To help acknowledge the approaching end of a more-than-three-year, $400,000 Spencer Grant, Putnam County High School held a special event on March 11 to showcase some of the projects students recently completed as part of the “Putnam Model” of education.
“We have these wonderful teachers here who have been doing amazing things through arts, through science, through writing, through history, that have been applying the principles of the Spencer Grant in their classroom through what’s called a ‘Putnam Model,’ which is not just work-based learning, but a project-based learning experience,” PCHS community liaison Dr. Avis Williams explained.
“We used to call it experiential learning, not just saying, ‘Here’s how you do it through reading.’ We actually teach things by having the students participate in them. So, we’ve taken our version of what we call the Putnam Model, which is project-based learning, and train our students here at Putnam so they’re ready when they go on to post-high school graduation.”
Williams said PCHS secured its three-year Spencer Grant in 2020 after proposing a project to answer the question, “How do we ‘untell’ a story that says children from poverty communities can’t learn?” The pandemic, however, delayed the grant's application until the following year, she added, giving the school essentially a “zero year” to prepare better and plan its strategy.
Much of what the Spencer Grant paid for were trips to Albany State University or the University of Georgia for rising PCHS juniors to see and experience a little of university life before reaching graduation.
“We take them for a college visit, so then it’s up to Albany State to sell Albany State when the students come down there,” Williams said. “It helps the students so much, too, because it’s not just a bus trip down there and back. They go for several days at a time and sit in classes, meet professors, eat with ASU students, and sleep in the dorms; they really get a feel for what ASU offers. And the same with UGA.”
Williams added that she’s convinced the trips went a long way toward easing the apprehension so many graduating seniors feel once high school ends. For several local students, a trip to Albany and even Athens was the farthest they’d ever traveled from home, especially without their parents. The Spencer Grant, she said, opened up a new world to them.
“I even tell parents that when it comes to Thanksgiving or even Christmas break, ‘Don’t let them come home. Don’t let them come home because they might not want to go back.’
“I tell them to go visit their kids at school, have them show [the parents] around, have your holiday with them down there, because if they come home too soon and start hanging out with their friends here, they may just decide they don’t want to go back,” Williams said.
Additionally, Williams said the PCHS-Spencer Grant partnership allowed the school to provide several students with $1,500 scholarships each year toward university acclimation.
“And when they go to Albany, they’re placed in collaborative groups so that they’re still together there,” she said. “So, our kids that go down there first with the Spencer Grant, they rarely have those problems. It really helps ease a lot of the fear and apprehension about being away from home.”
On the other hand, Williams said professors and administrators from ASU and UGA have visited Putnam County High School over the last few years. They want to see the facilities, meet the teachers, and understand the PCHS curriculum. They even use and interpret some of the data gathered to determine the Spencer Grant’s effectiveness.
And though this Spencer Grant officially ends June 30, Williams said plans are already underway to secure ongoing funding for the university visit program.
“This grant is ending, and we can’t get the same one again, but I do know the Spencer Grant people are very happy with our progress,” Williams said. “The executive director asked if we would be applying for something else, so we have some ideas about applying for another grant. There’s still a lot to be done."