Ms. Smith’s Educational Services has been an education resource center for the Starkville, MS community since 2009. Kids enroll in the summer camp, which is every weekday from 8 a.m. until after 5 p.m., for a variety of reasons – some need academic help, some need a place to go while their parents work, some come to learn behavior management, and others come because it’s just fun.
Camp operates like a small village or family unit. Kids are assigned duties that they’re responsible for keeping track of. The middle and high school students take the younger ones, as little as 4, under their wings by helping them with peer tutoring and supervising them during transitions and bathroom breaks. This structure supports one of Co-directors Niya Smith and Tonya Davis’s main goals, which is to create the next generation’s leaders.
“They have to replace us,” Smith said.
Besides functioning as a family unit, camp is brimming with love that feels familial. Davis said most of the kids think of her and Smith as extended family.
“We get a chance to really show the kids that people can love you who don’t have to, and you all can be each other’s brother’s keeper and sister’s keeper,” Smith said.
Niya Smith talks with Kylin Boyd, 12, while students get up for a bathroom break during Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp on July 16 at the Needmore Center in Starkville. Kids who enroll in Ms. Smith’s summer camp or after school program usually use the educational services for five to nine years. “It’s really awesome to watch these kids grow,” Niya Smith said of how she gets to be part of their lives beyond camp.
An older student helps Khloe Neely, 8, adjust her mask during Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp on July 21 at the Needmore Center in Starkville. As precautions for COVID-19, everyone wore masks throughout the day, except during lunch time, and people received hand sanitizer and got their temperature checked as they entered the building each morning.
Niya Smith directs kids to the vans before the group went to the skate park on July 21 outside the Needmore Center in Starkville. In previous summers, before COVID-19, campers at Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp would take field trips three times a week and wear a coordinated color so they could keep track of everyone. The camp cut back on field trips amid the pandemic, only taking trips to the skate park, but still encouraged the kids to wear specific colors on each day of the week.
Tomarkus Gray, 12, watches his peers as they skate on July 21 at Skate Odyssey in Starkville. Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp visits the skate park every week for a field trip. Besides doing schoolwork, campers this summer visited with guest speakers from the community, practiced a praise dance and played basketball outside.
From left, Allyson Henley, 10, Alhyson Jett, 9, and Kylah Neely, 10, comfort each other and wait for prayers to conclude during Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp on July 23 at the Needmore Center in Starkville. Community leaders led a prayer circle for the campers and then offered to pray for with the kids individually about anything that was on their minds. Allyson, Alhyson and Kylah each received prayers and then sat down together while the rest of their peers were prayed over.
Community leaders, from left, Jackie Rogers, Tammie Tubbs and Jarvis Boyd stand in the middle of a prayer circle during Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp on July 23 at the Needmore Center in Starkville. Before praying, the three led a panel discussion about how to be your best self and have confidence.
Campers of Ms. Smith’s Academic Summer Camp perform a praise dance on the last day of camp on July 24 at the Needmore Center in Starkville. The campers worked on the dance all summer, and Tonya Davis, co-director of the camp, said the performance is the culmination of all their teamwork and collaboration. The dance was choreographed by Mya Halbert, who is one of the camp’s high school students and who is heading to college in the fall.
