Older Students

Midshipmen can no longer trade exemplary performance at the Naval Academy for weekend leave. "Our object is to keep midshipmen at the academy more, not less," said Capt. Lee Geanuleas, director of the academy's professional development division, in explaining the change at the thrice-yearly meeting of the school's Board of Visitors yesterday. The board, a congressionally appointed group that runs the academy, also heard from Geanuleas that the new policy is an attempt to maintain rankings between classes and to end the idea that leaving campus is a prize.

Here is an educational institution ... -- Where the students never graduate and never receive diplomas or degrees. -- Where students and instructors often trade places in the course of a day: The student of the morning session transforms in the afternoon into the teacher. -- Where even the professional directors, when they retire, step around to the opposite side of the desk to join the ranks of the student body. It's called the Renaissance Institute. It's part of the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, and open to men and women 50 or older.

In many ways, Joanne Daum is a typical undergraduate student. After earning her associate's degree at Anne Arundel Community College, she switched to the University of Baltimore, where she is majoring in business and administration, with a specialization in accounting. But as a 51-year-old who didn't jump right into college after high school, Daum -- like other nontraditional students -- has had to make tough decisions about how to pay for her education. It's a bind faced by many undergraduate and graduate students who are returning to school.

Heather Housand is 13 years old and has just discovered ho scary high school can be.Older students necking in the hallways. Piles of homework. Rules. The sheer size of the place.Glen Burnie Senior High is crammed with 2,074 students who, along with 115 teachers, rush to classes through a maze of hallways in six buildings."I was worried about getting lost," said Heather, whose small, single-building middle school had about half as many students. "I was really nervous when the older kids came."

When Emani Haffeez and fellow student council members convene for a meeting, they sit cross-legged in a circle on a blue and red carpet, surrounded by building blocks, teddy bears and dolls.They begin each session by answering a few simple questions: "What day is it? What month is it? What is the date?" And though all council members know their names, several stumble over how to spell them.The 5-year-olds on the Campfield Kindergarten Council, formed in the fall, are getting a firsthand lesson in democracy, handling issues such as choosing school colors and doling out charitable contributions.

A newly built outdoor classroom at Piney Ridge Elementary School gives students and teachers an opportunity for hands-on learning about wetlands, aquatic life and the environment.The outdoor classroom, the first at a county elementary school, was made possible, in large part, through the efforts of Piney Ridge fifth-graders, who won a $3,000 grant for materials from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and students from South Carroll High School, who contributed labor to the project.The children and the teen-agers spent about six hours Tuesday building bridges, trails, an observation deck and a classroom on 8 acres of wetlands behind the school.

Susan Proto, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Maryland, College Park, was talking strategy last night."Keep the ball down, because when it goes into the air, it's easy to catch," she said.It could have been baseball she was describing until she added, "Unless you can kick it so far that no one can catch it."Proto was talking kickball, a sport that attracted 170 Maryland students to the school's first intramural kickball championship tournament last night.Maryland and the University of Nebraska are the only two schools in the country that offer the sport, which most students hadn't played since they were wearing hand-me-down sweat shirts and corduroy reversible slacks.

Sharing a bathroom with 20 college women is not exactly what 49-year-old Jennifer Bean-Dempsey envisioned for herself at this stage of her life.Neither is planning a family Christmas dinner while studying for exams in her dormitory room.But Ms. Bean-Dempsey, mother of six and grandmother of three, is among the increasing number of nontraditional students forsaking home and hearth for communal living in Towson State University's 11 dorms.In the past five years, the number of these students at Towson State has risen from 131 to 201 -- and includes a single mother with a new baby, a blind man and an Army veteran who wants to be a film director.

Do you remember looping strips of paper to make paper chains when you were small? Elkridge Elementary School students make paper chains each holiday season, festooning their school with color. But for these kids, each link cost 10 cents.Here's the system: Students in each grade choose a charity to which they would like to donate money. Then for two weeks, the children buy their links, chaining paper through the halls.At the end of Holiday Chain season, Principal Mary Mitchell measures the chains and the grade with the longest chain is the winner.