Horizons is so excited to be a part of Butler’s campus this summer! Horizons is a national program that works with low-income students in helping to close the achievement gap during a summer-intensive program. There are 51 sites across the country and one site is currently located in Indianapolis at St. Richard’s Episcopal School, the only site in Indiana. Each program focuses on academics as well as enrichment opportunities, such as a foreign language, art classes, yoga, dance, sports, etc. All Horizons students will also take swimming lessons to help boost self-confidence in and out of the classroom and provide life-saving skills that the children will take with them throughout their lives. The students also have field experiences out in the city where they can explore and learn from the opportunities that Indianapolis has to offer.
This summer, Horizons at SRES has become a multi-site program, and Butler has partnered with us to house all middle school students (6th, 7th, and 8th grade). We are thrilled to be able to partner with Butler in this new and exciting way, and the kids have been loving their first week being a part of a university.
Our Horizons middle school students will be working with a curriculum this summer that was developed by two students in the METL graduate program here at Butler and COE professor Dr. Shelley Furuness. Each grade will focus on a particular unit of study, and each unit was designed to allow for the children to explore a guiding question related to building and sustaining a healthy community. Our 6th graders this summer will be exploring sustainability and how to prepare healthy food while also caring for the environment. Our 7th grade class will be focusing on how to create healthy communities at home, at school, and also online. Finally, our 8th graders will be working toward being a force for good in the community, and will focus on ways that they can contribute to a positive and stable community.
A big part of our goal at Horizons is for our students to see themselves as life-long learners, and to see college as an attainable goal. We are so excited to be able to partner with Butler this summer so that our kids can start seeing themselves in this way!
You can learn more about Horizons and the work that we do in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzk3sV4p3XA