North Penn Earns First Place Innovation Award For Dream Growers Summer Camp

Lansdale, PA -- The future of the North Penn School District continues to grow brighter.

Marisa Neeson, the Preschool Outreach Coordinator at NPSD, has earned the First Place Keystones to Opportunity (KTO) Innovation Incentive Award for her efforts on behalf of the Dream Growers Summer Success Camp.

The Dream Growers Summer Success Camp is a two-week summer camp designed to support continued learning and promote kindergarten readiness with a focus on foundation skills such as oral language, phonemic awareness and school routine, the district says.

This interactive and educational camp is held at Trinity Preschool and promotes collaboration between several of NPSD’s diverse communities, a press release states.

In 2013, NPSD partnered with Trinity Lutheran Preschool develop the Dream Growers Summer Camp. Marisa Neeson and Lisa Corr, Director for Early Learning at Trinity, collaborated with early learning partners and kindergarten teachers and reviewed district data to identify several areas of need, according to the release.

Data was used to create the curriculum and target specific areas on which to focus. The camp is a collaboration amongst the diverse communities of the North Penn area that provides preschool experiences for students who may not otherwise have that opportunity, the district said.

Now in its third year, the goal of the Dream Growers is to best prepare incoming students for success in kindergarten by aligning with the NPSD Comprehensive Literacy Plan.

“We are so proud and excited for this wonderful opportunity,” said Marisa Neeson in a statement. “We hope to continue to grow The Dream Growers Programs to allow more of our students the opportunity to experience a high quality preschool program and continue to provide relevant professional development opportunities to our teachers.”

The Dream Growers Summer Success camp is a free program open to children preparing to enter kindergarten. In its first year, the Summer Success Camp had 65 students enrolled. There were 88 campers in year two and this summer, 108 students attended the camp, according to the district's numbers.

As the program has grown, so have Marisa and Lisa’s visions for the future of the camp.

For this reason, the two applied for the KTO Grant in early 2016 to help assist the inevitable growth that the Summer Success Camp is sure to continue to experience, the district said.

The application process included a series of in-depth questions regarding the program, data showing results and success of the program, curriculum alignment with the NPSD Comprehensive Literacy Plan and several other items, the release states.

After being notified that the North Penn School District was named a semi-finalist for the KTO Grant, Marisa and Lisa were required to arrange for a site visit and submit a video vignette highlighting The Dream Growers Summer Success Camp, according to the district.

The North Penn School District is pleased to announce that it was awarded first place for the 2016 Keystones to Opportunity Innovation Incentive Award for forming strong partnerships by connecting children birth to age five and kindergarten to grade five to increase student achievement.

With this award also comes a generous grant to be used in the Dream Growers Program for years to come, the press release states, the district said.

The camp has been held at Trinity Preschool in Lansdale for the past three years as they are one of NPSD’s KTO partners. They have also generously donated the classroom space to North Penn. The camp was held in June.