(ACCOKEEK, MD) Despite stumbling at the start because of scheduling issues, the 2010 Piscataway PACE program successfully concluded its second year last Sunday.
Thirteen Piscataway youth received academic tutoring, tribal language and history lessons, and enjoyed field trips to Jefferson Patterson Park and other venues over the program’s three weekends in August. With a track record of success now established, the program’s coordinators are hoping to be eligible for grant funds that will allow the program to mature completely.
A mature PACE program is envisioned as an intensive, weeks-long program where Piscataway youth are immersed in an environment of academic learning, tribal history and cultural values and, perhaps most interestingly, Algonquian language – where spoken English is “prohibited” except during academic sessions.
Grant funding would help secure a dedicated location for the program, in addition to more volunteer mentors that would allow children to be sectioned off by academic level. Individual mentors currently juggle students across a wide swath of academic levels, often teaching 3rd graders and 9th graders at the same time.
More information about the 2011 PACE Program will be posted as it arrives.
