SUMTER, S.C. — As this school year begins to wrap up, three schools in Sumter are gearing up for a collaboration. The new initiative is an effort between Liberty STEAM Charter School, Wilson Hall and the Sumter School District.
“I think it is awesome getting everybody on the same page,” lifetime Sumter resident Crystal Reed shares.
Reed has a son, Zechariah, in kindergarten at Liberty STEAM.
“He is six years old; he is so joyful,” Reed explained. “A ball of energy and just my sunshine.”
Reed tells me hearing that her son’s school is working to collaborate with other educational entities in the area is encouraging.
“It makes me feel awesome,” Reed smiled. “I like to think of, I think it’s a Scripture, plans fail for lack of advice, lack of knowledge. And so I’m glad that everyone’s working together, everyone’s brainstorming.”
Wilson Hall Head of School Brent Kaneft says he brought an idea to Liberty STEAM’s leadership, and expanded to the Sumter School District’s superintendent.
“What if every once in a while, we got together with our teachers and staff and had a professional development time or what if we had some community service that our kids did together just so we could a little bit break down some barriers, misunderstandings about each other schools are trying to accomplish but also grow together and just improve and so all of that was an effort in improve the outcome for Sumter students,” Kaneft said about the idea before referencing other schools in the Midlands that have attended collaborative events at Wilson Hall. “To me, it’s a positive sum game, not a zero sum game. And so we're not competing against Liberty or Sumter School District or Heathwood Hall or any of these other schools that we’re, Hammond, or any other schools. We are trying to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.”
In January, Kaneft says the schools announced their plans to collaborate. The first effort toward that goal happened this past weekend with a seminar on the science of teaching and learning hosted at Wilson Hall for teachers like Lee Gandy.
“Let's get together,” Gandy said. “Let's learn from each other, let's grow together. And that unites us as a community and lets everyone know we're all on the same page.”
Born and raised a Sumterite, Gandy says he graduated from Sumter High School in 1985 and taught in public schools for 13 years before becoming the AP Government teacher at Wilson Hall. Gandy says he thinks of this collaboration “a lot like doctors.”
“If we have different doctors in town that all focus on the same thing, let's just say the heart, I would want all of them to have the most up to date information, no matter which heart doctor I go to,” Gandy elaborated about his hypothetical comparison. “If one of them had some sort of special knowledge about their craft, I would want that doctor to share that information with other folks. And so when we are doing this together, this collaborative thing, we're still talking about our community, it's still Sumter. The kids that graduate from here or Sumter High or Thomas Sumter [Academy] or Lawrence Manning [Academy] or anywhere around here, they’re our future and so we're not in competition. We just have different groups of kids all over. So that’s the way we see it, it's not competitive.”
Kaneft says he hopes this first step will result in magnifying that spirit of collaboration between all schools in the area.
“It's hard to say what the end goals are other than improving education in Sumter,” Kaneft explained. “I think wishful thinking, ‘Gosh, this would be great is if we change the narrative about how people talk about education in Sumter overall.’ That if we become this small town in sumter, that people say, ‘What they're doing in education there is incredible, in the public side, in the charter side, in the private side, even the homeschool side.”
After the initial announcement about an initiative between the three entities, a question arose about what the schools’ collaboration would entail.
“There's no merger or anything like that,” Kaneft said. “I would love it if we had, you know, every school in Sumter participating. And I know that may not be possible for some other schools but I would love that to happen. I think of, you know, Thomas Sumter and Sumter Christian [School], Morris College and USC Sumter and all of these entities that I think, ‘Man, wouldn't this be impactful if we all came together?’ I think right now, we're small but we want this to be open to everybody.”
It’s a time to improve education in the area for students, Kaneft says, but also to help teachers.
“They are faced with challenges right now that no teacher has ever faced. Obviously, you know, we’ve moved from a play-based childhood to a screen-based childhood, and that has significant consequences for our kids,” Kaneft shared. “I think teachers need resources, they need each other to figure out well, how are you tackling this at Sumter High, how are you tackling this at Wilson Hall and Thomas Sumter, at Lawrence Manning or wherever, Ragin [Preparatory Christian Academy]? What are y'all doing right to figure this out? So I think we all need to help each other in this.”