EAST AURORA — Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES recently held its third annual Summer Enrichment program at the Ormsby Educational Center in East Au rora.
Each day for a week, 26 middle school-aged students rotated between three courses: Construction/Makerspace with instructor Paul Hoch, Culinary Arts with instructor Gregory Babcock, and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) with instructor Ronald Pasqualetti.
Summer Enrichment is offered to kids in grades 6-9 and provides a glimpse into what students may learn in a Career & Technical Education program through E2CCB.
“It’s nice to get the middle school kids in here because they have a different sense of energy, and they seem really excited to be here,” said Ormsby Principal David Bogner. “They get to make different things and then show their parents what they did each day.”
Nathaniel Potter has participated in Summer Enrichment twice at Ormsby. This year, the 13-year-old East Aurora middle schooler said he learned new cooking skills and how to use a laser engraver on checkerboard pieces.
Susie Hedgepeth, 12, said she had fun making food in Culinary Arts and learned to take apart a computer in STEAM.
“I’m really interested in a lot of the stuff here,” Hedgepeth said.
In Construction/Makerspace, students had the opportunity to make birdhouses they could then take home.
In STEAM, Vivian Sultana, 13, of East Aurora Middle School, said she learned how to use computer programs such as AutoCAD and how to print out life-size cutouts.
On the same day, students also learned about frosting cakes in Culinary Arts.
“These kids are very energetic and enthusiastic,” Chef Babcock said. “We’re only here for a short time, so we pack as much as we can in. We want to expose the kids to what we do here at BOCES, not only to the three programs but to everything we have.”
Jake Brach, who is retired from Rich Products where he served as manager of community engagement, assisted Babcock in the kitchen. He demonstrated to the students how to frost a two-layered cake.
“I love the programs that BOCES offers,” Brach said. “It gives these kids some real-life skills. We need more of that in the world; we need people who can fix cars and work in restaurants.”
For more information about Career & Technical Education programming, visit www.e2ccb.org.
