Students take on new challenges at summer center By MAEGAN CLEARWOOD Student intern | Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2012 12:00 am CHESTERTOWN At a premiere screening of four movies last Friday, an audience of filmmakers and their families was transported to a beach, an airplane and the streets of Paris. They witnessed a daughter mourn her mother's death, laughed at the antics of two troublemaking high school seniors and gripped their armrests in terror as a killer penguin stalked her innocent prey. If they hadn't known any better, viewers never would have guessed that the filmmakers were rookies to the world of camerawork and editing. And they certainly couldn't have known they were a group of middle schoolers.
Young and Gifted Dick Goodall, CEO of Dixon Valve & Coupling Co., asks 12yearold Joy Nichols about her short story. The final draft is the product of her work with the Dixon Summer Center for Creative Writing and Film Production.
The 15 filmmakers were participants in the first Dixon Summer Center for Creative Writing and Film Production. They spent two weeks of their summer vacation at Washington College, honing their writing skills and familiarizing themselves with the art of filmmaking, then collaborating to create a final, edited project. The Dixon Center is one of 14 Maryland Summer Centers for Gifted and Talented Students offered this year to students grades four through 12. For 45 years, summer centers have challenged public school students on college and university campuses throughout the state, teaching programs on everything from engineering and space science to law and government. "They're exposed to things in this gifted and talented program that they wouldn't in a normal classroom. It's not just a fun camp with recess all day," said Stephanie Zenker, specialist for gifted education at the Maryland State Department of Education. Zenker said the programs have relied on corporate sponsorship since state funding for the summer centers was cut three years ago. "The thought of the centers closing was just heartbreaking," she said. Students and parents have always expressed interest in a creative writing center, but it wasn't until Dick Goodall, president and CEO of Dixon Valve & Coupling Co., approached Zenker about sponsoring a program that the idea became a reality. "We wanted to add enhancement to offer some more rigor for kids in Kent County. Writing was a great way to start the program," said Goodall, whose son and daughter are graduates of Kent County High School. "Writing well for employers today is so important. It's a key to success." Goodall, a former member of the state board of education, said he purposefully made the program nonresidential, opening it up to students from across the state. Five of the Dixon Center participants were not county residents; their parents either drove them to Chestertown each day or vacationed nearby. "I wanted local kids to get exposure," he said. "Every school has its strengths and weaknesses."
Zenker said there are 20 Kent County students participating in summer centers this year, a significant increase from previous summers when involvement was virtually nonexistent.
Along with sending information to teachers across the state, Zenker also gave a presentation about the summer centers at the middle school this spring to garner more interest. "We want the rest of the state to know that Kent County exists. They have a lot of bright kids that need rigor and challenge," she said. Students at the Dixon Center were challenged from day one. The first week focused solely on creative writing, filling sixhour days with workshops, revisions, and group discussions. Polished drafts of the students' writing were showcased in a gallery at the final celebration last Friday. Parents and guests read stories, talked to the authors and filled out response cards with encouragement and critique. "You see the individual kids in their writing. You actually hear their voices caught in their writing, and that's beautiful," said Annelle Tuminello, creative writing instructor. "Their ideas were absolutely brilliant." Tuminello had the students read two books for inspiration: "The Bay," by Gilbert Klingel, and "The Hunger Games," by Suzanne Collins. She said both authors are "master stylists," and their books showcase strong narrative and descriptive writing and center on similar political and environmental themes. Students discussed different aspects of the books each day, then used what they learned in their own work. They also took a field trip to Eastern Neck National Wildlife Refuge, where they soaked in the environment as inspiration for their stories. "Students said this inspired them to not sit back and watch, and that's the point," Tuminello said. The young writers took their finished products into the following week. They were split up into four groups and assigned the monumental task of turning one of their stories into a screenplay and, eventually, a film. Brian Palmer, digital film production instructor, said many of the students started with little or no experience in filmmaking or editing, but they "picked up really quickly." "They all really wanted to be here. They came every day hungry to learn," he said. "We didn't have Hollywood sets or a huge budget, but they pulled through and did really great work." Palmer, also the manager of the Multimedia Production Center at Washington College, compared the students' project to the college's annual 24Hour Digital Video Challenge. There, college students create a video following specific guidelines with limited resources; his middle school students, who worked in groups of three or four and had only about five hours to film, faced an even greater challenge. "People don't realize how much work goes into making a film," he said. Along with the final films, the audience watched a short video documenting student testimonials about the summer center compared to the public school system. Palmer, who said the summer center is about "waking up the schools in the district to what kinds of teaching could be more effective," interviewed students after representatives from the Board of Education visited and talked to them about their public school experiences last Wednesday. In the video, many of the students expressed frustration with the lack of creative stimulus in public school curriculums, describing their experiences in the classroom as boring or unchallenging. Their responses about the summer center, however, were overwhelmingly positive.
"It's really fun. I would much rather go here than school. You just have so much freedom to be creative," said Kent County Middle School seventhgrader Lila Ingersoll. Although the students enjoyed their time at the center, Zenker emphasized the difference between a camp and center; the summer centers focus on rigorous learning and challenging students outside of the classroom. "You could have stayed home in front of the TV or texted your friends all day, but you chose to do something really tough," she told students before the screening. Tuminello, who is taking her students' final stories with her to an Advanced Placement conference later this summer, said their hard work paid off. "The bottom line is, rigor is more than we can handle, because if it's more than we can handle, we can grow into it," she said. "The future is in the hands of these young people. It takes soul, it takes heart, it takes mind and it takes sweat." Zenker said the creative writing and film center will expand next summer with an additional program for high school students. "This was probably the most memorable part of their summer, and from what I've heard from alumni, it's an experience they will remember for the rest of their lives," she said.