BROKEN ARROW - Some middle school students spent their first day of class on a college campus.
About 80 seventh-graders from KIPP Tulsa College Preparatory visited NSU-Broken Arrow on Thursday to attend a "Mad Science Lab," a forensic anthropology class and an innovative math session.
KIPP Tulsa is a charter middle school that opened in 2005, part of a national network of schools in the Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP schools focus on students in underserved communities across the U.S.
"Every KIPP school across the country spends its first day at a college campus to let students know early on that college is the very best option," said NSU-BA professor Allyson Watson, who has coordinated the trip for the past seven years.
This year is the first time students visited NSU's Broken Arrow campus.
"We wanted to show them that we're right in their backyard," Watson said.
KIPP Tulsa Executive Director John Wolfkill said the school's fifth-graders were to spend the day at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, the sixth-graders at Rogers State University in Claremore, and the eighth-graders at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
Jimmy Seter, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at KIPP Tulsa, said the visits reinforce the school's "to and through college" credo.
In May, the group of students who were the first fifth-grade class at KIPP Tulsa graduated from high school, with 78 percent of them having been accepted into college, the Tulsa World reported previously.
"We always start with the big vision, the big goal," Seter said.
"The visit sets the tone for the rest of the school year."
Tone most certainly was set as NSU-BA professors interacted with the KIPP students Thursday.
Martha Parrott, who taught the innovative math session, told students that the beginning of seventh grade is the time to start making wise choices.
"No one in here wants to be told what they have to do," she said.
"If you want to have a choice about your career, you need to work hard in school."
In the Mad Science Lab, NSU professor Pamela Christol let students work with dry ice.
The enthusiasm was apparent from the start. Christol asked the students to put on goggles, and excited whispers of "Awesome!" could be heard throughout the class.
Some students pretended to operate on the pieces of ice, tongs and tweezers in hand.
"Doctor, we've got an emergency," one said to his classmates.
Others lifted the dry ice to their ears.
"It sounds like Rice Krispies treats," one of the 12-year-olds announced to his table.
"It comes out dry," Madison Monroe told her friend as she pulled the ice from water.
Chyna Hawkins looked for herself and then said, "It's not even wet at all!"
Most of all, though, they had questions.
"Do you hear that?" one student asked his classmates as he heard the ice crackle. "What is it doing?"
Christol was happy to hear the conversations.
"I want them to question, question, question," she said, adding that this is how they start making applications to real life.
Piddy Hall, 12, said she enjoyed the visit to the NSU-BA campus.
"I like how they teach us hands-on things," she said. "We get to learn more than we already know."
Nour Habib 918-581-8369
nour.habib@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: KIPP course set for college
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