Kelly Kenoyer
Children in Sweet Home looking to spend time with peers will soon have a new, free option thanks to a grant from Linn County.
Starting Oct. 5, students in the Sweet Home area will have the opportunity to join a free evening enrichment program put on by the library, 4-H, Outdoor School, and SHOCASE. The program takes place in the Community Center from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Monday through Thursday.
Local retired teacher Kathi Collins helped Library Director Rose Peda organize the project.
“We feel it’s a much-needed thing, considering the online learning method and the fact that children just don’t have a chance to interact with other children and adults, other than their parents,” Peda said.
Due to social distancing requirements, there will only be 30 kids in the building at a time, along with 12 adults there to mentor, teach and engage with them.
“These are cohorts of five, and there are six cohorts. So we’ll have two adults in each cohort, which is wonderful,” Collins said.
Cohorts will be separated by age, with early elementary students paired together and high schoolers together.
The adults staffing the program will be a mix of classified employees, paid tutors and volunteers, including retired teachers and Ph.D candidates from Oregon State University who are entering careers in teaching. Those OSU students gain important experience working with children and teaching, while also having the resource of experienced retired teachers to help them.
“4-H has a vast assortment and collection of programs that they can present and engage students in,” Collins said. Those kinds of enriching activities will be a major component of the program, along with tutors being available to help students with assigned schoolwork, if their parents wish.
“We wouldn’t put a seventh-grader with a kindergartener,” Peda said. The youths will learn through 4-H programming on various topics, and organizations like SHOCASE will drop in to teach about art or work with students to create art projects.
“An artist might be able to come in, and we provide the materials for them,” Collins said, and the students can create art like pottery with the guest teacher.
Outdoor School programming will be aimed at fifth- and sixth-graders, Peda said. “Ames Creek is right behind the community center, so they’ll be able to study a habitat.”
Those activities and mentoring aren’t the only support. Counselors will also be available to parents and youth through the program, based on need.
“It could be as simple as a student saying, ‘I really have a hard time doing this and went through that’ and being able to work with a counselor who has some time and is not engaged with the rest of cohort at the time to speak privately,” Collins said.
“We’re very thankful to the Linn county commissioners for having the foresight to set this money aside to help children,” Peda said.
Interested families can enroll on the library’s website, at sweethomeor.gov/library, or come in person to the library to register with the help of library staff.