By TRAVIS M. WHITEHEAD
Staff Writer
HARLINGEN — The best way to avoid a brain drain during the summer months is to stay busy.
That’s the word from Jazminka Flores, who was building her final automobile from Legos Friday with her friends Ciara Valdovinos and Elayna Munoz.
“I like it because it makes my mind work,” said Jazminka, 9, who was participating in the STEM Camp Robotics Engineering event this week at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Harlingen.
Camps were being held at the Main Unit as well as Wilson, Ben Milam and Lamar elementary schools.
“It’s going really good, exciting,” said instructor Elda Cuellar.
“They came up with their own ideas and they had to work as a team,” she said.
The challenge, she explained, was to construct a car and place an egg inside. They then had to roll the car down a ramp without the egg breaking.
The Boys and Girls Clubs as well as the Harlingen school district have had numerous programs this summer engaging local children in a broad range of activities. They’ve participated in chess camps, construction camps, and cooking classes and other programs intended to keep their minds active.
Such activities can create a crucial bridge between the previous school year and the next one.
“Basically, these programs help students retain more knowledge and it keeps them engaged,” said DeEtta Culbertson, spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency.
“It keeps them focused on learning,” she said. “They can reinforce lessons students learned in the past school year and maybe get them interested in upcoming subjects.”
However, Culbertson said it’s difficult to gauge how well students would perform in school without summer programs.
“That’s going to depend on the student,” she said. “Some kids come back to school raring to go and of course you’ll have some who are like, ‘Uh, we have school again.’”
Some school districts avoid the brain drain by having year-round school.
“With year-round schools you keep students focused on a year-round basis,” she said.
Nevertheless, the programs here manage to keep kids tuned in to learning, Cuellar said.
“They are thinking and organizing,” she said. “They’ve become so driven.”
Meanwhile, Jazminka and the rest of the Fire Bolt Team were putting the final touches on a Lego car, which had an egg in the front seat surrounded by a sort of superstructure.
“Put this red arm here,” she said, gesturing toward a long slender piece that, once properly placed, lay forward near the egg.
“Now we’re going to put the yellow one,” she said.
And so the work continued as young minds exercised their talents.
