ORANGE COUNTY, N.Y.–Middletown High School hosted its annual “Experience Our Programs” event on May 9, in which all the Middletown School District public schools presented what their classes and programs had created.
Hundreds of students from public schools all over Middletown milled around presentation tables and exhibits, and 1,300 parents, friends, and visitors jostled through the school.
Artwork from the district’s 7,500 students filled halls and classrooms. Some students donated their art to be auctioned, hoping to fund a student’s art degree.
A sixth-grade social studies class hosted a game show in the library. The district Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps showed its students’ drone flying abilities. Students in the biomedical program taught visitors simple medical procedures.
Kinsley told The Epoch Times about her third-grade class’s book that she helped write. Her class has made a book every year for the past three years. The class recorded their voices reading the book and made QR codes to let people listen to them.
This year’s book is called “A Spooky Story,” and the goal was to help the students learn about the writing process, including prewriting, drafting, and editing. The teachers also helped with grammar, spelling, and overall understandability of the story.
Kinsley described the process of making the story: “It was hard and kind of easy. And it was really easy to figure out what I wanted to write about.”
The Middletown school district has joined a global movement teaching the “Leader in Me” program in schools. Middletown is in its first year of the program, so currently, the teachers are receiving training on how to apply the curriculum in their classes.
The Leader in Me program aims to inspire leadership in students, using principles from the books “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and “The 4 Disciplines of Execution.”
The curriculum will be included in classes starting next school year, Christine Dumais told The Epoch Times. Dumais is the cultural co-lead, one of the two people in charge of running the Leader in Me program in Middletown.
Dumais described the reason why the school decided to start implementing the Leader in Me curriculum.
“We want our students to be more independent and to take more ownership over their work,” she said.
Middletown High School student Jadiella spoke about the biomedical section of “Project Lead The Way.”
Project Lead The Way is a program that helps students make advances in STEM fields such as medicine, engineering, and computer science.
Students in the first year of the program learn about crime scenes and cause of death analysis. The second year goes into human body systems. In the third year, students learn about medical intervention, teaching them what to do in medical emergencies. Students learn more advanced medical and surgical techniques in the fourth year.
Students who complete the program receive a Certificate in Medicine, which in some cases leads to job opportunities in the medical field.
“It’s really fun. It’s very interactive, which I was very happy with. There’s lots of dissecting and hands-on, which is great,” Jediella told The Epoch Times. “ It’s not so boring, just learning and absorbing, because it’s a lot of hard information. Some definitely want to be hands-on.”
Middletown Mayor Joseph DeStefano has three grandkids in the school district and is himself a graduate of Middletown High School. He visits the event every year.
“When we bring business leaders and community leaders into the school district, into these schools and they see what’s being provided here, they’re just so impressed. And I think it’s a big plus for industry and economic development and the community,” DeStefano told The Epoch Times.
