By Kalvin D. Perron
Staff Reporter
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BAY MILLS - Bay Mills Ojibwe Charter School hosted its quarterly Paragon open house, "A journey through history..."on Wednesday, Sept. 21. Attendees were taken on a guided tour through history with presentations in each classroom. The open house was designed to give parents an inside look at the different time periods studied by each grade, Kindergarten through fifth, as part of their Paragon Social Studies curriculum.
Rather than visiting just one classroom, visitors, led by their sixth-grade tour guides, spent 10 minutes in each room. Upon completion of the tour, the guide issued each group member a ticket for refreshments in a packed school cafeteria.
OCS Chief Administrative Officer Ralph Crosslin said he was thoroughly impressed with the turnout at the open house. Not only was he impressed with the amount of people who showed up to support the school, but even more so with the conditions they had to brave to even get through the front door.
"People were coming in, virtually, dodging lightning bolts," Crosslin said jokingly. "It was amazing. With that said, I don't think we could have fit any more people in here."
OCS hosts Paragon open houses quarterly to invite parents of students, as well as interested community members, to see what the children are studying. As part of the Paragon curriculum, students at OCS start in ancient times and work their way towards the present, studying each unit for a total of five weeks. According to Crosslin, students learn through a multi-sensory approach. By experiencing the art, music and culture of the people they are studying, Crosslin said students have a better understanding of what they are learning.
"Of all the schools I have been at, I haven't seen [a curriculum] that comes close to matching the effectiveness of Paragon," Crosslin said. "Instead of simply learning from a textbook, and memorizing dates and times, kids are diving into history here. They are doing some of the things the people they are studying did - they get to eat what they ate and dress how they dressed - they become them."
The following is a list of what each classroom presented:
Kindergarten: Egypt - dressed as Ancient Egyptian Princes and Princesses, the kindergarteners answered the essential question, "Who am I?" by presenting their big project posters;
First Grade: Europe - students told all about their projects made from the pre-historic time period and entertained visitors with a "Wooly Mammoth Dance;"
Second Grade: Mesopotamia - students taught visitors how to write their name in cuneiform and displayed some of the projects about their time period;
Third Grade: India - dressed in traditional Indian Saris, students treated visitors to a native Indian dish of Pongal;
Fourth Grade: Michigan History - this classroom showcased their dioramas of Native American inhabitants before European settlement;
Fifth Grade: Egypt - students led visitors through a darkened tomb filled with mummies and treasures.
