 director at ASA, the school superintendent's association, really pleased to welcome all of you to this first in a series of webinars between ASA and LPI focused on what I believe is an important timely, essential question. And Linda, I want to thank you for helping to structure our thinking about this. If we look at the title for the webinar, accelerated learning strategies for whole child, summer learning and beyond. I love the title because it looks at strategies and looks at whole child, looks at summer learning and beyond. And most importantly, it doesn't look as a deficit model looks at as an asset model and how you build on strengths of children. So Linda, thank you for your leadership in that conversation. Our program is being recorded. If you have a question of any of us, any of the panelists particularly, please put that in chat. We will be monitoring that and we'll get those questions to our panelists. And you'll all be muted, so you're not going to be able to talk to each other or applaud after Charles or Diana or Linda speak. I do want to note two things before we get started. One, I choose my virtual backgrounds, I think as we all do very deliberately and but a seeking of today, I chose this background as a good morning and a new day in America background. I'd like to think of the work we are all doing as an accelerated approach to services to children. So I put that up there for you. And secondly, and most importantly, I want to thank and celebrate and honor all of our educators across this country who over the past year have been frontline workers on behalf of children. Too often we get caught up thinking about, oh my gosh, it's like E or mortality, the sky's falling. But to our superintendents, principles to our cafeteria workers to our teachers, to our secretaries, to all of you over the past year, whether you're in service the full time, whether or not you're going back now doing hybrid models, I just think America deserves to thank you for your service, your professionals and for your care of children. And as I turn it to Linda, I want to put it in a context, Linda, you have not been around quite as long as I have, but you've been honored and recognized in so many ways. I just want to share a conversation I have with John Goodlife many, many, many years ago after one of his books came out. I said, John, you've been writing for so long about what we should be doing. And he talked about viewing classrooms. I think he went to 110,000 classrooms with cancer route. And he said, you know, I couldn't tell what decade it was in, opened the door and they all looked the same. I said, John, how do you keep on writing, keeping the faith? And he said to me, but you know, I'm going to keep on writing until somebody listens. And I just, I loved his answer. But I think we are at this time where we are listening. And now the question for all of our panelists, I'm going to thread back in, how do we take the wonderful research, the great evidence, the resources we have at hand and truly take action in a way perhaps we've not done before? Which is why is the sunrise and why we have an audience of professionals across the country who are listening. So to get us started on this amazing conversation, it is my honor, my privilege to introduce Linda Darling Hammond who is president and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute. She was named one of the nation's 10 most influential people affecting educational policy in 2008. She served as the leader of the president of Barack Obama's educational policy transitional team and again in 2020 for the transition team for president Biden. So good morning, Linda. Welcome to a new day. Help structure our thought and our beliefs about how we move forward in this wonderful world. Thank you. Thanks so much, Mort. It's great to be here with this wonderful panel of participants. You mentioned choosing the video background. So I put up my favorite, my current favorite, which is Aaron Douglas painting. It's called Up from Bondage. And I think, you know, there's so much that we're striving for now that really is around liberatory education that is supportive, that leans into how people learn, and that is enabling for both students and for educators. So with that, I'm going to share my screen and sort of kick us off here with our beginning of the PowerPoint. And if you can't see it, as somebody says so, otherwise I'm assuming we can go full steam ahead. So yes, we're talking about accelerating learning with strategies for summer learning and beyond. I'm going to focus especially on summer. And for some reason, my slides are not advancing here. So what is going on with that? Hang on a second. Let me start sharing again and see if I can get it to work this time. All right, let's see if this will work. There we go. But we all know, as educators, the impacts of the pandemic on learning, we've seen so many children experiencing trauma and isolation, you know, children whose parents have lost their jobs, they may have lost their homes, their food insecure, there's the isolation of being separated, there's the big digital divide that many have experienced, lost instructional time for many young people, decreased engagement, and in fact, we have lost engagement from some students in significant numbers in some districts. We don't know where they are and how to get them re-engaged. I know lots of administrators and teachers who are, you know, reaching out, going to homeless shelters, you know, chasing down students who've disappeared through various contacts, relatives and friends and so on. And of course, greater opportunity and achievement gaps. And, you know, a lot of people are talking about learning loss. We don't use that term because it starts from a deficit orientation. Children are always learning. The question of what they're learning and what they're making of it is, you know, something we need to engage with and frankly build on because a lot of kids are taking more responsibility for their siblings, for their families and learning a lot of things that are need expression and need processing as well as academic pieces of the curriculum. We wrote a piece called Restarting and Reinventing School at LPI and I'm quoting from one of the parent volunteers. Reprioritize. This is the time to see if something can be different. To reset the system, we have to take a loss, but we can recoup the loss if we actually get kids excited about education and create a more positive space for them to learn. And I think that has to be the first goal of coming back in person fully this spring, summer and beyond. The set of ideas for restarting and reinventing school that we synthesize from the work of people all over the country and the great efforts of so many districts that are reinventing now and sharing what they are learning with others is this framework which really begins with closing the digital divide and really talks about all of the elements of strengthening learning, assessing what students need socially and emotionally, as well as academically redesigning schools so that they're relationship centered, emphasizing authentic and culturally responsive and affirming learning, providing the expanded learning time, the community school wraparounds, the professional development and the funding that are really needed for the system that we will carry into the next hundred years and hopefully allowing us to free ourselves from the elements of the system we inherited that have proved to be inadequate for the current time. Why should we accelerate rather than remediating? There's a huge research literature on the failure of remediation tactics to dramatically improve instruction. Typically that consists of trying to fill the holes in students learning. Quite often remediation requires us to segregate students into remedial classes, which are then also stigmatized by the labels that are attached to them. Often the work is sort of low-level disconnected skills work that is not highly motivating or engaging and in the end what we know from the research is that that actually depresses achievement relative to other opportunities that take children where they are, figure out what they need to know next and accelerate their learning. Every child is motivated to learn the next steps that are in front of them to learn. Very few children are motivated by systems that rank and sort and label them in relation to other children. We know from the science of learning and development that is being increasingly synthesized and understood from neuroscience and the other sciences several things that we should build our programs on. First is that relationships are the essential ingredient that catalyzes healthy development and learning and actually has to do with building brain architecture itself when we are in relationship with other people interacting in positive ways. Children actively construct knowledge by connecting what they know to what they're learning so we have to draw those connections within their cultural context which is the context for all of us for learning and we need to honor and build upon those cultural contexts to draw those connections. Learning is social, emotional and academic. We learn more and better when we're in an emotionally safe place when we feel trust, when we feel safe, when we feel we're not being stigmatized, when there's no trauma in the environment and when we care for and like the other people that we're with and we're interested in what there is to learn and learning is undermined in high stress environments that are traumatizing that may have elements of stereotype threat may have elements of bullying or may have elements of judgment that are negative that cause people to close down their ability to learn. Students' perceptions of their own ability influence learning. If I feel I can learn then I will put forth the effort develop a growth mindset and that will actually influence how much I learn. If I feel I'm not good at math or I can't read and I've adopted that identity it actually inhibits me both from freeing up my mind from the anxiety that that produces and from putting forth the effort that would allow me to make progress and then adversity affects learning and we know that schools have to be trauma-informed and healing focused and again that takes us all the way back to relationships which are the single most important element of recovering from trauma. What we need to build our environments in which there's much less cortisol the hormone that goes to the brain produces adrenaline and the fight or flight syndrome from anxiety of various kinds towards environments that produce oxytocin which is the hormone that we develop and that affects our thinking our learning our brain architecture when we feel safe and trusted and happy and so that's a key element of what summer learning should look like. I would argue it should not look like this coming back you know the old-fashioned summer school where you're you know drilling and killing to make up on those worksheets or maybe now on programmed computer instruction what what you missed it should look much more like this where students are involved in in getting inquiry and experiments and figuring out the answers to questions basically outdoors playing and and inquiring looking at puzzles and being together and that really derives directly from the science of learning and development we have evidence that that will in fact increase kids capacity to attend to engage to want to be back in school and then to open their minds to what school has to offer so if we want to make the most of summer learning there are a set of goals that as the folks in Tulsa, Oklahoma recently shared in a reopening school summit by the Department of Education sponsored last week or the week before belonging we want kids to feel they belong that they're connected that they are supported that they develop attachment and they they have choice and voice all of which will enable them to put the effort forward both to attend and to see this as a springboard for a happy and productive school year rather than as something to avoid or dread social emotional learning is of course critically important along with the mindsets that matter growth mindset that sense of belonging and purpose and sense that school is worthwhile and I just want to make the point of that I know most of you really understand that when we address social emotional learning when we teach kids to be self aware and aware of others able to interact able to make responsible decisions we not only get safer schools and greater belonging we get higher achievement and higher graduation rates improved apology career ready skills we know those gains persist over time from hundreds of studies that have been done and synthesized so social emotional learning is not a distraction or a tributary it is actually the path to academic learning and needs to be considered first and foremost the other thing I would say about key strategies for summer learning is first it's important that it be universal that it not only be for kids who are thought to be behind or in trouble which begins the whole experience from a perspective of stigma and deficit it should be open to everyone kids can engage in heterogeneous groups we know from ran corporation studies that summer schools are more effective when they not only offer academic learning that is contextualized and interesting and engaging but when they also offer enrichment arts and sports and other aspects of enrichment and the programs that do both of those things actually get greater achievement gains than the programs that only focus on academics culturally responsive as we've noted and engaging and partnered with community organizations in many cases you know teachers are often quite tired some will want to come back and new teachers who you're seeking to hire may be excited to start in the summer to get their sea legs under them as well but there are many community organizations that the YMCA the boys and girls clubs the I was looking at Tulsa's plans the Tulsa bike club the debate club of Tulsa there's all kinds of organizations that are interested in participating one really interesting example of a community-based support for districts that partners with a lot of districts across the country is the freedom schools that are started by the Children's Defense Fund I'm hoping Charles Payne will say a little more about this on the panel because of the work they're doing in Newark but these programs which are five to eight weeks long really have kids reading intensely from a library of selections that are culturally grounded and exciting and connected to historical and social consciousness that ties to social action projects and plans with the community we also need to be clear that learning is more intensive extensive in non-tracked classrooms there's a tendency to want to group and sort kids into above at or below grade level or standards or whatever but we have a lot of history about the fact that the higher achieving kids do not benefit more from that and the lower achieving students who are in tracked classes lose more achievement than they gain they the gap gets wider there are research-based approaches to what's called complex instruction and to math English language arts and other subjects that have been highly successful offer terrific inquiry oriented materials and strategies for students to make substantial progress in non-track classrooms and then I'm going to end with just a little bit of conversation about tutoring which you know we have often thought in public school systems is too expensive this one-on-one treatment but it turns out that the gains that children make are so steep in a well-designed tutoring context that in a short period of time you can reduce or close achievement gaps get kids on track and allow them then to progress with their peers and it turns out to be more cost effective than the old strategy of dividing kids up into these different groups and sort of giving a remedial curriculum to kids who are in that lowest group but it's important to know that effective tutoring is accomplished not by a cadre of ever-changing untrained volunteers but by a focused group of trained individuals who are consistently multiple times per week with students or small groups of students way back in 1984 Benjamin Bloom published what they called the two-sigma study and he had done a variety of experiments on learning and found out that students who were in a tutoring setting increased their performance on a curriculum that was being taught across all these settings by what he called two-sigma two standard deviations this means a student who was at the 50th percentile groups of the 98th percentile in the matter of a couple of months not a years to close the gap and there's several features of this relationship the one-to-one aspect of it creates that human connection that is an attachment that opens up the mind for learning the immediate feedback the opportunities to practice and revise this can also be done in small groups of up to five and there's now a recent synthesis of almost a hundred very rigorous studies that find equally impressive gains from tutoring so thinking about how we can actually draw on this kind of a strategy with trained teachers who might be trained to do reading recovery which has a extraordinary track record and getting kids on track for reading it's often used in first grade but it can be used at any grade level where it is needed or trained paraprofessionals who've been very successful in some math curriculum tutoring projects even AmeriCorps volunteers or others can be trained current teacher candidates to provide very structured tutoring around high quality curricula needs to be regular multiple times a week with the right kind of support for ongoing improvement and it can be targeted in a variety of ways this list comes from those strategies found to have the greatest achievement gains associated with them from the AIR and Sense of Intervention Center and we provide the links to that center in the slide deck that you'll receive it can be structured in a variety of ways but important that it be asset-based not deficit focused that kids know that they're going to learn from where they are and accelerate their progress and not be repaired or fixed up for any deficit that they would feel they have referred to it as a period or a class and it can be integrated both with what's coming up in the classroom it's can learn not only some things that they're filling in if you will but also look ahead to the next day the next week and be ahead in their preparation for what's coming in the classroom there's a lot of federal money that fortunately is coming to districts the latest American Rescue Plan Act 125 billion for K-12 education if you include all the components of it including particular money for students experiencing homelessness most of the funds will go to local education agencies and a component must be used to address what is called their learning loss and then to ensure that the interventions respond to academic social emotional needs states can also hold some of the money to plant support systems for this work with districts we should consider how to address the current needs on the ground but also allow for strategic uses of the funds over time the way the Rescue Plan Act is structured states have years to obligate all of the money districts have up to five years after that to spend all of the money and so funds could be expended even as long as 1921-29 and so we should be thinking about how do we actually plan sustainable strategies and supports that we can regularly use rather than just one-time opportunities for this cohort of kids this summer or fall with that we'll leave you with these resources you'll get access to all the slide decks and I'm thrilled to see our panel really get into the details and the vivid examples of what we can do to bring kids back in a way that is supportive affirming powerful and attaching them to school now and for the future thanks. Thank you Linda as always it is an honor it's a pleasure I want to ask one quick question before you run it came out of a question I was in the chat about what do you give up to do SEL and you kind of hit it right on the head it seems and you said it's the pathway SEL is in fact not it's a tributary I mean your language was really precise and I think encouraging but I think there are a lot of folks across the country saying do I in fact have to change and give up something in order to make this happen and then it's a subset of that if you don't mind is a question of it's not just summer what I think you propose and what you're talking about here is what the good instruction should be all the time yeah yeah we want to kick it off this summer in many places where the school year has been so challenging but we should be thinking about restructuring the system and I invite people to take a look at reinventing and starting school on the okay website which does give examples of how to infuse SEL into the curriculum but I would just say that I'm not hearing you're going to I'm not sure if it's mine or yours which is paying off looks like it's internet connection issue if I'm going to say goodbye I'm going to turn off so that you can go on with the panel okay thank you Linda thank you very much and I want to go right into introducing our panel right now pretty remarkable folks who have agreed to pick up this conversation first of all I'd like to introduce Diana Green Dr. Diana Green who is superintendent of DeVal county public schools the 20th largest school district in the nation with 130,000 students 200 schools and $1.7 billion budget in her 10 year has already begun to show results and secondly in our panel I'd like to introduce Charles Payne who is the Henry Rutgers distinguished professor of African-American studies at Rutgers universities Newark and the director of the Joseph Cornwell Center for Metropolitan Research and finally I'd like to introduce it not finally but next Jennifer Sloan becomes the senior policy researcher and director of the behavioral and policy sciences department at the rail corporation and Dr. McCombs let us hand it right over to you to pick up where Linda was talking about so please take it Jennifer terrific thanks so much more to appreciate it so Adam you can move to my second slide whenever you get it up there summer is a time of opportunity there are many different types of summer programs that can be effective in producing positive outcomes for children in you next slide Adam including those focused on academic social emotional well-being physical health mental health and employment however offering a program does not guarantee success so they're going to focus on some research based lessons for designing effective voluntary summer learning programs those lessons come from a longitudinal study of voluntary summer learning programs offered by five districts and their community partners they offered full-day programming five to six weeks that included three hours of academics split between mathematics and English language arts and three hours of fun enrichment activities that were offered daily they had small class sizes of no more than 15 students and in our study we were studying upper elementary school students the study found strong evidence of near-term benefits in mathematics for treatment group students and promising evidence of persisting academic benefits for high attenders that were seen in the fall and on the spring state assessment in mathematics after the first summer and in mathematics and reading after the second summer next slide it's creating those lasting benefits for students requires attention to ensuring sufficient program duration student attendance supporting quality instruction aligning program content to student needs and creating a positive site climate and so I've highlighted here the implementation is difficult so planning is key next slide to create academic benefits for students we recommend offering academic programs five to six weeks over multiple summers to promote that strong ascent attendance districts should focus on signaling attendance expectations and recruiting material following up with program reminders and this is all creating engaging programming that students want to attend and linda really talked quite a bit about what that might look like I'm very eloquently earlier and then also a focus on maintaining a positive site climate I'm going to turn to this again at the end but site climate was one factor that was positively correlated with student attendance and we know that attendance is key next slide to target programs we recommend identifying student needs the associated goals for the programs and really aligning recruitment curriculum and staffing to those needs I'm going to highlight especially that sort of like you need to have expertise and support to address all student needs so if you're expecting to serve students who have individualized education plans or who are learning english you need to have staff who are appropriately trained to provide them the supports that they need and require and similarly as linda alluded to earlier lots of students are having additional trauma due to covid so if you're expecting that in your community and you may want to think about one hiring counselors and psychologists for the summer program and training teachers on how to appropriately identify and refer to that support next slide the quality of reading instruction was associated with positive academic benefits in our study but instructional quality is necessary for engagement in academic and enrichment classes so it's critical across the board to maximize the quality of instruction for academics and enrichment we paint attention to scheduling logistics and creating a sense of purpose for staff really goes a long way in addition for academics we recommend hiring certified teachers with grade level experience having small class sizes of no more than 15 students and for enrichment the content expertise is equally as important many of our districts in our study partnered with community-based organizations who had content experts who provided fun enrichment activities and these are activities that kids might not otherwise have access to particularly students who are experiencing poverty so these programs offered things like theater swimming robotics archery activities that kids across the board during summer want to be able to participate next slide and finally paying attention to site climate pays off in major ways so quite site climate is what is driving students daily experience their enjoyment of the program and their attendance so you want it to be positive fun and focused on creating strong connections and strong relationships so setting sort of like an idea for their site culture training staff on that establishing common behavioral expectations and really emphasizing with both enrichment instructors and academic instructors the importance of positive adults engagement throughout the day and even during transition times we recommend site leaders actually observe for instructional and non-instructional periods to make sure that the site climate is living up to what their expectations are and to potentially be thinking about whether they need additional staff to provide positives to behavior supports next slide for those interested there are many resources from the study that are available to support implementation of strong programs that ASA is sharing so there is a lot more that can help support you but I'm going to turn this over now to Dr. Green to talk about some of the exciting work that's happening in Duvall thank you Dr. Sloan it's kind of amazing what I'm about to share I did not see the slide presentations from the first two presenters until just now and I have to give kudos to my curriculum department as well as school operations that we did a lot of research this year and we believe our summer programming is kind of in line with what you've already heard so if we could go to the next slide I do want to let you know we're still in the planning and development phase and it is so true you need a lot of time to put the planning and development infrastructure in place if you're going to offer a large summer school program such as we are offering this year in Duvall if we go to the next slide we are offering summer programming for any rising first through ninth grader even though it says targeted selection if there will be a priority students will be given priority if one if they had attendance issues during the school year two if they're at least one year behind if they are on grade level they actually receive a second priority we want as many students as possible to participate in this summer school in the state of florida however we have mandatory retention for third graders these are these are students that did not pass the state assessment and we need to help them develop their portfolio so what I want to talk about is you see the word remediation that is only for those students who we have to develop a portfolio to prove that they are prepared to move on to the next grade level and so remediation is in there because we have to go back and remediate those standards that they have not shown proficiency and develop this portfolio that does show that they are proficient in those standards so really our summer school is more about acceleration you'll see that it talks about we're going to introduce the 21-22 grade level standard so if you're a rising fourth grader you're going to get instruction on what you will receive in fourth grade so we're really doing this as a preview before they enter fourth grade we wanted a lot of hands-on activities for students we are introducing STEM and robotics for all of the grade levels outdoor activities and field trips this includes we call ESY that is for our ESE students as well as our ESAL students English speakers of other languages so we are developing this program to support students whether they're on grade level below grade level and if we have space available even for students who are above grade level for my district transportation is is a big factor and and so part of our funding is ensuring that we can provide transportation for every single student that is engaged in our summer school and our summer school is going to be six weeks five days per week and they will be full days but I think what is even more important is what is not going to be included in our summer school there will be no computer-based programs during this year's summer program it's not school as usual not reading and math programs used in the regular school year we think we have really strong reading and math programs but we've decided that we're going to use something different so that students will see something different even though every single site will not be used we will have multiple sites so that students aren't spending a large amount of time on buses getting to their summer school sites and it's not sending a classroom all day they're going to have a lot of outdoor activities we're encouraging physical education teachers to apply for summer school this year in the past we probably wouldn't hire a PE teacher to work during summer school because it's all it's mostly been about remediation or going back to the standards that they were not successful in learning during the previous year and and it was only a half day program and it was much shorter than six weeks so this one is really about ensuring that every student has an opportunity to experience something different than what they would have during the normal school year the next slide for our high school high school is a little different for the state of florida high school students must have 24 credits a 2.0 GPA and if they don't pass the state assessment they must have a concordant score on the ACT SAT prep so for our high school students it's all about ensuring that they're on track to graduate on time so every high school will offer our program which is ingenuity all courses are available it's a half day program and it's self-paced students even we have a one-to-one laptop initiative with our high school students so even though it's a half day they can work part of the day from home and it's they work at their own pace that has been very successful for our students especially if they need to recover more than one credit also we're offering SAT ACT prep we we have a robust strategy program built in for our high school seniors in reading and math it's a two-week prep program and it's also half days and we pay for their ACT or SAT exam so if they go through the prep program for the two weeks and they maintain attendance we pay for their we give them a voucher to go take the ACT and SAT our school counselors are on site we pay them to be present because many times students who are in credit recovery they get lost in in in the shuffle and they get their opportunity to have personal counseling so that counselor can work with them on hey you have to make up two credits you have on your QM pathway that you plan to go to college these are some things we need to work on if that is your goal so this is an opportunity not only for them to get credit recovery but they get that personalized counseling session that is quite difficult to have during the school year and all of our programs are taught by certified teachers something that we are really excited about offering this summer and if we can go to the next slide is a writing camp for high school students if you've never been to Jacksonville Jacksonville has a strong history of events related to civil rights for African Americans and that history is about to be presented in the city's bicentennial in 2022 and we thought it would be a wonderful idea for our students to be a part of that bicentennial and so we're offering a three-week writing camp it's an enrichment program however all students will be accepted that want to participate and it's a combination class being taught by an ELA and a social studies teacher so they're they're combining efforts we're also partnering with the University of North Florida and Edward Waters College and these students are going to write sort of literature essays but based on research of local history and hopefully our students will be a part of this bicentennial program we are we are looking at how do we infuse more cultural curriculum not only just during the school year but now we're going to start offering that during the summer especially for our secondary students next slide so we've talked about what we're offering during the summer but for many of our students especially our rising sixth graders and ninth graders there if they've been working remotely and our program is called Duval homeroom these students haven't been in brick and mortar for over a year and now they're getting ready to go to a next the next grade band a brand new facility and they've had no interaction and so we want to provide what we're calling middle and high school orientation it's anywhere from three to five days depending on the the size of the school and the number of Duval homeroom students that will be participating but this is about orienting them one to the next grade band as well as to a brand new school entering brick and mortar that as we stated they haven't been in brick and mortar by the time this starts almost a year and a half and so this is about sort of refocusing them on school the the hidden curriculum of school the understanding of schedules meeting teachers so we believe this will give our students a good beginning to ask questions that they may be fearful to ask when all the other students are present they get personalized tours their families get introduced to their new school and and we just think this will be a great way to ease students back into somewhat close to normalcy for brick and mortar and my last slide we can't do this without partners we have three strong partnerships the one i'm going to focus on is in the middle the kids hope alliance this is the jacksonville partnership of children youth and families is run through the city they run summer camps on our campuses and one of the things we are going to offer them is that we want them to hire one of our science teachers because we want students in those summer camps to engage in science projects and that science teacher will work with that agency to support those students we also have our elementary and middle school summer camps through what we call extended day they are also going to hire science teachers providing hands-on curriculum we are producing something called science in a box those will be box of curriculum projects science curriculum projects and so the teacher doesn't have to do anything the box has the materials the instructions the student materials everything is in the box and the science teacher is simply coming to the camp and we believe they're going to come three days a week and the students will participate in the science in a kit uh science in a box activities and last but not least is our voluntary pre-k early learning coalition through northeast florida dpk will also be in our schools these are for students that are entering kindergarten but they've not had they've not had a pre-k experience and so we work collaboratively with the coalition and we offer our teachers our certified teachers to teach these vpk summer school projects this year we will be working on stem initiatives and coding for our vpkers entering into the summer project that summer project the students are required an attendance of 200 hours so it will be um actually longer than our other summer schools the goal is to make it as close to the beginning of the school year so that these students will um be entering kindergarten like two weeks after they finish their vpk summer initiative but again if you're planning for a summer school this large it does take a lot of individuals to come together to plan to ensure that you have transportation um food service all of our summer programs will offer breakfast lunch and the vast majority will also have dinner so we are taking care of the needs of our students during the summer and that really is a benefit to our community because my school district you heard about how large it is but um one thing that most people don't know is close to 80 of my students are on free and reduced lunch and we talked about mental health we are very fortunate that we partner with united way and kids health awareness that we have year-round mental health therapists so students will receive those support services even during the summer uh and we offer telehealth for our um especially our students who are learning remotely and our goal is to start offering that for our high school students and so we feel like this summer program will be a pathway into next school year that will allow us to hopefully close some of those uh gaps we are seeing the largest gap in mathematics and so we will have a large focus on math during the summer but the other piece of this that is not a part of this presentation is we are moving that into next school year so you heard about tutoring we are putting in place we're looking at extending the day by 30 minutes and putting in place tutoring in those schools where we see the largest number of students that are still experiencing a gap from where they were pre-covid to where they are um when we begin the 21-22 school year. Valerie thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to present and now I'd like to turn it over to Charles Payne. Charles Payne would like to be invited to that to that summer rating camp that just sounds fantastic so much of what you're doing is amazing and especially at the scale at what you're doing it right um it really is district transformation I think one of the themes we can work that out one of the themes in all the presentation so far has been a underlying theme of respect for students um respect for student potential and I'm going to continue that discussion in another way when we am I moving the slides no um when we talk about the whole child sometimes we talk about the whole child without talking about the more complicated aspects of a child's identity and that very often includes race it very often includes ethnicity it very often includes other kinds of stigmatized identities so how do we bring those aspects of the whole child into our work I've been a part of a group of community activists uh district educators university researchers and others who've been thinking for um easily over a year and a half now about the question of how do we how do we make race in particular how do we make it an advantage for children all right how do we make it a launching pad for the developmental launching pad for educational growth instead of the barrier we are almost always um uh similar to be and if you can have the next slide there was really good reason to believe that racial identity absolutely can be the basis for achievement and particularly when children have been taught that their racial or ethnic identity is attached there's a connection between that and academic achievement then they do better on all kinds of measures at the end of my slides which I understand all of you will be getting there are a series of slides which which go into this research or at least give you some leads into this research uh in in greater detail but we know that race can be um a positive support for academic and social growth all right one of the things that we have been asking ourselves is if schools were more racially intentional what would that look like right so some of the models that that that some of us here have worked with in the past are models like freedom schools Native American survival schools Chicanos strike schools um educational models which came from the community rather than coming from professional educators to not professional educators with this group I think one of the things that that that that we find um is that they certainly put a much more aggressive emphasis uh on the development of positive racial identity they put a very explicit emphasis on responding to to dignity to respect issues for children because if how do children experience race they experience race as a withdrawal of respect as undermining their dignity then it makes sense to reaffirm that in schools if students experience race as people doubting their capacity to do things and we know that they do then it makes sense for schools to double down on building a sense of capacity a sense of agency uh and and the students that uh that we that we work with and so in these schools what we now call social emotional learning isn't something that one slow down on the slides now it isn't something that one does some of the time it's something that is built into the very warp and woof of the activity when Linda put up that slide of the 10 points framework for reopening and strengthening schools one of the questions I was asked about maybe one of those things makes sense and and there's good reason to think that if we can put them together in the right way implementation is always the key we can see much better outcomes for students but the prior question for me is for one of the prior questions for me what happens to those to those 10 points if students don't feel respected right if they don't feel that their dignity is being protected in that environment I think we can do all of the things right but if we haven't sent that message to children then we're not likely to get we're not likely to get the kinds of outcomes that we would hope so anyway the last couple of slides have been slides from the freedom schools from Mississippi especially in the summer of 1964 we think that's a really particularly well articulated model of the kinds of community education that that we are talking about Charlie Cobb the person who's working for the student nonviolent coordinating committee I think some of you will remember that at least if you're my teacher the person who if you will invented or develop the plan for their freedom school in 1964 said that the whole idea is to get young Negro Mississippians to articulate their own desires demands and questions to stand up in classrooms around the state of Mississippi and ask their teachers a real question right so it was to give students that kind of sense of self-respect that kind of sense of agency that would allow them that would allow them to do that right now and I'm sure some of you do know this the most common form of freedom schools is those run by the Children's Defense Fund and we can go to that slide now they usually do I think it's now up to 120 schools a year Linda mentioned them they can be anywhere from five to eight weeks and some of the things that I think distinguish the freedom school walking into a freedom school is often like walking into a is it Busby Berkeley I hope I got that name right the guy who used to do all of those fancy musicals in the past it's walking into a world when nobody speaks it seems sometimes everybody communicates whatever it is they have to communicate and music there is music everywhere dance everywhere chairs and chants everywhere people don't say hello they send you hello they don't say thank you they send you thank you right it is a very different and a very stimulating kind of environment and children love it they are particularly well known for their prize winning reading program which has had significant effect on what we used to call summer learning loss it has created some really large gains for students um over the course of the summer in terms of their literacy skills there's a great deal of emphasis on using multi-ethnic materials there's a very self-conscious creation of a multi-ethnic teaching staff almost always it's its majority minority in the staffs that I have seen they provide safe space for students to discuss almost anything that they want to discuss and their students my work has been in Chicago and Newark and students are very often concerned of sexual harassment violence and community violence right those are probably in places I've been the things among the kids things talk about most civic engagement is really one of the things I think it sets freedom schools apart from from other forms of education that we're familiar with and that the real point is to teach kids that they can be leaders it doesn't matter how old you are you can and I'm now paraphrasing children's defense fund curriculum you can make a difference in your family and your class and your school and your city and you can do that right now and each week during the summer they take one of those themes and talk with students and work with students about how they can how they can make a difference in that area and I think and I think that one of the best responses to a social climate in which people feel that their capacity their worth is being questioned is to develop your leadership potential that's sort of a perfect response to all of the doubts that you may be finding in a racialized stigmatized environment and if we go to the next slide it just I mean I've already referred to the research that shows improvements in literacy a greater level of on appreciation of the culture conflict resolution skills with responsibility taking on the perspective of others right I mean that's presumably what we mean by social emotional learning and that's that's very much a part of what we get out of it so I'm coming now to the to the end of time and so I will I will leave you with that but if we go to this next slide we can skip this one we go to the one after it this is the theme song and so it's it's it expresses I think what what freedom school teachers most want their students to get they sing this and dance it every year how you build your barriers the taller I become the father you take my rights away the faster I will run and so you can go on and you can hear that it's very moving to watch a room for students seeing this together but what I would just ask us to think about is that whatever else we're doing how do we become more conscious of the ways in which we can send students stronger signals to affirm their dignity and their capacity especially in racialized context and so I will stop there thank you Charles thank you Diana excuse me thank you Jennifer special thanks to Linda there are a couple questions I just want to end with the quick summary there was some technical difficulty with Linda's comments at the end we'll try to get that out I think Valerie listed and as special thanks to Valerie and Adam and both the ASA team and the LPI team for pulling together this but we'll try to pull together a summary of what you said that we couldn't hear and and you know I just am so struck Diana by your work your your boots on the ground real-time work in your district thank you for that I don't know if you Diana if you had a chance to look in the in the chat there are all kinds of questions that we can get to and maybe figure out how to respond but but people were just fascinated by the deep level of work and Jennifer thank you for providing a research perspective and enabling us to think about our work we at ASA always think about is it is it research-based is it evidence-based or is it folk wisdom not all folk wisdom is terrible but I think that the brand covered you guys just do phenomenal work and we're also appreciative of the field for for your contribution specifically Charles I wish we had given you a little bit more time and and I wish you and I could rehearse some practice and sing together but I want to end today by by two of your comments because I think they were so compelling as I mean Diana everybody you know first of all this idea that children respond to dignity and respect it's not just black and brown children it's all children but it is if we hold that as a centerpiece of what we do as educators for children there's such a guiding principle thank you for reminding us of that and here's the thing that I wish we could sing together that you know I love that little story you're telling about how that you sing hello to the kids when they come in so I wish we could sing hello to all the participants and sing a thank you and sing a welcome to our ASA and LPI webinar series on accelerated learning and and welcome you to the next four as we go forward we'll kind of pick up on these themes over the next couple of weeks Valerie I see saw posted information in the web or in the chat room if there's any questions you have please get them to us thank you panelists and thank you LPI for being a partner with ASA have a wonderful day