County schools challenge young learners at 'Insight Academy' camp

Tuesday morning, students in Sara Appleby's 'Mind Maze' class were working in pairs to solve 'Murdle' mimi detective puzzles at Deer Park Elementary School.
'We're using memory skills, language skills, deduction skills, process of elimination,' Appleby said.
'It's trying to get them to think differently,' Appleby said. 'They have to figure out a solution to a problem that's not obvious. They all solve it differently. They all have different strategies.'
Although schools are out for the summer, the fourth and fifth graders in Appleby's class and others were busy trying out the Scientific Method by experimenting with food, building their skills with integers and learning about history by sticking their hands in water similar to the the icy ocean that surrounded the Titanic when the behemoth ocean liner met its fate in 1912.
The classes were a hands-on collaborative learning experience that was anything but routine, which was intentional by Angie Gunter, Daviess County Public Schools' gifted and talented coordinator.
Tuesday was the second day of DCPS' 'Insight Academy' summer day camp for gifted and talented students at Deer Park.
The 24 students, who came from elementary schools across the district, were invited to participate based on their high scores in math and language arts assessment tests.
While each of the elementary schools has a gifted and talented team that augments the traditional curriculum for promising students, the idea behind the camp is to challenge the students beyond what they traditionally receive in the classroom, Gunter said.
'We have middle school teachers who are teaching these kids,' Gunter said.
The teachers proposed their own topics and crafted the classes.
Having middle school instructors working with the students at the camp both lets the teachers get to know kids who will one day be in their classes, while also giving the students an idea of 'what's expected in middle school,' academically, Gunter said.
The classes were designed to be hands-on and fun, Gunter said.
'These kids signed up to do math in the summer, and they love it,' she said.
Brad Goodall, who was teaching the 'Math with a Twist' class, said the fourth and fifth graders would move through a curriculum during the week that would include some of the pre-algebra they will encounter in middle school.
'Because I teach middle school math, I know what they are going to need,' Goodall said, as they students busily played a competitive card game based on integers. 'We've had a good time working together. If you notice, they are not quiet.'
The game was designed to be active and energetic for the gifted students.
'If they are not challenged, they get bored,' Goodall said. 'I'm trying to keep them as challenged as I can.'
There was also a social element to the camp, Gunter said, as the students learned cooperation and collaboration by working together.
'Some of these kids are the ones that tend to dominate' their traditional classes, Gunter said.
Part of the camp process is teaching 'all these dominant (students) to take turns,' Gunter said.
'Next year, we are going to expand to middle school' and have students from the middle schools as well, who will be taught by high school teachers.
While already gifted students might not seem to need much help with school, providing hands-on and engaging content furthers the district's goals, Gunter said.
'By law, we are supposed to serve and help every kid grow,' Gunter said.
Even a student already considered to be gifted can achieve more, she said.
'If we are not allowing the kids to reach their potential, we are not serving the students,' Gunter said.

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Madison County Bigfoot enthusiast and professional archaeologist, Gene Brock, agrees with my theory. 'It's not a strange or unheard of activity in relic Hominids,' Brock tells me over the phone from somewhere on Interstate 75. 'Neanderthals did it. Homo nadeli, they took their dead and threw them in a cave, down a pit. So, that's very likely why we don't have bodies.' Meldrum, however, does not agree. 'It's unlikely for a presumed solitary species,' he says. That is to say, unlike elephants, Bigfoot are not thought to travel in groups. 'Tracks and sightings are typically of solitary individuals, or presumed females with offspring,' Meldrum clarifies. When I ask Meldrum where Bigfoot lives, as in, which states have the highest preponderance of the upright creature, he tells me it's a tricky question. 'You always have to treat that kind of generalization very tentatively because there are all these other variables,' he says. They do seem to consistently appear in bear territory, he says, but that the data are 'messy' because they occur by happenstance. 'These data aren't systematically collected by wildlife biologists that are conducting standardized surveys,' he tells me. 'These are hodgepodge encounters, and almost every credible or substantial encounter happens purely by chance.' A lot of so-called evidence, he says, is illegitimate, fabricated by hoaxers. Plus, in what seems to me a tone of annoyance, Meldrum says, 'There have been sightings in every state except Hawaii … but the point is, something being reported and something actually existing are two different things. People also see dog men and orbs of light.' He brings it back to the bears. 'You can use the density of the bear population, not just the distribution,' he says. Where go many black bears, there go more Bigfoot, essentially. In states like Oregon and Washington, or in British Columbia, Canada, places that have among the highest reported Bigfoot sightings, the black bear population is also higher. 'Idaho has 35,000 black bear, so that suggests a lot more area and a lot more resources to support a large bear population, and that suggests there could be more Bigfoot,' Meldrum says. 'My rule of thumb is 200 black bear for every one Sasquatch.' Kentucky's black bear population, depending on who you ask, is real but tenuous. In casual conversation, some environmentalists have told me that bear — and mountain lions for that matter — have never not existed in the state, but that extraction companies have helped create the notion that they don't, making it easier to drill, log and mine without conservation restrictions. Bears were declared extinct in Kentucky early last century, but since 2006, the state has acknowledged there are more than one thousand black bears living here, mostly in Eastern Kentucky. If Meldrum's ratio is accurate, that gives the commonwealth about five Bigfoot. Raymond thinks it could be more, given the large sampling of audio, tales of encounter, and hair samples he's collected from across the state. 'It's very difficult to come up with precise factual information on a creature that supposedly does not exist,' he says, which it occurs to me, is kind of the same point Meldrum was making, but I realize this is the whole point — Bigfoot science is emergent, and still coming into its own. Raymond tracks sightings by county, and says Anderson County in the southwestern corner of the Bluegrass region has among the highest number of sightings, including of a Bigfoot nicknamed 'Howdy' because of multiple people claiming he likes to wave hello. Raymond also notes sightings in Shelby and Trimble counties, nearer to Louisville, and plenty near where he lives in the Red River Gorge. There are also sightings among abandoned drill sites in Lee County, he says. In Madison County, Brock claims to have had two separate nighttime encounters with an angry Bigfoot that, on each occasion, heaved a large rock across the reservoir, aimed at where Brock stood with his sons at the boat launch. No one was hurt, according to Brock. As for Orcutt: 'The most compelling potential evidence of Sasquatch that I have seen firsthand in the woods are two apparent trackways that to this day help keep me curious.' Those were just outside of Berea, he said. Raymond says that in the nearly 30 years he has been collecting stories, he has yet to hear of a violent Bigfoot, but he suggests that is cold comfort for those who tell him they've crossed paths with it. 'These are face-to-face encounters, where it's terrifying,' Raymond says. 'The (person is) alone. The Bigfoot is standing eight-plus feet tall. They do look scary. And if the person runs away, sometimes the Bigfoot follows them, to escort them out of the woods and out of his territory.' The terror drains and the peace of mind returns once these people tell their stories, according to Raymond. 'More and more of these witnesses let me videotape their testimony of their encounters. That's like a healing process for them, because it's a relief to get it off their chest,' he says. 'It's like I am a therapist.' The more academics and enthusiasts collaborate, the sooner proof will emerge, is the fervent wish of Raymond, the investigator with the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization. 'Hopefully, Bigfoot will be officially recognized in my lifetime,' he says. 'I will tell everybody, 'I told you so,'' he laughs. 'I do believe the government knows about them.' If and when the mystery is solved and Bigfoot becomes a fact, Raymond says he will dedicate his life to protecting them. The first annual Red River Gorge Bigfoot Fest held last month was one of Raymond's contributions to the pro-am Bigfoot field, bringing top researchers like Meldrum and Cliff Barackman, a Bigfoot hunter and former co-host of Finding Bigfoot, and the general public for a day of fun and education. 'We had to turn people away, there were so many attendees,' Raymond says. 'It was a free event, so I don't have ticket sales to count, but we think it was over 10,000 people.' Raymond also says the Bigfoot-enthused crowd was so large, it shut down the town of Stanton, and created massive traffic headaches. Next year, he says, 'We'll have better traffic control, and also fabulous guest speakers again.' If Bigfoot is real, Brock, the Madison County archaeologist, predicts mayhem. 'There will be religious turmoil. The problem with it is that it will not follow religious beliefs, that there is another line, not just Adam and Eve. It's gonna change Creationism,' Brock philosophizes, but it's industry that will really suffer, he thinks. 'The logging industry will have to come to a grinding halt, because if you have an endangered relic hominoid living in your deciduous forest — and your non-deciduous forest, as far as that goes — then you're not going to be going in and cutting logs,' Brock says. Meldrum, on the other hand, is pretty sanguine about it all, largely because Bigfoot are apes, not men, according to him. 'It doesn't prove evolution. All we're talking about is a gorilla that walks on its hind legs,' he tells me. 'This is not a type of person. It's not even a close relative. It is, if it is in the Hominid family, it's a very early offshoot that persisted alongside Homo sapiens.' Meldrum didn't comment on the possible impact of Bigfoot on industry. As for Orcutt, who has the honor of conducting what might be the breakthrough Bigfoot study, 'It could indeed prove an unknown species, depending on what the results are,' he says. As for me, I still am not sure what to conclude, but I will attest to this: next time I see a bear, I am outta there! This story is republished from The Edge based in Berea.