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Sep 11, 2008 7:53 pm US/Central
Doctor: SMART Camp Helps Where Texas Schools Fail
Reporting
Jack Fink
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
While many youngsters went to summer camp some North Texas students went to Smart Camp: Strategic Memory And Reasoning Training Camp.
Six hours a day, for ten days, middle and high school kids came to the Dallas Center for Brain Health.
Adam Snider was an intern at 16-years-old. "It's really nice to help kids fix their problems," he said. Snider -- like the rest of the students at the camp-- has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
"We teach children strategies to help them learn how to reason," said SMART Camp Director Dr. Jacque Gamino. "Children with ADHD tend to be very detail oriented, they can give you many details back, but they don't think about the big picture - the main idea, the gist of something."
Dr. Sandi Chapman, Chief Director of the Center for Brain Health, says they're having to teach students how to reason, solve problems, and think critically because they're not learning how to do it in school.
"Our education system is failing our youth," she said.
Dr. Chapman has studied students' brain activity for years. She blames the curriculum and says the standardized TAKS test falls short.
"What we feel part of the problem is that our school systems moved toward a very fact based learning versus a more of a take these facts and how do you work with this information to come up with a novel idea," she said.
Dr. Chapman says it's happening to students with ADHD. "Many who are in AP classes, actually more than 90 percent of the kids, failed on being able to abstract the deeper message," she said. "That shows they're very impaired in critical thinking and reasoning skills."
She says those are the kinds of skills students will need in college and in the workplace. Dr. Chapman says a study done five years ago shows from nursery school to fourth grade, the U.S. ranked among the best in education for developed nations.
"But beginning in fourth grade, we begin dropping very dramatically behind so that in high school," she said. "We're rated in the last 20 percentile of all other developed countries."
Dr. Chapman says it's a problem they're seeing with most students, even those without any learning disabilities.
In the recent TAKS test, more than half the students failed the critical thinking portion of the exam. Dr. Chapman says school districts across the state should start focusing on middle school students, and teaching them how to solve problems and improve reasoning skills.
"As a whole, our brain is undergoing more changes during the teenage years than any other time in our life except for the first two months of life. And yet, we're not taking advantage of this rapid growth and the rapid re-modeling that is taking place," she said.
That's why they will continue to hold SMART programs year round.
Adam Snider says when he went through the program, he learned how to analyze a story, and block out most unimportant details.
"There was an almost immediate change after learning everything,' said Adam.
Adam's father says his son is very bright, but before he went through the program, Snider's school work suffered.
"Everyone's answer was drugs: here's a pill, here's a pill, here's a pill. And we didn't like that, and he pushed back hard and eventually said, 'I'm not going to do that.' That just seemed to be the only alternative out there, and this is an alternative very positive," said Bruce Snider, Adam's father.
And Snider has noticed a positive change in his son's grades and overall attitude. "It seemed to really help his confidence. You can sense that Adam really felt good about what he was going through, and secondly, he seems to understand what they taught him," said Snider.
Tests conducted before and after smart camp show Snider and others succeeded.
"Every single student we've tested who has gone through our program has improved in their ability to reason and to get the main idea," said Gamino.
"I think it holds a lot of promise for a lot of people," said Snider.
Here are three tips parents can use to help their students after reading a book, article, or even seeing a movie. Block-out all of the unimportant details. Focus on the main point of the story along with two supporting facts. They also say students should think of multiple interpretations.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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