Fun and games and academics, too

Initiative to link community centers with schools

Children participated in a science lesson at Murphy Community Center's camp on Wednesday. A new initiative seeks to coordinate programming between community centers and schools. (PHOTOS BY DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF)

At Dorchester's Murphy Community Center, 7-year-olds are using chemistry to learn how police investigators identify mysterious substances. At Franklin Park's White Stadium, children from 7 to 14 are writing essays and discussing literature. And at Allston's Jackson-Mann Community Center, children are learning sign language and Spanish.

If this doesn't sound much like summer camp, get used to it.

This is what Mayor Thomas M. Menino's new "Boston miracle" looks like: Children in summer camp putting down basketballs and jumping out of the pool to open a book or conduct a science experiment.

Dozens of the recreational camps based at community centers across the city have been incorporating academics into the regular routine, the first step in a broad community learning initiative meant to link programming at community centers, libraries, and schools.

In his January State of the City address, Menino called the initiative a new "Boston miracle" to put it in league with the city's 1990s community policing efforts. The idea is to improve test scores and decrease youth violence by getting all of a community's resources lined up behind student success.

Given what children have been doing voluntarily at White Stadium, miracle may be an appropriate designation. More than 100 youths have been filing into the Roxbury athletic complex every Monday this summer to talk about their summer reading and to study grammar and punctuation. They are among the 400 to 600 students who also participate in drop-in summer athletic activities at White Stadium Tuesday to Friday.

"It's summer fun and sun, and yet there's this academic piece," said Daphne Griffin, executive director of the Boston Centers for Youth and Families.

The students gather under tents on outdoor athletic fields when the weather is nice or underneath the stands when it's not. They have also met in locker rooms and offices, said Ryan FitzGerald, the city's director of recreation, sports, and fitness. Staff members at the center who also are Boston public school teachers design the curriculum, which is intended to help bridge the learning gap that typically occurs in the summer.

"You work hard during the school year and have this time where you can run around and have some fun, but this will allow them to not come back with the same amount of cobwebs in the fall," FitzGerald said. "It keeps them sharp and competitive as students."

At the Murphy Community Center, which bustled on a rainy summer day Wednesday, 7-year-olds tried out some crime scene investigation techniques under the direction of camp counselor Sarah Downing.

"Last session we did one about the human body, and this session we're doing one about crime scene investigation, and they're really excited about it," Downing, 20, said, as campers ran back and forth across a gym floor playing street hockey. "We need to calm them down a little bit to start it off - read the directions and stuff - and at first they're kind of like 'eh,' and then they get really into it and volunteer to do stuff."

The workbooks and materials for the Murphy Community Center's science lab were purchased through a $120,000 Associated Grant Makers grant that funded similar academic activities at 17 community-center camps in the city this summer, Griffin said.

An informal survey of children yesterday found the science lab was mostly a hit.

"We get to experiment with stuff, and we get to learn, and we get to write stuff," said Nina Mazzella, 7, of Dorchester, who described that morning's science experiment. "I learned that when you put vinegar on baking soda, it bubbles."

Even Nolan Mahoney, a 6-year-old who said he prefers gym to science lab, said that learning about how police lift fingerprints and investigate crime scenes was interesting.

Griffin said the integration of academics into the camps, which she said was taking place "to varying degrees" at each of the city's more than 50 summer day camps, is intended to get staff members thinking about the more in-depth coordination that will take place starting in the fall. In coming months, city workers in community centers and gyms will start receiving training on how to coordinate their programming with schools and libraries in their area.

"While in the summer we dealt with the breadth of academic infusion into summer programs, in the fall we'll begin to deepen that engagement," Griffin said.

That means that after-school basketball leagues at community centers in the city could start explaining how statistics are used in sports. Other children may learn graphic design by creating their own baseball trading cards.

"These are the things we know reinforce the school day," Griffin said.

John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com.