Nearly 200 students in the Socorro Independent School District’s Gifted and Talented (GT) Program spent a week in June 2026 making new friends and letting their imaginations run free at the GT Summer Enrichment Camp at Jane A. Hambric School and Capt. Walter E. Clarke Middle School.
GT students in third through fifth grade engaged in hands-on activities designed to foster creativity, collaboration and critical thinking.
Among them were fifth graders Dylan Herrera from Myrtle Cooper Elementary School and Adam Medina from O'Shea Keleher Whole Child Academy, who quickly became friends, creating puppets and developing original stories together during the “Strings Attached” camp.
“He’s a nice friend, and he’s super fun, and he has a lot of ideas,” Medina said about Herrera.
They first made stick puppets of a devil and an angel who were trying to persuade a student to choose between being good or bad. Next, they created paper puppets of a cat and a mouse, inspired by a video they watched featuring a lion and a mouse.
They were provided with a variety of materials, including markers, string, glue guns, bandanas and wiggle eyes, to bring their puppets to life.
“It's been really fun. We met a lot of new friends,” Herrera said, adding that the camp allowed him to express his creativity.
“I would recommend the GT program because, well, you make friends and you get to do creative things; instead of the teacher limiting you, you can do whatever you want,” Herrera said.
Diana Lucero, a second-grade teacher at Jane A. Hambric School and the camp’s coordinator, said that rather than focusing on traditional classroom instruction, the camp challenges students to explore ideas, think creatively and collaborate through hands-on experiences.
“We let them go ahead and use their imagination,” Lucero said. “It's a classroom setting, but it gives them that opportunity to go above and beyond.”
At Spy Camp, students such as Oliver Peña, who had just completed fifth grade at James P. Butler Elementary School, used investigative tools and observation skills to step into the role of detectives.
They learned investigative techniques, including fingerprinting, shoe printing and observation exercises and participated in teamwork challenges.
"We get all these cool gadgets, and we get to do fun activities with other people in similar age groups," Peña said. "We pretend we're spies and there's a spy among us, and we're trying to find it using body language and questions."
Amanda Livingston, a third-grade teacher from Sierra Vista Elementary who led the Spy Camp activities, encouraged students to consider the role of spies and the importance of gathering information.
“If somebody is a spy in this classroom right now, it might not necessarily be a bad thing. It might be that they're just trying to get additional information so they can share it with somebody for positive reasons,” Livingston said.
Peña, now a sixth grader at SSG Manuel R. Puentes Middle School, said the camp provided a unique opportunity for students to showcase their talents.
"This camp lets us show what our gift is and lets us express it," he said.