Grant funding provides Troy students with summer programs

Last week at Troy High School, a two-week summer roller coasters and skate parks class began, and at the W.F. Morrison Elementary a group of elementary school students spent a day at The Jurassic Quest Dinosaur Exhibit in Missoula.

The GearUp (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness of Undergraduate Programs) seven-year long grant allowed Cory Andersen, who has been teaching science at Troy Middle and High school for nine years, to teach a summer course on skate parks and roller coasters.

Over the past three years, the Libby School District received approximately $700,000 in grant funding. This year, the schools received $97,000 from the GearUp grant.

According to Anita Winslow, the GearUp Grant liaison for Libby High School and Middle School, the grant helps students participate in academic events, field trips, college visits, and STEM camps that they might not necessarily have the opportunity to participate in otherwise. The grant also helps pay for the teachers to be trained in Google applications on the school’s Google Chromebooks and for professional development guest speakers to come speak to the students.

According to Andersen, five to six seventh and eight-grade students attended the two-week summer class, which allows for “more one-on-one time with the students,” Andersen said.

“The kids enjoy hands-on stuff,” said Andersen. “They learn about physical science, from basic physics and Newton’s Laws of Motion.”

“It’s really great, I enjoy it,” said Collin Stecher, who will be in eighth grade this fall. Stecher said that he might grow up to build skate parks, but his real dream is to become a professional skier.

“We get to hang out with friends and go on fun trips,” said Delaney Duve, who is going into ninth grade this fall.

Last week, the summer-class students learned about the laws of roller coasters, and were assigned to build their own model roller coaster using pipe-insulation and hot-glue guns. After constructing the model roller coasters, the students placed a marble on the tracks and used it to measure speed and energy.

This week, the students are learning about skate parks, and are busy constructing model skate parks with cardboard, straws, and hot-glue guns.

Thanks to another grant given to the Troy elementary school, MOST (Montana Out-of-School Time) grant, a group of elementary students traveled down to the Jurassic Quest exhibit at The University of Montana on a field trip to learn about and interact with ultra-realistic, life-size animatronic dinosaurs.

Jennifer Higgins, the Student Intervention Coordinator at the Elementary School, led the students through the exhibit. According to Higgins, 36 students from kindergarten through sixth-grade attended.

The students each got VIP passes for the Jurassic Quest, so they had unlimited access to the rides and activities, which included a “fossil dig” station, a green screen picture with dinosaurs, and a bounce-house maze.

The students not only got to learn and interact with the dinosaurs, they also got to ride some of them.

“It was a great opportunity for kids of Troy to see the world outside of Troy.” Higgins said, “A lot of those kids have never been out of Lincoln County.”

Reporter Bethany Rolfson may be reached at 293-4124 or by email at Reporter@TheWesternNews.com