Rehoboth Elementary empowers dreams

Rehoboth Elementary School recently completed the first year of a new program titled Rehoboth Empowers Dreams. A federally funded program, the RED aim is to expose elementary school students to job possibilities and career paths via an after-school program that meets twice a week for 12 weeks in fall and spring.

Rehoboth Elementary School, with the aid of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, partnered with many area businesses and organizations to aid with its goals. The businesses and organizations included Browseabout Books, Safeway, B&B Music, Delaware Beach Life magazine, Cape Gazette, Azura Clothing, Tomato Sunshine, Big Fish Grill, Crossfit Lewes, Cape Henlopen State Park and the Rehoboth Beach Museum. The hands-on curriculum for each group was created around a certain type of business; then students visited the local businesses that related to the curriculum directly.

This year 132 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders participated in the program. “We were really excited with the success and participation rate this year,” said Erin Bailey, program administrator and fifth-grade teacher. “Ultimately, we would like to engage as many students as possible to help them understand the many career opportunities that there are right in their own communities.”

Kris Carper, owner of Crossfit Lewes provided a workout program dubbed Let’s Get Active. Students noticed physical and mental changes in their lives.  “I had fun learning proper breathing techniques and the different types of exercises that work the different muscle groups," said Lauryn Head.

While visiting the Cape Gazette offices to see how a newspaper puts everything together, Dan Yi Chen said, “in Beach Breeze I learned how to interview people and quote something that they said. I also learned how to make a sentence make sense and to organize sentences with the most important things in the beginning.”

Alyssa Titus shared her crafting supplies and ideas for recycling to create the Earth Day windows at the Rehoboth Beach Museum, “We learned how to make things have a new purpose. Crafty Critters showed me how fun recycling can actually be,” Avery Silicato said.

Next year, Rehoboth Empowers Dreams will be adding an engineering program that will include programing and operating a drone purchased with funds from the grant. “We are really looking forward to our new engineering program and hope to engage the children with local engineers, to help them understand what kind of work real engineers do in a community,” said Cody Smith, program administrator and fifth-grade math teacher at Rehoboth Elementary School.

Funding for this program came from a 21st Century Community Learning Centers program provided by the U.S. Department of Education and administered through the Delaware Department of Education. Erin Bailey and fellow fifth-grade teacher Cody Smith applied for the federal grant in 2014. If all guidelines are met, the program will continue through school year 2018-19.

Any local businesses that would like to participate in the RED program for the 2015-16 school year can contact Smith at cody.smith@cape.k12.de.us.