 So again, welcome everyone. We're so excited you're here today with us. Today you will meet an expert on summer learning. Broderick Clark is joining us from the National Summer Learning Association and he will share how student learning is impacted when students engage in high quality learning opportunities during the summer. We also will be sharing some CSOL lessons that provide continuous learning to help avoid the summer slide and support academic and social emotional engagement over the summer at home. Now you all have introduced yourself in the chat. So now it's our turn. My name is Ali and I am one of the training and professional development specialists here at CESA. Prior to being at CESA, I was a fourth and fifth grade teacher as well as a reading interventionist and an instructional coach. And I am in Denver, Colorado and I have my colleague Mia with me tonight as well. Hello everyone. I am so excited to be here with you today. My name is Mia. I am the other training and professional development specialist here at CESA. Prior to joining the team, I taught kindergarten for 10 years and instructed and coached teachers around implementing technology in their classroom. And I am in Chicago. So shout out to my Illinois folks that I found in the chat. Awesome. So now let's meet our expert. So Broderick is the vice president of programs and systems quality at the National Summer Learning Association. He has an extensive experience working with the K through 12 student population and provides training around improving the quality of out of school time options for youth. He also supports the implementation of organizational activities that aid in the expansion of high quality summer learning opportunities. So welcome Broderick. We are so excited to learn from you today. Thank you so much for having me here today in this space, this virtual space without a doubt. I'm in awe just looking at the chat box right there. Shout out to our friends from New Zealand and the Philippines. And you know, this is an international experience that we have in right now. So I just appreciate everybody hanging out there letting us know who you are, where you're from. I'm Broderick Clark. Once again, I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York. So shout out to anybody from New York City. I'm currently living in Silver Spring, Maryland. I'm the vice president of programs and systems quality with the National Summer Learning Association. And what that means and it affords me is the incredible honor and privilege to talk with folks just like yourself. And we get to make the magic happen. So if you don't remember anything that I say today, we all get to make the magic happen, right? We have outcomes for our young people. We have dreams and hopes for the young people and families that we serve. And we're equipped with the knowledge and the skill and the competency to serve young people at a real high level because that's what families deserve. When those young people come into those places and spaces where the virtual in-person or otherwise, if there is an otherwise, that they're met by an adult facilitator that has that really strong capacity and knowledge to serve them really well. So we're here to talk about summer learning, what that means and all of that. But I certainly want you to walk away with this prideful, like pride in the fact that you contribute to that space where families can thrive. So thank you for all that you do in the out-of-school time space. Yes, thank you, Brajak. And let's start and get that magic happen. And so we are taking time right now in March to help all of you start thinking about summer learning. Summer learning is important. That's why you're here, you know that. When children continue to learn in the summer, research shows that they are healthier, happier, safer and smarter. We know from years of research that summer learning loss is real. So this, along with the impact of the pandemic, has widened the academic learning gap. Summer provides us with the opportunity to mitigate this gap by offering students fun, engaging learning that will boost reading and math skills and also support mental health. So today, we hope to provide you with an understanding behind the importance of summer learning and send you with some ideas on how you can support learning all summer long with CSAH lessons. So today, Brajak Clark will highlight the promise and hope of summer and teach us how to maximize the opportunity in education that summer provides through positive youth development. Then, like I've mentioned, we're gonna share some CSAH lessons that will help districts support families in summer learning at home. So all right, let's get started, Brajak, take it away. Fabulous. Summer starts right now, summer starts right now. I say quality, you say matters, quality matters, quality matters. Summer usually starts in the month of September, but for the purposes of right now, we're going to embrace our planning mindset, right? Around summer, at least sort of get some grounding and some understanding in what this summer space, the opportunity that exists in that summer space, why this is the most important summer of our lifetime coming up here in the summer of 2022. And it could be with some knowledge and some resources around summer learning. So let's go ahead, go ahead and stand on that starting line on your mark. Get set, let's go. So certainly you would just wanna start with just a couple of agreements. You all are spending your time on this call. Time is one of the things that you can't necessarily get back. And I don't even think folks can pay you further your time. It's so valuable. And so learning is social, learning is emotional and learning is cognitive. And so hopefully, as you came into the space, you heard your name called, you heard your city or your country called, being social at one another as best we can on the virtual platform. This is also emotional work. And so I heard a lot of people say that youth development work is personal for me. And so we're gonna honor the emotions that we all bring into this space. And we also know that learning is cognitive. And so if you can keep all of your cognition for these next minutes that we have together, I would encourage you to focus all of your cognition into this space. And I would also encourage you to smile, have a good time, have fun, learning can be fun as well. And to share as much as you can, definitely there in the chat box. So it can be more like a conversation rather than a presentation. NSLA is the only national nonprofit that is exclusively focused on closing the achievement gap. We do this with a relentless emphasis on quality. We know that just running programs for the sake of running programs or even running low quality programmatic experiences do not move the needle with respect to moving young people towards those outcomes that we know that they're capable of. And so with the premium being placed on quality for us, we make sure that individuals, programs, cities, networks ensure that they have a system that supports high quality youth development at the point of service in what we call the out of school time space or the summer learning space. And I'll talk a little bit more about that summer learning definition. We wanna make sure that all young people and ALL is the operative word right there, right? We're not gonna be satisfied until all young people have access to high quality summer learning experiences to help them succeed in college career and life. And notice I didn't say summer school experiences and I'll talk a little bit later on in another slide about the differences between the two. Summer time is awesome. Out of school time is amazing, right? These are these places and spaces where young people get to learn, they get to grow, they get to challenge parts of themselves. It ends up being exposed to all different kinds of things. They discover passions that they have within them. They discover some things that they don't like too much, which is also pretty awesome. And so while we recognize out of school time is primarily a place for young people to learn, grow and survive and thrive. We also like to lift up that summer is a great time of inequity. We know that we understand that in education today and we'll continue to work on those inequities, but it's also a great time for opportunity. And we usually frame this in the context of the four eyes, which is it's a time for improvement. So nobody's perfect, we're all learning and growing. And so summertime can be a space where we say, we wanna improve in this area or this dimension of our services this summer. What can we put in place to ensure that we're improving in this particular area? Or we can use the summer as a time to assess whether or not young people have access to those key developmental experiences that we know that they need to survive and thrive. We can observe, we can go into the program, we can see, we can take notes, we can score a research and evidence-based tool and then sit down and have a conversation with our teammates about the quality of the programmatic experience. And we can do that in this summer. We're gonna debunk some myths, right? Summertime is not that we're gonna push all that stuff until next summer when summer's over. There are some things that we can do relative to improvement that's not a heavy lift that doesn't require a whole lot of intellectual sweat equity, it can be a simple tweak in modification can make a big difference in the quality experience. So let's leverage summertime and summer learning to improve. And if you wanna shout it out, you can too. Everybody say improvement, improvement. We're using the summer and leveraging the summer to improve. Matter of fact, sometimes we say at National Summer Learning Association, we're not gonna do any professional development about kids without kids. And so, you know, we're working on it. Youth voice and choice is super important. The other eye is that it's a time for innovation. If you think about all the great tools that we have available to us in the ecosystem of out of school time, all the research, all the evidence-based practices that are going on, even some of those organizations that, you know, we all know of like the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Ys and other places, you know, they hone those methodologies and skills during the summertime. A lot of programs were born in the summertime. Even in school models during the school year are incubated during the summertime. So leverage this summer as an opportunity to innovate, to try something different that you didn't do last summer. You know, something that might be a little bit of a stretch, right, that's really gonna push your cells and your staff and your organization to innovate in the summer space. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to look like last summer or this summer before or five years ago. And just a tip for innovation. If you involve the young people in what the program could look like and feel like and sound like, you're halfway there. Innovation, let's innovate. It's also a time to integrate, right? A lot of times we operate in silos, right? We have this wonderful program. We might even have a brick and mortar building that we go into. We have our office and this place where the young people come and do their thing, right? But it seems a little solid off because there's a library across the street or down, you know, across town. There's the Parks and Recreation Agency. It has their facility not too far from us, right? Boy Scouts of America, you know? Girl Scouts of America, gotta reach out and see if we can integrate other structures and systems that touch the lives of this young person or these young people and figure out a way to integrate them into what we have going on. And it has to be a meaningful partnership. This is not like partnership. I used to work and spend six years working at the Department of Parks and Recreation here in Maryland. And I can tell you sometimes partnership is code where I need a free room to run a program or it's not that. It's really integrating partners where there's an equal share in the challenge, equal share in the responsibility, the division of labor, as well as the equal share in the credit and triumph of that partnership. So figure out a way to really truly integrate other structures into your summer offerings. Integration, last one is impact. The summertime is a time for impact. You know, let's talk about how we can make sure that what the young people are participating in has lasting impact. One of the ways that you can do that is to ensure that there's integration of family and the school and the community in your efforts. And we'll talk a little bit more about that as well. So when you think about summertime, you know, we're not gonna get hung up on the inequity. We recognize inequities are in that space and we're gonna continue to work on that. But we're gonna really leverage and lift up the opportunities through these four eyes that exist in summer. So I did mention that I wanted to talk a little bit about the distinction between summer school and summer learning. And first of all, let me go ahead and take a moment just to honor and celebrate everybody who operates in the traditional day school. They're awesome human beings. They're doing great work on a regular basis. You know, they get up and do what they have to do to serve our children during a traditional school day. So I don't want folks to leave feeling like this is truly summer school versus summer learning. But if you were to look at summer school, and if you think about it, you know, if you close your eyes and bring yourself back to sixth or seventh grade and your teacher along with the principal or a counselor brings your parents in and they sit you down and say, Miss Johnson, you know, Jane and John, both of them actually are gonna have to go to summer school. And if you're feeling a visual reaction to being told that news, if your heart sank a little bit, if your palms started sweating, it's probably because you have a sort of vision of what summer school looks like, feels like, and sounds like. And for at least in my experience, it was not always a pleasurable piece of news to get. All right, when you think about summer schools, it's generally about, you know, trying to catch up on some stuff that you didn't get to do during the school year. So it's about remediation. Whereas summer learning, when you think about summer learning, that it really focuses on, you know, new and accelerated learning. Like I can learn some new things. I can, you know, connect to some new ideas. That summer school is traditionally about, you know, let's get the academics on, let's get the literacy, let's get the math, let's do the drill and skill, and then maybe after that, we'll get to go outside and play basketball. But if we don't do the academic stuff, then we can't go outside and play basketball. You probably heard, you know, that strategy before. That summer school is about being inside of the school building. It's district-based. It feels sometimes disengaging and like a punitive response to something I didn't do during the school year. And of course, we know that it's mandated for some students. But then when you think about summer learning, it's quite the opposite of that, right? It's not about academic drill and skill. That it's comprehensive. It's, you know, I'm making connections between my context and my reality and my environment. That it's project-based, that it can be hands-on as well as being minds-on, right? That it doesn't have to take place in a school building exclusively with the teacher standing in the front of the classroom and the young people sitting in rows, you know. That it can be in a variety of different places and locations that the world can be your classroom. You know, we talked a little bit earlier in previous slide about partnerships. Well, if there's a construction site, you know, in walking distance from your program's location, how awesome is that to have a relationship with the developer and say, hey, can we bring a couple of classes by to understand how do you take a drawing from an architect and make that into a big building, right? So the world can be our classroom. And summer learning takes place in all different kinds of locations. Yeah, Cynthia, the first time I heard hands-on minds-on, I was like, oh, okay, it just like clicked for me. So thank you for shouting that out there in the chat. You know, summer school is, you know, summer learning is exciting, it's engaging, it's attractive, everybody wants to go. Like, you know, there's a waiting list for our program because it's so popular because there are things in there that young people have identified that they are interested in doing is what they need, want, and desire, and that we're able to craft the programmatic experience based on your voice and your need. And then we know that summer learning experiences are voluntary and open to everyone and not just for some who, you know, didn't do what they were supposed to do during the school year. So I just thought it was important to spend some time talking about the distinction between summer learning and summer school, and really what we advocate for at the National Summer Learning Association is for networks, programs, individuals to really embrace this term summer learning and also what that looks like, feels like, and sounds like. So this stuff didn't just pop up, it's been around for a while. Actually, the Forum for Youth Investments been studying this work and creating tools for us to assess whether or not we're running quality programs. I would encourage you to go and check out the Forum for Youth Investment. If you're interested in learning more or diving in deeper and wider with respect to positive youth development, the Forum has written all kinds of articles, white papers, you know, books on strengthening youth development practice, aligning those policies at the state level or city-wide level or at scale on a jurisdiction as well as how do we plan and partner for impact. So visit the Forum when you get an opportunity. And the architect of most of what I'm talking about today is the Weikert Center, the David P. Weikert Center for Youth Program Quality. They are the architects of the Youth Program Quality Intervention. So I would highly encourage you to visit them. You can find them at cypq.org. That C is in Charlie Wise and yellow P is in Paul. Q as in quick.org. So what is youth development? What is positive youth development? It's a process. All right, we just don't wake up and young people don't just wake up in turn from adolescence to adulthood with the flip of a switch. Although sometimes it might feel like that. Sometimes I get that. But it is a process indeed which all young people are gonna try to meet their basic physical and social needs. Matter of fact, you can even drop off the youth here and just say human, right? Every human needs to be safe and supported and put in situations to learn and lead. And so young people are gonna constantly, they're on a mission to get their physical and social needs met as well as build the competencies that they need to succeed as a young person in route to adulthood. Youth development is so complex that it actually has two definitions. And so there's the conceptual definition which I just shared here. And then there's a practical definition which is your approach to the work that defines young people based on their capacities and their strengths and not based on any deficits or anything like that. So we meet the young people where they are, celebrate all of the greatness and their amazingness and really identify where their strengths are and put them in situations to learn and lead. And also intentionally putting them outside of their comfort zone at times too because we know that people in general, young people do not learn when they're comfortable. So it's another thing you can kind of make a little note on and walk away from this conversation knowing that young people don't learn when they're comfortable. They learn when they are somewhat uncomfortable just outside of their comfort zone which is called the zone of proximal development. If you wanna Google that so you get some good goodies there for that. But if you push them too far out their comfort zone then the self protective mechanisms kick in and they shut down and it can be frustrated. So we're gonna find that nice balance of pushing young people just outside of their comfort zone. If you think about the programs that you run, hopefully you're seeing yourself in this list. We know based on research and evidence that these features need to be present if you wanna say that it's a high quality programmatic experience for young people. And for young people have access to those experiences that we know that they need to survive and thrive. These pieces must be in place. Physical and psychological safety must be promoted throughout. Of course, we know how to keep young people physically safe. Psychological safety is a little bit more complex. And so just keeping our eyes on the emotional climate of our session. Once again, whether in person or virtual to the extent that you can. That there's an appropriate structure that the relationships are supportive as characterized by staff really engaging with young people helping young people to think more critically about what they're doing, how they're doing it as well as why they're doing it is one of the ways that we can support young people. We don't just give them the task and walk away but we give them the task, adjust the level of challenge as appropriate based on the young person's need and then support that young person either through participating alongside them and or ask an open ended questions so that they can articulate what they're doing, how they're doing it as well as why they're doing it. Positive youth development settings need opportunities to belong. Like let's just take it back to basics, right? Like, you know, this is my group. This is my classroom. These are my family members or a family, how whatever terms that you use to create that opportunity to belong. Young people need that, that the positive social norms are present. Notice that it didn't say rules. Although you can have some rules and some of those rules can be non-negotiable rules. You can't have 200 non-negotiable rules and then rules are usually grounded in participant and young people's safety. So I would suggest one of the ways to increase positive social norms. And even if you do have rules and other sort of community things that you put in place to govern your community there that young people had an opportunity to contribute to what those rules are. Young people need support for efficacy and mattering. They need opportunities to build skills and integration of family and school and community. I wanna lift that up just one more time. Integration of the family. What are some of those ways that the program can be extended? You know, whether or not you have those young people in place physically or virtually. What are some of the ways that you can get the family involved in the young persons out of school time experience as well as connect the larger school and the community in your efforts. With my producers there in the background, you can like maybe drop a timer there or something in the chat. I know exactly how much time I have left. I teach this stuff quite a bit and I can go on and on about positive youth development. So sometimes my timing gets off. Though I appreciate y'all. Any visual folks in the room? I don't know if there's any visual. I tend to see the world in pictures. And so here is another example of positive youth development in the visual form. So you see at the base of the pyramid is keeping young people safe. Oh, we wanna support them, provide them opportunities to interact and engage at the top of the pyramid where young people get to plan what they do, do what they do and reflect on what they've done as a result. And if this looks like anything else that you've seen in your academic career, if Maslow's hierarchy of needs is coming up into your consciousness as a result of looking at this, just know that it is exactly that. That we want young people to self-actualize at the top of the pyramid. And we can help facilitate experiences or their access to those experiences that get them what they need to survive and thrive. I always say survive because we know that some young people lost the zip code lottery. And that reality is something that's very real. So for some families, it is about survival, first and foremost, and then of course, en route to thrive in. If you look at these four domains, safe environment support, interaction and engagement, you'll see some methods that creating structure and clear limits with young people. Active learning strategies, ask, listen, encourage. How do you ask open-ended questions skillfully, creatively? When conflict does come up in program, how do you address that with the young people involving the young people in the resolution as well as leveraging the conflict situation as an opportunity for young people to know what to do differently next time. It's always a learning moment that in the interactive domain, we can talk about building community and how do you create cooperative learning groups with young people? And what do we do about this homework piece in out of school time? And how do we create space where young people can become more organized with their assignments and have that space to address some of their responsibilities to the day school with respect to homework? And then of course, at the top of the pyramid, once again, do we engage young people in planning for what they do, giving them that space to do what they do and then reflect on what they've done as a result and offering opportunities for young people to provide feedback, which is the young people telling us adult facilitators what they would like to see in the program differently next time. So all of that in one photo. Second photo I'll show right here as I bring my conversation with this group to a close. Once again, I'm a visual person, so I tend to see the world in pictures. And when I think about the young person in the center here, I'm reminded that they have a brain that needs nurturing. And I can nurture that young person's thinking by providing very concrete experiences that we can reflect on those experiences. What did we observe? How do we feel about what took place? We can talk about certain things that are happening in the world in abstract form. How do we take those abstract and trying to conceptualize things in an abstract form and connect those to our current reality as well as a concrete experience, as well as actively experiment with different things, connecting young people to different kinds of experiences. We know that young people have amazing talents and gifts. If you have time and want to do some research beyond this conversation, Howard Gardner's multiple intelligence theory is also represented here. So some young people are super kinesthetic. They need to be up, they need to be moving. They need to, they're tactile. They need to have their hands on things. They need to be doing things, making things, building things. You know, some students that are very verbal and linguistic, all right? You put them in a poetry class like in two seconds, they're like writing and they're standing up and they're expressing themselves verbally. You have folks, that student that's in the back of the room banging on the desk, banging out beats on the desk. Well, they have this musical type of brain and they see the world through that. And so I shared this to say that our challenge is to see the superpower that exists in every child and to create concrete, reflective, abstract and active experiences for them. So that they can thrive. And so we don't do this in isolation. We do this in partnership with, you know, the other structures around that young person. The day school, we do it in partnership with families. I understand that CESA has embedded within their products opportunities for our parents to be involved and engaged with their young folks at home so that the program, you know, it's one of those gifts that keep on giving even beyond the time that they are formally with us. And so I know I've been talking for quite a bit. I'm gonna go ahead and give you an opportunity to just look at this image and tell us what you see here in the chat box. And if there's anything that I talked about in the last 15 minutes or so that you see connected to this image, feel free to go ahead and type that up in the chat because I think it perfectly sort of captures most of what we talked about today. Actually, I'm gonna show you that. So I gave you a little bit of a precursor. I'm gonna show you that in just a moment. Let's just go over just a few more definitions. Great, so some principles. I wanna make sure that we understand that all young people are gonna seek to meet their needs. And if we do not provide for those needs, young people will figure it out. They will get their needs met someplace else. So we want them to get their needs met with us in a safe and structured environment with the necessary opportunities and support so they don't go anyplace else to meet their needs. Our goal is not to fix young people. We don't fix broken young people. We accept all young people and their greatness. The moment that they lock eyes with us at program, our job is to develop them and to challenge them to achieve their highest potential. Caring adults simply don't just show affection for young people. They challenge them to achieve their full potential as well as keep the bar high. If you raise the bar to here, young people are gonna rise here. If you raise it here, they're gonna rise here. So go ahead and keep that bar raised really high. And then we provide young people with a full range of supports necessary for them to succeed. This is the image as you think about everything that we discussed that I shared in the last 15 minutes or so, what do you notice here in this image? And go ahead and type some of that there in the chat so that we can get a little bit of an interaction going on here. Okay, I see you're working together. It looks like a lot of fun is taking place. I appreciate that. There's some collaboration. Thank you. Collaboration giving meaning to each other's learning. I thought it was interesting to see the young person with the pen and you see the adult with the pen. So it looked like the adults are participating alongside them. Katherine mentions that there's some cooperative learning going on. Cynthia mentions like it looks like there's some project-based learning going on. Self-expression, evaluation, collaboration. Everyone is engaged with one another. I think they look quite comfortable too. They don't even have any shoes on. Just sitting around with the socks. The emotional climate seems really positive. Everyone is engaged. Fabulous. Fabulous. And Chanel, thank you for ending us with that in the chat because I feel like everyone on this call is engaged as well. And so with that, I'm gonna end my comments here today and just so I'm sure a moment of gratitude for being invited to be here with you all today. This is something that's near and dear to me. My organization and we are super excited when anyone is out there providing these vibrant places and spaces whether in person, virtual or otherwise if there is a otherwise for young people to survive and thrive. So I'm leaving this conversation prideful knowing that you all are continuing to do this work. Know that the National Summer Learning Association is here to provide any support and assistance for folks to understand the summer space, understand the opportunities that exist within the summer space and how we can fully leverage the summer for continuous growth and improvement not only for our staff but for the families that we serve. Fabulous. So I'm gonna send the microphone back over to Mia. Thank you so much, Roderick, for sharing all of those jewels with us, the importance and the impact of offering those summer learning opportunities for students. Now that we know how important it is, we wanna share a few CSI lessons that support students to explore those interests like Roderick mentioned earlier to ask those questions and build skills all while having fun, playing learning games and forming positive attitudes at home. CSI lessons is our new supplemental curriculum. Our summer learning collection was built with research from the Summer Learning Association and also from the ideas presented in positive youth development. In total, we have eight weeks of curriculum that was built to be sent home for students and families to engage over the course of the summer. So like Roderick said, integrating the family and the community into the learning in order to make that big impact. Each week is centered around an affirming theme that students explore through reading, through writing, through SEL, STEAM and family activities. All grades focus on the same thing each week so that families can grow together. So let's jump in and explore. All right, so here is our week one lesson. It is titled, I Am Curious. I have previously assigned this lesson and I am in as a student so that you can see the student experience. Each lesson starts with a clickable homepage like you see here that shows the activities that are included for the week. So you can see here this page includes an introductory video, a read activity, a write and draw activity, a STEAM activity, family connection and reflection activity. So let's start with the video to learn more about what it means to be curious. We're gonna play just a little bit of this for you. Being curious means you want to question and learn about the world. When you're curious, you ask questions like, how are roller coasters built? Or how do toilets work? Or why do pandas eat bamboo? So after students and families watch the video, students then use the video tool right within Seesaw to interview a family member to find out more from someone else about what it means to be curious. Building on that understanding of the theme of the week, students are then challenged to go further and have a family member interview them about curiosity. Students can save their work each day by clicking on that orange draft button that you see in the upper right-hand corner. And then the next day they come back to access their work by going to their activity tab in Seesaw and clicking finish response. All right, next we move on to the read section. So here's students listen to a story and then are asked to connect the story to the theme of the week about being curious. In this activity, students use the microphone to share their favorite question from the book. Here is the write and draw activity. After learning what it means to be curious, students are prompted to connect what they learned and use the drawing tools in Seesaw to write about what they are curious about. Students are encouraged to explore what they are curious about by researching their topic with a family member. In this steam activity, students watch a video to see how to build something strong and then they use maker materials to actually build different shapes and they experiment to determine which is the strongest. And here students then use the video tool to record their experiment and they explain why they think one shape is stronger than the other. Here is the connection activity, the activity that's designed to bring in that family member. This activity is really designed to stimulate that curiosity in the home environment. So what students do is they use that camera tool to take a picture of something in their home and they use the label tool to type what the object would say and add audio to record their ideas. Then students are challenged to use their curiosity by having two objects in their home talk to each other. And then finally, students have the opportunity to use that video tool to reflect and to share what they learned about being curious. Each week, students are engaged in a variety of multimodal learning activities all connected to that same thing. Kids are being kids, they're having fun, they're actively learning. They're learning how to explore their curiosity and fun and creative ways and making connections with family. These activities boost overall well-being and provide a four continuous learning. Now Ali will show another part of our summer learning collection. Thanks Mia. So also included with summer learning are math games for grade bands, so K to one, two to three and four to five. And these games reinforce concrete classroom skills. They build family connection and conversation and are a great way for students to practice math fluency in a fun and meaningful way. So what you see here is our math games lesson for fourth and fifth grade. And just like Mia had, I previously assigned this lesson and I'm in as a student so that you can see that student experience. So as you can see, our math games also have a clickable homepage that gives students that choice of which game to play with their family. So we have six games that help students practice important math fluency skills in fourth and fifth grade. We have multiples dice, fractions war, fractions dice, half it, double it, make it simple and four fours. So today we're gonna check out fractions war. So all of our games begin with a page of directions and there's a video of directions in which students watch another students and family members play the game. So let's take a look at this one. Hey Grace, we're gonna play a new game. It's war, but it's a special kind of war. It's called fraction war. And we're gonna focus on proper fractions. Do you remember what those are? Yes. Can you tell me? It's where the fraction is one hole or less than a hole. Yeah, one hole or less than a hole, okay. So here's how it works. Where are you tuning it? Two cards, these are gonna be our dividing line. One card for you, one card for me. One card for you, two cards for you, two cards for me. Okay, turn them over and let's make it. Okay, so that video goes on showing how to compare the fractions that this student and her father made and how the student determines which fraction is bigger. She explains that to her dad during this video. So students and families then read over on the right hand side the directions before they play the game. Then once students have played fractions warf in this example with their family, they have the opportunity to share what they learned in Seesaw. So students use the video tool in Seesaw to reflect on what was challenging about that game and then also how they overcame the challenge which really brings in social emotional learning to the game. All math games prompt students to reflect like this on how they overcame any challenges, reinforcing perseverance as well as a growth mindset. All right, thank you, Allie. So as promised, we will be, we are now going to share links to the handout that contain free Seesaw lessons. And we are actually dropping those links in the chat because we saw some of your responses about the issue with the handout tab. So this will also be in the followup email that you will receive as well. And the handout does include three lessons from I am curious in English with the three K through three lessons in Spanish as well. In addition to those lessons, we've also included three lessons for I am persistent in English for K through five, as well as in Spanish for K through three. These lessons help to build students understanding of how to be persistent, which we know is an incredibly important life skill both in now the classroom. You will also receive the math games for kindergarten through first grade, second and third and fourth and fifth to share with your students and your families. So once you get that handout, just click on the link that you find in that handout to save it to your My Library tab in Seesaw. If you do need more basics about how to use Seesaw, we want you to check out our training page at web.seesaw.me for its slide slash training. We will share that link with you as well. This is just a sample from our eight-week summer learning collection. The entire collection provides standards-based reading, math and writing activities with SCL skill building in authentic ways. The lessons leverages the assets and funds of knowledge families bring to learning while building family confidence and finding learning moments in their home, community and everyday life. And finally, the summer learning collection strengthens relationships by keeping students and families connected through Seesaw. So students are inspired to learn all summer learn, long, excuse me. So we do have additional collections that can be used to accelerate skills in summer programs. With lessons, teachers and students can get excited about. Lessons are for multiple entry points and creative ways to practice foundational ELA, math and social-emotional learning skills. To learn more about these additional collections or you can go to www.seesaw.me for its last summer, we will be sharing that link with you or you can check out the one pager as well that we dropped the link to in the chat. So once again, we just wanna say thank you to Roger Clark. We really appreciate you spending time with us today to share about the importance of offering summer learning for students. You are a wealth of knowledge. You dropped some gems tonight for us. If you would like to learn more about the National Summer Learning Association, you can contact Mr. Clark by email or visit the website which will drop in the chat as well. Great, thank you. Okay, Broderick, we are now going to take a few minutes to answer some questions that were asked in the chat or excuse me, in the Q and A. Totally, I jumped in there myself and saw some gems there also. Great, let's see what we've got. So here's our first one. It was asked, what are some ways that you can blend social learning with academic learning so students are making gains over the summer? This is a great question. I think, I just try to make it untraditional. I just remember myself, how I felt studying science which is something which is like super interesting. I'm really interested and felt like my interest was being zapped out because I was forced to sit still in these rows in the class. And so, I think you can blend social learning by just bringing young people outside of the classroom, outside of your program space, outside of the building, really leveraging the entire environment that's around young people to encourage things like building community, right? So before we jump into the content, we're not just gonna jump into the content, we're gonna actually spend some time doing circle time. And I would encourage you to try this for a week. Get with your kids and do circle time whether you're in person or virtual, get this time where you just say, hey, everybody has a chance to say one thing that they noticed about someone from last week that they did that was awesome. Well, I noticed last week, Hakeem went into the chat and I was a little nervous in my presentation and he just went and took it. So you do that every day for a week and then try not to do it the following week and you can guess what's gonna happen. The young people are gonna be like, wait, we didn't do circle time. And that's when you really know that the young people are really identifying really strongly with the program offering is when they begin to take ownership and to begin to wanna even lead those pieces. So you don't have to lead the icebreaker all the time. Have the young people lead icebreakers. And now, you can just sort of be the guide by the side rather than the mage on the stage, right? And have young people take control of their growth and development and learning. You'll get them to those developments that outcomes quicker that way. Definitely, I love that analogy, guide on the side. Exactly, we don't have to be the star on the stage. Actually, it's not about us at all. It's really about them being on the stage and starring and self-actualizing. All we do is facilitate their access to those experiences that we know that they need. Absolutely, thank you. Roger, I love that. And as a former kindergarten teacher, we all know the importance of that kind of community building that socialization, but it's really important for all of our students. So I'm so glad that you pointed that out. All right, so here is another question that we have. What are some ways that you begin to solicit and integrate that family involvement into the summer learning piece? Another great question. I'm actually gonna take these questions with me and use them in other talks because they're just amazing questions. But one of the ways that we can integrate families, so I used to run a program in Washington, DC and I looked at my staffing and how much resource I had to run the program. I was able to carve out a couple of dollars for a stipend to have what I call a parent partner. And this parent partner was like the most critical individual in my experience as a director in this program. This parent knew everything that was going on with all the young people. She knew what was going on in the living room. She knew the triumphs that they had and the challenges in ways that I just would never be able to know. And so if you have that, those resources and are able to bring on a parent, she was a grandparent. She was retired. So she wasn't looking for a salary. It was a small stipend mode. I could just a gift. But you can involve families in that way. The other way is just the other way that I, I'm thinking out loud but the way I used to do this a lot is to stand in front of the building when students are being dropped off and be visible. Because a lot of times as administrators, we're only visible to parents when their child is cutting up or doing something that's wrong or we got to do some corrective action but rarely do they get to experience on the other side. So I can't leave from behind the desk. So I would get up and go stand outside as those parents are dropping their kids off. I would wave to them, talk to them for a few minutes. Those informal exchanges are huge. What you really want is to build allies with families where you have entree and the ability to share some of the other great things that are going on and share the good news. Share the good news that's going on in a program have a formal orientation. Whereas not just like I'm just gonna talk about the rules and what your kid can't do but create orientation where the parents actually get a chance to experience the curriculum. They get a chance to experience the program to feel what it's gonna be like to be a student in the program. It could be a fun way to expose them to the program and give them a sense of what's going on. And also we can talk about the other nuts and both like rules and that kind of thing. We just have to be creative. Adults are just little big, big, big little people. They need to be safe and supported and put in situations to learn and lead too. So the more you can stand in front of families and let them know that you're there for them, these are the services, opportunities and supports that you're committed to providing not only for their child but for them. Those are just a few creative ways. And I would just say, I know solicit is a strong word but just ask. Like parents are like, they'll listen. They might hit you with a question back but that's a good thing when you get more information and more data from parents to learn how to tweak and modify the program to better meet all their needs. Thank you. So that's great ideas that you just provided. Really appreciate it. I think at the time, I think we're gonna pause on questions and as I don't know if we mentioned this but any questions that weren't answered, we'll make sure we get in contact with any participants to answer those for you. So as we wrap up today, we wanna encourage all of you to think about how you can incorporate the strategies that Mr. Clark shared to support your students and families throughout the summer as well as those seesaw lessons. And so we'd love for you to share with us on social media if you're on there using the hashtags seesaw as well as seesaw lessons. Project, we'd love for you to share about this book because little preview we're gonna be giving away a few copies, yes. I'm old school, so I need to actually have the actual book in my hand. I know the kids today, they like to do it with their thumbs and swipe in and stuff like that, but there's nothing like having the book. So I'm excited that a couple of y'all will be getting copies of this. If you're running summer programs, you don't have to look far further than this guide to know like what things you need to put in place to ensure that it's a high quality experience for them. So the book is divided into two domains. So program infrastructure, so all the things you need to have in place, like even just going back and saying, what's the purpose of this program? Is this program content that is relevant for right now? How do we sustain this program beyond this year? Let's talk about how we plan, how do we staff up? Who are these individuals? What kind of dispositions do they need to have to be ready to be in the service of our children and families? And we talked about partnerships earlier. And there's also some point of service considerations where it matters the most, like when the young people's eyeballs meet the adult's eyeballs, like how do you individualize the instruction for each individual child's superpower? Remember I talked, some kids are kinesthetic, some kids are musical, some kids are tactile, like, and how do we integrate all the other structures, the Parks and Rec, the libraries, you know, other things that we can do to integrate their experience in those lessons. And then one of my favorites is unique program culture. What makes our program unique, different, special than the one that's down the block and around the corner? So we spend time talking about those in the guide too. There's job descriptions in here, so you don't have to recreate the wheel. You know, there's forms, there's templates, there's best practices, profiles of excellence programs that have done really great work that we lift up in this document as well so you can aspire to be, but just as proficient as those programs are with the quality of your service provision. So if you're one of the lucky folks to get a copy of this book, awesome. And then maybe we can figure out how to get others copies if, you know, we can figure that part out too. Just go summerlearning.org. Perfect, that was a question in the chat, summerlearning.org, you can purchase that book. But as was shared in the chat, we, first of all, once again, thank you all for joining us and thank you, Broderick Clark, for helping us understand the importance of high quality engaging summer learning. As mentioned, we will be giving away five copies of summer starts in September. So just head to that Google form that was dropped in the chat, complete that, provide us with some feedback and fingers crossed, you're one of those lucky five winners. And just once again, we wanna say thank you so much for joining us today and we hope to see you again soon here at CESA. Thank you, Broderick, thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you, thanks for having me, appreciate you. Thank you, we appreciate you. Take care.