ANAHEIM, Calif. — As students return to school, educators are concerned about the effects of summer slide, which happens when children don’t engage in educational activities during the break.

This learning loss is especially prevalent in low-income areas where parents struggle to afford summer programs, but one free camp is keeping third to seventh graders in Compton engaged by bringing STEM education to the baseball field.

Alyssa Johnson and her husband are beaming with pride at the progress their son has made this summer at the MLB Compton Youth Academy.

She says the last few years have been an uphill battle fighting learning loss and regression as her 9-year-old Luke struggled to stay engaged in the traditional classroom setting.

“It was really hard for him, very challenging,” Johnson explained.

But at the Science of Sport baseball camp at Angel Stadium, Alyssa Johnson says Luke hit a home run in retention.

Their final project was to create their own stadium, compiling the science, technology, engineering and math lessons they’ve been learning for the last five weeks.

Alyssa Johnson says Luke loves baseball, and this camp created a new excitement for learning. She’s hopeful as he prepares to return to school for the new year. As an educator herself, Alyssa Johnson says she has to remind herself and other parents to be patient with the children. 

“You want them to be back to school and just be like doing really well, but they’re not. I think that, yeah, you feel guilty as a parent sometimes.”

She says she’s learned that it’s okay for them to be a little behind for the time being. 

It’s why the Science of Sport Executive Director Daren Heaton says his team started to get creative when teaching the inner-city kids who are so often falling through the cracks in a growing achievement gap among Black and Brown students.

He says only 28% of students in Compton are hitting math proficiency levels. In 2022, standardized test scores fell roughly five to seven percentage points among most racial groups across the state.

“As we look at the learning loss that’s taking place through academia across the board, this kind of program is addressing those things. They’re learning about force and gravity, launch angle, trajectory of ball flight, how to improve with their math skills in fractions, percentages and decimals,” Heaton explained. “And not just by sitting there and working on a sheet and doing it, by dropping baseball cards and seeing how many they can catch out of 10.” 

He says the students were given a fixed budget and had to decide what players they could afford on their teams. They also compared aluminum and wooden bats, recording the distances that the balls would travel, while considering force and gravity.

Now, Luke said there was only one thing left to do as he got to watch his first professional baseball game to close out the summer.

“Catch a ball!” he said. 

“We just want him to be a good person, always trying his best in everything that he does,” Alyssa Johnson added.

Academically, of course, but also as he learns discipline, accountability and what it means to be a good teammate, too.

For more information about the program, click here.