Every Thursday students in Mrs. Heppner’s 4th-grade class at Highland Elementary stay after school to do extra math work in a grant program called Crazy 8’s. But this isn’t your everyday math class explains their teacher Kari Heppner. “Crazy 8’s is an accelerated math program developing and expanding the kid’s brains,” said Heppner. “It flexes the brain using the right and left side of the brain because we’re using our creative side along with our problem-solving side of the brain. It’s an eight-week grant program every Thursday after school. I receive all the materials and the funding, so we go after school until 4:15 p.m. every Thursday for eight weeks.”
Sometimes the program teaches skills that are ahead of where the students are in class. “Some of the kids aren’t involved in the program,” said Heppner. “Sometimes we’ll be doing something in the classroom, and the kids who are in the program will say – “oh yeah we that in Crazy 8’s last week” or “or remember when we did that in Crazy 8’s” – and they will, in turn, teach the other students what we did in Crazy 8’s and how that relates to what we’re doing in the classroom.”
For more on Mrs. Heppner’s Crazy 8’s afterschool program tune into Focus On Education Saturday morning at 8:45 a.m.
