Aspiration Academy: A place for children to learn and grow through inspiration, innovation
Creating animations. Learning about how horses can help disabled children and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. Discovering the process of sowing seeds in the ground and watching a plant sprout to one day produce tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables. The chance to explore a fire truck.
These are just a handful of the opportunities third-graders at Aspiration Academy, an afterschool program at University Park Elementary School in Melbourne, have enjoyed since January.
Robert “Bob” Barnes, an 81-year-old West Melbourne resident, began making plans for the program six or seven years ago as he worked with kids through the Children’s Hunger Project, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2010.
In the past, Barnes has said though he can't change a child's ZIP code in a low-income area, he can do two things to help them succeed in life: feed them and provide them with opportunity to learn.
Through the Children's Hunger Project, Barnes' vision provides weekend meals for thousands of students in the Brevard Public Schools system, to tide them over while they're not getting fed as they are during the school week.
Now, with Aspiration Academy, he's beginning the journey of giving kids experiences they've never had before.
The program's goal is to improve kids’ math and reading skills through a simple concept: introduce them to hands-on experiences that will encourage them to learn math or read books on their own to learn more about the subject.
After years of preparation and collaborating with local community members, Barnes finally saw the idea come to fruition on Jan. 5 when kids returned to school. The program is funded mainly by private donors, with any shortage supplemented with his own money, he said.
"It's going better than I anticipated," he said. "All the kids talk about toward the end of the day is staying longer in the school building to be part of Aspiration Academy. Who ever heard of such a thing?"
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The kids — a group of about 10 third-graders with a tendency toward independent learning and a lot of potential, with many learning English as a second language, according to Principal Ana Diaz — have met after school Monday through Thursday every week since.
In that time, a variety of topics has been presented by local organizations and community members, ranging from Donn Weaver with the Veterans Memorial Center to fire inspectors with the Melbourne Fire Department; from master gardeners taught by University of Florida urban horticulture agent Sally Scalera to Pamela Rogan with Harmony Farms and more.
The experience that stands out most to Deborah Kofkin, director of education for Aspiration Academy, is when Codecraft Works — a Brevard-based educational technology company that provides computer programming lessons to students and teachers — taught the students how to create animation over the course of four Tuesdays.
“On the last day they were there, our young scholars all shared what they had done with their other young scholars,” she said. “It had never been so quiet in the room (as it was) when they were all working on something.”
She added that seeing how quickly they picked up on the concept of coding was amazing to her.
“I’m trying to listen to what (the instructors are) saying, and they might as well have been speaking Russian or another foreign language — I just couldn’t even grasp what they were saying, and the kids are all there and they’re doing this, and they’re like, ‘Wow, I can make it do this, and I can do that,’” she said.
Kofkin, a teacher of more than 30 years who retired in 2019, said being able to give kids more one-on-one instruction than she did in a more traditional teaching setting has been beneficial.
“At Aspiration Academy, I’m available to do what’s best for each individual child, and it’s absolutely amazing. And to see how they have grown, is just — it’s fabulous," she said.
Diaz, who helped Barnes pick certain themes to focus the lessons on prior to January, said she’s noticed a difference in the students since they started attending the program.
“(They’re) like ‘I belong to a niche’ … and there comes a sense of pride with that,” she said. “They’re super excited every time we have speakers and we have someone that comes in to visit with them. They get very excited about that. So there’s been a lot of pride in these children.”
Sometimes, students may not perform well in school without background knowledge on a topic, Diaz said. As she was working with Barnes to plan the program, it was important to her to think about giving kids opportunities they may not have access to as a way to help create that knowledge.
“We have children that live here on the Space Coast and have never been to Kennedy Space Center; they’ve never been to the beach,” she said, adding that while occasionally there are chances during the school day to incorporate hands-on experiences, the pandemic has limited those opportunities.
Currently, Aspiration Academy works specifically with third-graders. Diaz said this age group is a good one to work with, as they’re making the transition from learning to read to using that skill to make sense of a topic.
In coming years, Barnes plans to follow the current third-graders through sixth grade, while adding new third-graders to the program each year.
He also wants to expand Aspiration Academy.
Initially, the hope was to expand to each school in Brevard County. But with the outpouring of support from community members and groups, he’s considering the potential of a building in different sections of the county.
“This concept of having our own building only came about after we got into the program, and I’m starting to think, ‘Wow, how do we duplicate this now in other schools?’ And it’s a pretty daunting task,” he said.
“If we had our own building, we could do this 12 months of the year, because we would have our own delivery system, our own ability to get children to and from the school, and that would be marvelous because of the summertime.”
Right now, the biggest barrier to expanding is the cost of getting a building and the services needed to get kids to and from that location.
But in terms of volunteers, Kofkin said she believes there are plenty of people willing to help.
“There are always retired teachers, there are always people that have time and want to help children who have been vetted for 30 years because they have been a school teacher or a police officer or a firefighter,” she said.
For information on Aspiration Academy, visit their website at aspirationacademy.org.
Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at 321-290-4744 or fwalker@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @_finchwalker.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hands-on experiences at Aspiration Academy help kids strengthen skills
