COLOURS Redefines Summer Camp for the 21st Century

Students are putting finishing touches on their websites in Create Summer’s Coding Class.

Many of us in the Beltsville area grew up attending summer day camps at local schools, often run by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC). These camps went by several names, but the one I remember most was Summer Playground. For many of us, those camps weren’t just where we spent our summers—they were where we found our first jobs when we turned sixteen. We spent our days playing kickball, making arts and crafts, and taking field trips to the Beltsville pool (yes, there really was a Beltsville pool once).

But times have changed. For today’s generation, the COLOURS Program has completely redefined what summer camp can be.

Founded in 1992, COLOURS—now under the direction of Jason Cook—is based at Paint Branch Elementary School in College Park and at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (MLK). Over the years, COLOURS has partnered with numerous schools throughout Prince George’s County. According to its website, www.coloursprogram.org, COLOURS is “an ensemble arts leadership program designed to strengthen students academically, artistically, socially, and interpersonally.”

Earlier this year, COLOURS worked with students at MLK to produce Misunderstood, an original drama exploring how students see themselves versus how others perceive them.

This summer, COLOURS again partnered with MLK to run the Create Summer Program. Due to construction at Paint Branch Elementary, the program found a new home at MLK through a collaboration with The Stars Foundation (thestarsfoundation.org) and Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS). Funded by a 21st Century Grant secured by The Stars Foundation, the program hired high school interns from Bowie High, High Point High, and Fairmont Heights High to work directly with PGCPS educators and students. Together, they explored dance, poetry, fitness, soccer, and computer coding—all designed to challenge students physically, academically, and socially each day.

Students from MLK and Paint Branch Elementary took daily classes in computer coding, health and fitness, and spoken word and communication. Needless to say, we’ve come a long way from the days of kickball and macaroni crafts.

When I spoke with staff and students, everyone had glowing reviews of the program. Coding teacher Steve Cottington from Fairmont Heights High School said, “We have about 40 kids in the program, and it’s great because it strives to expose them to different types of skills.” In his class, Cottington and two senior PGCPS interns taught students how to build websites.

Sixth grader Keith Coutreyor from MLK shared that he built two sites—one about himself and another about “tweens, fitness, and healthy eating habits.” Each student created two websites: a personal one and another on a topic of their choice. Many chose themes that reflected issues teens face today. For example, eighth grader Ester Sekatawa created a site exploring peer pressure and the ways students respond to it.

The health and fitness component of the program covered a wide range of activities, including nutrition classes, soccer, and dance. Rising sixth grader Akunna Okonkwo said she loved the dance classes, which explored styles from the 1940s to the present. Students even dressed in period costumes to match the dances. Seventh grader Justin Brent added that soccer was a highlight, saying, “We learned skills and got to play in tournaments, which was fun.”

The spoken word and communication portion of the program focused on poetry. Students learned to read, write, and perform their own original works. According to sixth grader Sheldon Jones, they wrote poems about themselves, about being a teenager, and even about inanimate objects. They also studied what it meant to be a teenager in different eras, practiced grammar to strengthen their writing, and recorded performances of their poems to be embedded in their personal websites.

When I asked students what they enjoyed most about Create Summer, their answers were consistent—they loved being creative, making new friends, trying new things, and learning. But one comment stood out. Seventh grader Justin Brent told me that Mr. Cook “treated us like adults. We learned to clean up after ourselves so the janitors didn’t have to, and we learned to socialize with people outside of our usual groups instead of being on our electronic devices all the time.”

I can’t think of a better lesson to carry into the school year—and beyond—than that.