K D Moody teachers a group of students during a summer school session in Durant. The POSSE summer school program is expanding this summer, with classes like this one in every district.
Oklahoma State University to supply student teachers for POSSE summer school program
By Brandon Frye
Choctaw Nation
Durant, Okla. - The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Partnership of Summer School Education (POSSE) program teamed up with Oklahoma State University (OSU) to offer a better learning experience for students this upcoming summer.
The joint venture is being called “Educate and Collaborate.” Education experts from OSU and the Choctaw Nation crafted the program to provide classroom settings in Choctaw Country for OSU education majors.
POSSE is designed to provide summer intervention in reading and math for both Choctaw and non-Choctaw students in kindergarten through third grade who are attending public school within Choctaw Country. This summer POSSE is expanding to provide a summer learning site in each of the 10 ½ counties. The selection of eligible students is based on the end-of-year math and reading assessment benchmark scores, or teacher recommendation.
The practical benefit of this for young students attending summer school this year is there will be more available classrooms across the Choctaw Nation, as well as more teachers ready to guide their learning.
“We are getting to work with people who are experts in the field,” Larry Scott, Director of POSSE said. “We are talking about a major university’s education department. The resources they have will benefit the children of the Choctaw Nation.”
The relationship between the Choctaw Nation and OSU began roughly two years ago when officials from the university–including the Dean of the College of Education, Pamela “Sissi” Carroll–were introduced to leaders of the Choctaw Nation during a lunch meeting in Durant.
“Listening to Mrs. Joy Culbreath, Mrs. Stacy Shepherd, Mrs. Paula Harp, Mr. Jim Parrish, Mr. Larry Scott, Neal Hawkins, and Lori Wells at that meeting, I began to understand how deeply the Choctaw Nation is committed to education, especially the education of its children,” Carroll said. “In my role at the College of Education, and as a former teacher of middle and high school students, I was drawn to the wonderful opportunities for teaching, research, and service that a partnership with the Choctaw Nation offers the faculty and students of the College of Education.”
In addition to providing more teachers for our students, a partnership with a major research university like OSU opens up possibilities to better understand and research the success of programs like POSSE.
For example, according to research by the Education Department of the Choctaw Nation, students who attended the 2014 summer school demonstrated significant improvement in reading and math. The results from a parent survey also indicated that over 90 percent of parents surveyed were very satisfied with the summer school program. A partnership with a research university could help better uncover the specifics of statistics like these.
Scott said cooperative projects like “Educate and Collaborate,” bring student teachers into our schools for a summer, and could also help bring more teacher applicants to work an entire career in the schools within the Choctaw Nation.
Both parties aim to sustain and improve young children’s learning, as well as reinforce the students’ interest in learning.
“We take very seriously our goal of working with communities to identify and address needs–to be involved at the local level, and learn with the community as we develop approaches to address needs through teaching, research, and service,” Carroll said. “We will learn alongside the teachers of the summer school classes. We anticipate that children who participate in summer school will continue to demonstrate increased growth in mathematics and reading, as they did in 2013-2014.”