On a summer morning this July, 17-year-old student Armani Madden sat in the campus home of the Chester Children’s Chorus (CCC) working on a math problem with 8-year-old Aiya Brooks. The room buzzed with the chatter of 26 other rising third graders, each engaged in solving the math equations that Dana Semos, managing and education director, had written on the whiteboard.

When Brooks wrote the correct answer, Madden smiled and said encouragingly, “There you go!” Semos, who was watching from the front of the class, beamed with pride.

“In math, I sometimes struggle,” Brooks says. “But when I work on it with my coaches, they break it down so I can understand better.”

Moments like this are common in the Summer Learning Program (SLP), where more than 130 Chester children participate in a free, five-week, full-day schedule of academic and extracurricular activities that go beyond the traditional summer camp experience. The CCC also provides year-round music and math education. Meeting the needs of families in the Chester community, where children are often at least two grades behind in math, is prioritized. One-third of children in Chester live in poverty, and only 3% of eighth graders in Chester perform math at or above grade level.

The goal for the SLP is to decrease summer learning loss, build academic and social skills, and, most importantly, give children a summer to remember. On an average day, students transition from large-group choir practices to math lessons in small groups to one-on-one reading instruction with adult volunteers. In addition to music, reading, and math, the program immerses children in science, art, swimming lessons, cooking, photography, field trips, and more.

Older students (CCC welcomes children in grades 3-12) have the opportunity to choose elective courses, such as a photography course that was renamed this year in honor of John Wehmiller ’66, who delivered a guest lecture this summer. The Class of 1966 provides support for the Science for Kids program. Wehmiller and his wife, the Rev. Paula Lawrence-Wehmiller ’67, who have supported the CCC’s work for decades, were honored at a celebration in March. This summer, the Science for Kids program was renamed for Liz Vallen, the Howard A. Schneiderman ’48 Professor of Biology, who died in April. Vallen, who founded the Science for Kids program, served as its advisor.

When John Alston H’15 created the CCC in 1994, he wanted to help Chester children get educated in ways they might not encounter in their schools. Most students who come to the summer program are learning about classical music for the first time. The goal is not for them to become experts in classical music while abandoning the genres they already love, Alston says. Instead, it’s about expanding their musical knowledge and palette for music so they can be equally fluent in classical music as they are in rap or R&B music. Acknowledging the equal beauty of both styles is important, he says.

“I want our children to be comfortable singing classical music, but I never say that Mozart is better than Whitney Houston or Stevie Wonder,” says Alston, a former associate professor of music at Swarthmore.

Alston refers to this as cultural fluency, a skill he says will be essential to students entering the workforce.

“When they leave here, they’re often going to be one of few or the only Black or brown person in a room,” he explains. “So, what I dream about for our children is that they develop a kind of fluency that will allow them to flourish outside Chester, but still be able to come home and be true to themselves.”

The program, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary, has seen great success with its students.

One alumnus, ​​Skyy Brooks (the older sister of Aiya Brooks), who spent 10 years singing with the Chester Children’s Chorus and attending the SLP over the summer, now attends Harvard University and Berklee College of Music. She is studying African American studies and contemporary vocal performance. Several other alums have gone on to major in a wide range of subjects such as biology, accounting, physics, and engineering at universities including Villanova, Swarthmore, West Chester, Neumann, and Lincoln.

Alston says he’s proud of students whether they go on to prestigious colleges or not.

“Our absolute goal is to become the program that allows our children to fulfill their potential, whatever that is,” he says.

Another hallmark of the program is that it inspires and welcomes former students to return as program assistants. Student program assistants are among the more than 50 temporary staff members, including K-12 teachers, Swarthmore faculty, and students hired to run the program each summer.

“Being able to say that I helped a young student grasp a new topic is a big success for me,” says Madden, who’s attended the SLP since third grade and was recently accepted to Villanova on the pre-med track. “It’s fascinating, because I was in their shoes 10 years ago.”

VJ Robinson, 21, says he returned as a program assistant because he “wanted to give kids the same experience I had.”

Now on the instructors’ side, the program assistants quickly realized that managing hundreds of students is anything but easy.

 “Trying to get a big group of kids to stay focused and engaged in what we’re doing is a challenge,” says Alayna Guy, 19.

Overcoming those challenges made Taylor-Monet Brice want to work with children. Brice, who attends Lincoln University as a health science major with a minor in psychology, recalls a breakthrough she had with a student during her second summer as a program assistant. Despite his having trouble sitting still and participating in structured activities, the student had his best day behaviorally when Brice asked him to behave well while she was absent from camp. From that point on, he continued to have better days.

“With love, hard work, humor, and a good plan, Chester children will achieve,” said Alston.