Cortney O’Brien, of Erie, saw first-hand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s education.
She worked as a teacher when classes were canceled and shifted online during the pandemic.
“That was hard. Not only was it a learning loss, it was also a social loss,” she said.
So when she heard about an opportunity to work for K-State Research and Extension as a summer intern for a program aimed at reversing COVID learning loss, she jumped on the opportunity.
She quit teaching in May to join her husband, a college professor, when he takes a sabbatical in the fall. The internship allows her to continue to work with kids but in a very different type of curriculum.
“This is a great hands-on opportunity,” she said. “They don’t realize they are learning, so you can teach them without teaching them.”
O’Brien is one of three interns working with the Southwind Extension District this summer. The district serves Allen, Neosho, Bourbon and Woodson counties.
The summer program offers a variety of fun activities and workshops aimed at reinforcing math, reading and other skills. For example, one of this year’s programs is a Space Camp that engage students in space-themed crafts while teaching science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills.
Clara Wicoff, an Extension agent, is supervising this year’s program, which was expanded to 80 interns across the state and is funded by the Kansas Department of Education. Last year, the district had two interns based in Iola. This year, they have three, each stationed at Iola, Fort Scott and Erie. They will work in teams of two to lead events in all four counties. Over 12 weeks last year, 56 interns reached 22,611 youth through 962 programs resulting in more than 1,975 hours of instruction, according to K-State Research and Extension.
Josie Plumlee is a returning intern. She’s a 2022 Iola High School graduate now attending Pittsburg State University to study nursing. Last summer she helped students incubate and hatch chicks, ducks and guineas. This year, she’ll help O’Brien, who is leading the incubation project at Erie.
Intern Gwen Fry is based in Fort Scott. A Uniontown High School graduate, Fry is currently attending K-State, studying communications science and disorders with the intention of becoming a speech pathologist. She joined the program to learn more about working with children, and also because she was heavily involved in 4-H as a youth.
Their work includes a six-week program based in Moran called “Choose Health: Food, Fun and Fitness.” It began June 7; in the first lesson, children read labels on bottles of drinks, then converted grams to teaspoons and measured how much sugar was in each.
Their finding: If you drink a 20-ounce bottle of Coke each day, it amounts to 52 pounds of sugar in a year. Try to visualize 52 pounds of sugar.
This past week, they used cards to represent servings of fruits and vegetables, then tried to accumulate the recommended servings of each.
“It’s more difficult than you think to get all your fruits and vegetables,” Wicoff noted. “It seems like an excessive amount.”
“You’ve never imagined how much sugar is in a drink or how much fruit and vegetables you need,” Fry added. “I started giving up Dr. Pepper and I don’t eat fast food anymore because we have another program coming up that talks about fast food.”
