On a steamy Thursday morning, 19 'cadets' from the Seize the Brain summer program had the chance to visit the U.S. Army Redstone Test Center, or RTC, airfield to learn how engineering and mathematics could play a role in their futures.
As the name suggests, Seize the Brain, or STB, is an academic program currently in place at Austinville Elementary, a Title I elementary school in Decatur, Alabama. The program is the brainchild of Ray Pickering, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who lives in Decatur.
Pickering and his church, First Baptist Church Decatur, partnered with Austinville to create the program in 2016, after seeing firsthand the impact poverty can have on children academically. The cost of the program is funded from local donations and the 'coaches' in the program are all volunteers.
The pilot program started last November with STB coaches visiting the students once a week to help improve the science, technology, engineering, arts and math, or STEAM, skills of disadvantaged students. Pickering said he learned from Austinville's principal that helping the high achieving students would have a bigger impact than his initial idea to help remedial students.
"I remember speaking with Principal Beth Hales who said she needed help with her high performers," Pickering said. "Principal Hales said she needed someone to come in and take her high performers and let them fly -- and those are the students who are now in the program."
Pickering added that the scores reflect the success of the program.
"We have students who were already performing in the 70 percentile nationwide in math and now they are scoring in the 99th percentile," Pickering said.
The school year program grew into a two-day a week summer program. On the first day, students are bussed to the church for fitness programs, math training, software coding, and character development, and the next day they are taken on field trips.
So far the cadets have taken field trips to the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant, as well as local colleges in the area. The cadets spent their final field trip of the summer visiting RTC.
The cadets were able to see how an early interest in math, engineering and computer science could lead to successful Army careers later. Active duty Soldiers were on hand to answer questions they had about the testing being conducted at RTC on Army helicopters and other military equipment.
"It's always fun to expose young people to what we do," said Lt. Col. Evan Brown, executive officer for RTC's Aviation Flight Test Directorate. "To see the excitement in the eyes of a young person when you give them a chance to crawl around a helicopter, try on a helmet, or ask questions of all kinds about flying and flight test -- that makes for a pretty special day at the office."
"We were grateful for the opportunity to support the Seize the Brain program and their kids and we look forward to seeing applications from some of its alumni in a few years," Brown said.
The summer may be ending, but these students and more will continue with the program when the new school year begins. The program is expected to expand to include middle school students in the near future.
"When I first heard about it, I thought it was going to be really boring," said Alexis, a 10-year old student at Austinville who will be starting her second year with the STB program. "But when I got into it -- it's really fun and I look forward to coming every week."
"When we initially recruit people into the program they think it's a tutoring program, which can seem a little scary at first," said Jarrod Goodhue, a Children's Pastor at First Baptist Church Decatur. "But once you get into the program you realize all you're really doing is coaching and motivating the kids."
The STB program uses existing websites, such as Khan Academy, as learning tools for the students. Khan Academy helps the students improve their math skills and provides lessons in computer programming. Cadets who don't have a computer at home or internet access are loaned a Chromebook laptop and a Kajeet MIFI system, which gives them filtered access to the academic websites.
Organizers say the ultimate goal of the STB program is to use education to break the cycle of poverty. The Cadets who visited RTC will continue with the program through high school graduation. In addition to receiving assistance preparing for college readiness assessments, such as ACT and SAT, they will also receive help putting together scholarship packets and filling out college applications.
Perhaps one day, one of the boys or girls who visited RTC will be able to share with future cadets how the STB paved the way for their successful Army careers working for a test center renown for the cutting edge test and evaluation support it provides to Department of Defense customers.
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