Student participation in summer programming can be an effective way to address students' academic and developmental needs. When well implemented and well attended, summer enrichment programs, academic programs, and employment programs have demonstrated positive outcomes for youth in areas related to program content, including academic achievement…

This study examined the relationship between using the Ignite by Hatch™ educational gaming system and assessments of the developmental status of young children participating in the 2023 Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) Summer Transition Program. Researchers collected data that describe the extent to which the children engaged…

Background: In response to the effort to increase minority enrollment in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, STEM summer bridge programs were created to help minorities with the transition from high school to college with the long-term goal of increasing the diversity of professionals in STEM. The goal of this…

Many high school students learn about nutrient cycling during biology, environmental science, and agriculture classes. These lessons often focus on soil and plants, and nutrient cycling is usually taught independently from climate change. Scientists know that animals, including fish, can have strong effects on nutrient cycling (i.e., nitrogen and…

The purpose of this paper is to present a profile of middle-school-age youth who participated in a weeklong experiential residential camp focused on helping campers learn about and interact with money, personal finance topics, and mainstream financial service providers. Based on pre- and post-test data, it was determined an experiential real-world…

Environmental education (EE) programs, when combined with human-wildlife interactions (HWI), can trigger emotions, an essential part of attitudes that influence pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). We used participant observation and a post-event evaluation survey to investigate emotional response to HWI among participants from marine educational…

Immersive professional development is often used to provide teachers first-hand experience in developing place-based curricula. Knowing this, we had carefully crafted such a professional development for our participants to learn how to engage their students in local watershed research and ecology. However, following year one of a two-year…

In this summer program, preservice teachers are recruited to work with children from the community and are mentored closely by two faculty members who are literacy education professors. This allows the candidates to learn from faculty mentors and their peers, a proven model for effective field experiences. Despite the research being done on remote…

For three weeks each June, the authors' PDS hosts a summer program called the Academy for Future Teachers (AFT), serving high school students interested in a teaching career. Partners across the PDS convene to support high-school AFT participants, including master teachers (P-12 teachers from local school districts and university faculty) and PDS…

This study used a combination of surveys and drawing-based metrics to evaluate whether integration of art-based activities into EE camp programing could enhance environmental orientations of diverse youth ages 6-12 (n = 285) in Athens, GA, USA. Compared to a control group, art-based EE had a positive effect on children's eco-awareness and…

The teacher shortage calls for innovative recruitment, development, and retention practices. This qualitative inquiry highlights the Academy for Future Teachers (AFT), a teacher-cadet program for high-schoolers interested in teaching. We endeavored to understand how the varied participants' in AFT (high schoolers, teacher residents, and master…

This paper examines how two language educators of color developed critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) in a combined youth participatory action research and teacher education program. Specifically, as a multilingual and diverse group of educators, we chose to use Latin@/o Critical Theory (LatCrit) as our methodology to align with the…

Camp scholars have designed structured curricula to engender specific outcomes and to break down the "black box" of programming. Implementation evaluation explores how well a program operates when delivered, further breaking down the black box. The purpose of this study was to explore the implementation of a new structured camp…

This article analyzes data from a summer literacy program for intermediate and middle-level children of migrant farmworkers. The program was grounded in a sociocultural perspective on literacy, stressing the importance of interaction and collaboration within socioculturally responsive pedagogy, using enabling literature to empower students.…

This article seeks to characterize Teach For America's (TFA) theoretical framework as engendering disillusionment among its corps members. Given that the corps members have little to no pedagogical or methods training prior to taking on teaching positions through TFA, the lessons learned during the summer training set the stage for the…