MOULTRIE, Ga. — Colquitt County School District’s Extended School Year (ESY) program under the guidance of the Program for Exceptional Children was able to add individualized art instruction back to their support system this year. 

Artist Jean Gay, assisted by her husband Dell, volunteered instruction, providing tools and various supplies to offer art opportunities for 70 ESY students from prekindergarten through 12th grade.

While having fun, the volunteer art instructors along with ESY speech and physical therapists came together to promote social skills between the students such as communicating, making friends, sharing, taking turns, and enhancement of motor skills including hand/eye coordination and proper use of tools, according to a press release about the program. 

For four years, Gay — the autism advocate and director of Moultrie Summer Club, Easter Seals Organization’s (ESO) Summer Enrichment Program — had included volunteer art instruction for students enrolled in Colquitt County Schools’ ESY as part of the organization’s activities.  Since the Covid pandemic, ESO has suspended funding the summer enrichment program. With the absence of art instruction from the curriculum, Amanda Horne, executive director of Colquitt County PEC and a friend of the artist, invited her to volunteer to instruct students, putting in place a schedule for ESY classes. Horne reported that the students were proud to take home a masterpiece on canvas of their own creation. A bonus of the project was that students worked together on multiple canvases to be hung in the PEC office.