Institute lets students solve problems where they live

Jessica Johnson
The Post and Courier

Brian Thill, the S.C. Aquarium's school programs manager, shows students including Matthew Beech (center) how to dip their nets into the Wando River to catch organisms. They were on the dock at the Children's Park on Daniel Island.

Jessica Johnson
The Post and Courier

Battalion Chief Franklin Finley of the Charleston Fire Department and hazmat team speaks to students taking part in a pilot gifted and talented program on Daniel Island.

In one room, rising Daniel Island middle schoolers discussed a hypothetical chemical spill on the bridge connecting their home to Mount Pleasant with members of area hazmat teams.

In the other, rising fourth- and fifth-grade elementary students planned a park on undeveloped land slated for a marina just west of the children's park.

Altogether, about 41 students spent the last week in a Daniel Island School Summer Institute, a pilot program for gifted and talented students based on curricula designed by the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

The program allowed students to work on solving real problems using scenarios based on where they actually live. And those involved hope that the program will be expanded through the Berkeley County School District and other area schools.

By the end of the week, middle school students formulated a plan on what to do, who to evacuate and how they would contain the spill and how it might affect the park elementary students were planning next door.

The program was more than a year in the making. Parent Stacey Lindbergh helped implement the idea after her two children had been identified by the state as gifted and talented. Lindbergh said she didn't receive the gifted and talented label as a kid.

"What is that?" Lindbergh recalls thinking. "What do I do?"

The school told her to seek advice from the College of William & Mary. "These are special-needs kids, you have to advocate for them," Lindbergh said she learned.

The intelligence of her children required that they constantly be stimulated and challenged. So she went to Daniel Island School Principal Lori Dibble to see if something could be done for the kids.

School leaders agreed. While teachers rewrote a College of William & Mary curriculum, which is now the pilot program, Lindbergh worked to bring in businesses.

During the program, an engineer from SCE&G, members of the Charleston County Hazmat team, the South Carolina Aquarium and land development and landscape architects spent parts of last week working with students on their projects.

Dibble said the business members had as much fun as the kids did.

Early in the weeklong program, middle school students gathered around a map armed with information about the area's tides and winds trying to figure out what would happen if a tanker truck full of hydrochloric acid overturned on Interstate 526's James B. Edwards Bridge.

Merrie Fisher, Berkeley County Schools gifted coordinator, said the idea of solving problems in their own neighborhood had the kids excited.

In one exercise, the middle school group substituted vinegar as hydrochloric acid attempting to determine how to neutralize the chemical.

Cristian Widenhouse, a rising seventh-grader, said the first day was a lot of trial and error.

Students dumped baking soda into the vinegar to neutralize the acid, but decided against using it in their plan.

Widenhouse thought the chemical reaction could have caused a tsunami in real life. In a presentation to community members Friday, students said there wouldn't have been a truck big enough.

But it turned out that with the day's tides and the winds, the Wando River would have diluted the acid on its own, said Mary Blanchard, a teacher who worked with middle schools students.

"I've had the most fun teaching than I ever had. It's more like play than work," Blanchard said.

Down river from the mock spill is where elementary students were planning a park, which included things they wanted that the island didn't already have, including a skate park and a dog park.

They also built a model similar to what an architect might. An engineer from SCE&G worked with students who decided to build a park using solar electricity. Kids also worked to save trees already growing on the tract of land. The children hope that one day their mock plan might be used in a real Daniel Island park.

"What came out of it was more than we ever expected," said teacher Colleen Murphy.

Reach Jessica Johnson at 937-5921 or jjohnson@postandcourier.com.