Miami-Dade summer school begins with something for everyone – NBC 6 South Florida

The school year’s over, but summer school’s just starting.

In Miami-Dade County Public Schools, they call it the Summer 305 Experience. It involves 112 schools and the district is expecting more than 35,000 students to enroll to take advantage of programs geared to every grade level, every interest, and every academic need.

Summer 305 looks a lot like school, because it is — with some key differences.

“They do have a shorter day, however, it is fully hands-on and the students get to interact and have collaborative conversations as opposed to the regular school year where it’s more traditional learning,” said Mileydis Torrens, principal of Joelle C. Good Elementary School.

A big part of the experience is enrichment, but Summer 305 is equally concentrated on what they call recovery, which means filling in learning gaps.

“Summer 305 this year is all about making sure that students gaps are closed for certain programs, those are the students that are in the reading camp in third grade as well as prepare those students for the next grade level, we also have this year the newcomer language program which is for students that just got here, they are able to practice their English and other foundational skills,” Torrens said.

20,000 immigrant students enrolled in Miami-Dade Schools this year. It’s crucial that they learn the language and the culture.

“We want them to understand different cultures, you know our district is a melting pot, a beautiful melting pot, so they’re gonna be learning about other cultures, and about things that make American culture, they come here, it’s really difficult, they don’t know the language, they don’t know the culture,” said Cecilia Monteagudo, head of the district’s English instruction unit.

For high school students, Summer 305 presents enrichment options such as engineering, creative writing taught by authors, arts classes, and an internship program which pairs students with local businesses.

So how’s it going so far? It’s a small sample size, but I asked fifth-grader Liz Ramos if she’d rather be at home or where she was, at summer school.

“Here at summer school because we have so much activities and you learn something new every single day,” Liz said.

Parents have until Thursday to sign their kids up for Summer 305.