Taylor Mason is as bright and charismatic as one would expect from a rising third-grader who says she loves school. Her favorite subject? Going outside to read, she said.

So she is not one to complain about attending summer school — especially one that has let her fill 50 pages in her journal and includes the occasional field trip to Sunset Pool.

“It’s definitely funner,” she said. “It’s better than sitting at home.”

Taylor is one of dozens of students who attend a summer school program run by Glen Ellyn Children’s Resource Center.

Every weekday for five weeks, the elementary and middle school students attend five hours of classes at Lincoln Elementary School and, hopefully, keep their minds sharp during the summer months.

Founded in 2002, the nonprofit center offers afterschool and summer school programs for students who qualify for the federal lunch program. Students come from schools throughout Glen Ellyn School District 41, which provides classroom space in its Lincoln Elementary School.

The summer program also includes School District 89, which consists of southern Glen Ellyn and portions of Wheaton and Lombard.

With a new director this year, the Children’s Resource Center has developed a new, more structured summer school curriculum. It is part of an effort to get the students interested in reading and other fundamentals without sacrificing enjoyment of summer.

“We want to know what interests them and what they want to enjoy,” said Jessica Rozga, who started as director in September.

For instance, the students’ writing journals, which are incorporated into all the subjects, are meant to engage them in what they are learning.

The student body at the summer school is a diverse mix. About one-third come from recently immigrated families and another third are part of Glen Ellyn’s growing population of refugees from conflict regions.

Most recently there has been an influx of students from Iraq and Myanmar, formerly Burma, Rozga said.

The summer lag in learning can be especially tough for students who are still learning English.
Rozga worked to align the center’s curriculum with the schools it serves. She attended the district’s institute days where the faculty discusses curriculum, said Julie Worthen, director of communications for District 41.

“We really want the students to become comfortable with reading, writing,” Rozga said. “Rather than making it tortuous.”

Funded largely by charity and education grants, the Children’s Resource Center has grown significantly since it was created, when it served residents of Parkside Apartments on Parkside Avenue. Rozga has plans for continued growth.

By the 2010-11 school year, she hopes to include District 89 in the afterschool program, and she wants to expand the number of school buildings in which the Resource Center works.

“It’d be best if we could be in all the schools,” she said.

The changes Rozga implemented in her first year already are apparent. A classroom at Lincoln is filled with books — many hundreds if not more than a thousand — and it for the past three weeks it has been the center’s own library. A tent offers students a quiet place to read.

By the end of the summer school, Rozga hopes to have distributed all the books to grow the students’ own home libraries.

“This is where you would want to go to school if you were going to school here,” said Maryanna Milton, director of the literacy program for the People’s Resource Center, the Wheaton food bank, which works with the Children’s Resource Center.

“You can see the kids totally engaged.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction.

Correction: June 8, 2009

An article in the June 9 Glen Ellyn News/Wheaton Leader about the Glen Ellyn Children’s Resource Center misidentified one of the students in the summer school program. Her name is Taylor Mason, not Jessica Taylor.