to Windham students. Although many of the kids involved are already interested in science and engineering, more of them find themselves becoming invested in the projects as the program goes on. “This has been incredible,” student Dan Savukinas told the Manchester Union Leader. “It is everything I love and enjoy about school. It’s educational, hands-on, and a challenge we have never done before.”

Paddle Math: Students Put Math in Motion (Grand Traverse Herald, Michigan)

About a dozen students meet twice a week to put math into motion in an afterschool boat building workshop at Traverse City West Middle School. The program teaches teens basic woodworking skills while helping them learn to work together. Each cut, hole and mark in the plywood of the soon-to-be stand-up paddle board the students are currently working on is also a chance for instructor Adam Burks to show the kids how the math they learn in class can be applied to the real world. Burks said that hands-on woodworking is one of the best ways to reinforce the mathematical concepts in geometry and algebra. “You can’t help but use math when you build boats,” Burks told the Grand Traverse Herald.

After School, These Kids in Ash-West Are Just Getting Crackin’ (Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise, Massachusetts)

Meetinghouse Elementary School nurse Marcia Sharkey is teaching kids that having healthy habits can be fun through “Let’s Get Crackin’,” a six-week afterschool program for kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders. Each week, the kids are broken into teams led by Oakmont Regional High School volunteers, and each team performs 40 minutes of exercise followed by a 20-minute health education session. The theme this year is “5-4-3-2-1 & 8,” which Sharkey says stands for different healthy habits students can adopt each day. “Five fruits and vegetables,” she told the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise. “Four glasses of water, three good laughs, two hours of screen time, one hour of exercise and eight hours of sleep.” Last week, the group did Zumba dancing and made yogurt and granola parfaits for their healthy snack.