Special Clusters a Big Hit at Oglethorpe Elementary

Fifth grader Mattie Muckle didn't know anything about sewing. When she was given a chance to learn, she took it, spending every Thursday afternoon for nine weeks at a sewing machine.

The result? An attractive tote bag Mattie made with a little help. And a promise of her own sewing machine from her mother.

"I wanted to do something new," said Mattie, 11. "I wanted to find out if I could do it."

That was the philosophy guiding 's recent schoolwide enrichment program: to let students pick a subject they were interested in and then to spend weeks exploring, learning and producing something. The program ended last Thursday with a school fair.

For one hour or so every Thursday, the school's 500 or so students--including the disabled children--from kindergarten to fifth grade focused on topics such as dogs, running, bugs, airplanes, fixing hair, sewing, songwriting, bookmaking, Zumba, carpentry, trees and nature, sign language, math problems, fishing, knitting, making mascots, cooking and clay.

"We wanted to enrich the whole school, not just the kids in the gifted program," said Jenny Walsh, Oglethorpe's SPECTRUM teacher. The clusters are just the first piece in the enrichment model. Coming soon, perhaps in the fall, are student-driven problem-solving projects.

Leading the clusters were teachers, parents and community volunteers. Deborah Willoughby, whose grandchildren attend Oglethorpe, helped with the Sew Cool cluster that attracted Mattie.

UGA sociology professor Jeremy Reynolds led the Unbuilders cluster, helping students take apart electronic gizmos and then put them back together.

Drive-by Truckers member Jay Gonzalez and his wife Katey headed the Rhythm and Rhyme cluster, in which participants wrote lyrics--My Dog is Cool--to a tune and performed in a music video.

Seven-year-old Murphy McCall picked the dog cluster "because I like dogs," she said. Over the nine weeks, she got to met a K-0 dog and a veterinarian, to learn about rabies and to meet older children in other grades.

What did she learn that she'll remember? "All dogs have wet noses," she said.