Author: Devang Pujara

Over the decades, there’s been much commentary about the downsides of our school calendar, which was designed to accommodate a farming economy. While this calendar has clearly persisted far beyond its practical application, old habits die hard, especially when so much of American life has revolved around school breaks. Amusement parks, vacation destinations, and other industries have been built around the summer vacation, and many families as well as educators have become very attached to this ritual.

However, for just as many families, and particularly those struggling financially who don’t have the luxury of long vacations or time off from work, summer paints a very different picture. Rather than attending camp and going on vacation, the children of these families are left with little to do and often suffer from what we’ve coined “summer slide”. Research has shown that summer slide is cumulative, so children who miss out on structured learning opportunities summer after summer are at far greater risk of falling behind, of not graduating, and missing key experiences and relationships that lead to college and career paths.

With all we know from both research and experience, why do we consider learning as something that happens just between September and June or between 8am and 3pm? Children are learning all the time—in school and out of school. Our expanded learning and youth development sectors have worked very hard to fill those learning, enrichment, and relationship gaps that children living in poverty experience after school, during winter and spring breaks, and over the long summer. But these out of school programs and opportunities aren’t available to every child in every community, creating one of the biggest and most consequential inequities in our education system.

With unprecedented state and federal investments for expanded learning coming to schools and communities, and multiple years in which to spend, let’s stop looking at the school day and afterschool, school year and summer, as such distinct and disconnected blocks of time. Let’s use this summer as a launching pad for a different approach. For example, utilize new summer program approaches and partnerships to inform school year activities; include afterschool partners in early planning for next summer; and provide opportunities for blended professional development for teachers, school staff, and expanded learning partners so all are grounded with the information and skills they need to support children, all day and all year.

There are many examples to look to, tools to access, and proven practices that should be leveraged as school districts tackle the important work of growing expanded learning opportunities for students. Be sure visit our Summer Technical Assistance Hub to be connected to expert support with planning, program design and operation, partnerships, assessment and more. Want to share this with your network? Click here for a flyer!

AUTHOR

Jennifer Peck, President and CEO, Partnership for Children and Youth (PCY)

RESOURCES

• Partnership for Children & Youth (PCY) Website
• Summer Technical Assistance (TA) Hub
• Summer TA Hub Flyer
• Summer Game Plan Webinars
• 2021 California Summer Learning Guide
• Summer Learning Toolkit
• PCY Summer Resources

A year with COVID-19 has taught us many lessons and surfaced many challenges, including the way we have approached professional learning. Gone are the days of one-and-done professional learning events. We now know that providing educators with a list of workshops to choose from simply based on “what sounds good” can lead to disconnected, single event learning opportunities with little impact on the school organization’s targeted key results for student success.

The Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) project, as a collaborative statewide effort amongst team members from the Riverside County Office of Education and El Dorado County Office of Education, provides, in part, technical assistance rooted in intentional re/design of systems and supports at all levels to connect new learning to direct implementation. The most requested support is with implementation of universal design for learning (UDL) as a framework to create flexible learning environments that maximize choice, so that each and every student can learn in the way they learn best

The Arcadia Unified School District in Los Angeles County is among the growing number of districts implementing UDL in our state. Knowing a one- or two-day UDL workshop would not suffice, Dr. Katherine Mahoney, Director of Special Education, offered this of their intentional design across several years: “With the support of the SIP team, the time AUSD students with disabilities spent in general education settings increased by more than 28% over five years. In 2019 the academic performance for students with disabilities increased in English Language Arts by 13.4% and in Math by 8.4% on the Smarter Balanced Assessment.”

The Poway Unified School District in San Diego County is on this same path for UDL implementation.  Megan Gross, Teacher on Special Assignment, shared, “In 2021 we partnered with SIP to begin a professional learning series focused on UDL that will continue through the 2022 school year. Our goal is to provide 31 schools (elementary and middle) the instructional design tools to increase access to general education for all students.”  

California’s educators are moving beyond one-off workshops after seeing sustained, measurable outcomes for all students with ongoing coaching and scaling of UDL over time. It is this work that is the heart of SIP! Learn more about UDL on the SIP website, which offers access to archived resources and free professional learning events.

RESOURCES

• Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP)
• SIP Resources
• SIP Events

After a year of pivoting, it may well be time for a stretch. Whatever instructional calisthenics educators encounter in 2021, flexibility will be key. As districts hasten to complete learning acceleration plans to secure Assembly Bill 86 or American Rescue Plan funding, it is important to remember the role that intentional planning has in ensuring inclusion for the success of all students. The California Coalition for Inclusive Literacy (CCIL), led by Universal Design for Learning experts at CAST, supports districts at a time when “the myth of average” will not be more apparent.

As students return to school sites, they may come having experienced trauma, loss, triumph, growth, or all of the above. CCIL, a partnership between the California Department of Education (CDE), CCEE, and five county offices of education, provides professional learning to help districts and educators anticipate learner variability and proactively design instruction to minimize barriers. This three-year initiative, funded by the Special Education Educator Workforce Investment Grant, focuses on practical  implementation of UDL to maximize choice and provide multiple means of access to content for students during instruction.

Through a tiered service model of universal, targeted, and intensive technical assistance, CCIL fosters inclusive educational and literacy practices in both general and special educational settings. 

Universal Supports: CCIL’s universal supports ensure that educators across California can acquire the essential knowledge to provide access to grade-level content by supporting literacy within general education settings. Resources such as the Learning Designed instructional platform, free webinars, podcasts, graphic organizers, and lesson planning templates will all increase the capacity of your teachers and paraprofessionals to provide supports for all students, but especially to English learners and students with disabilities.

Targeted Supports: Teams of educators from districts and schools will engage in cycles of professional learning activities throughout the school year, including county-led training days, professional learning communities, and personalized workshops. Deeper work includes collaborative classroom observation protocols, sharing of demonstration lessons, resource creation using Lesson Design Studios, and opportunities to earn credentials through self-paced learning modules.

Intensive Supports: COE/SELPA coaches in five counties will spend three years diving deeply into CAST’s model of universally designed inclusive literacy development. These coaches will learn to facilitate innovative professional learning opportunities that build the internal capacity of COEs to scale and sustain their work across districts and into other counties.

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

 – Alexander den Heijer –

AUTHOR

Elise Yerkey,
Implementation Specialist,
CAST

RESOURCES

• California Coalition for Inclusive Literacy (CCIL)
• CAST Website
• Learning Designed

Designing for Literacy Development in the Hybrid Classroom (Webinar Series)

• 4/12: Building Comprehension
• 5/10: Expression & Communication
• 6/14: Reflection & Goal-Setting

With the passage of Assembly Bill 86, school districts will once again feel the pressure to speedily match students’ needs with the appropriate level of intervention and learning supports to accelerate learning. Although the question of how schools will address the large-scale learning acceleration of students is complex, we know that students need to first feel safe and secure to learn. This will require an initial assessment—in an intentional and formative manner—of the personal well-being of not only the students, but also the adults. In this past year, students and adults alike have been “battered by difficult emotions stemming from not only the pandemic, but also the economic recession and ongoing civil rights protests” (Prothero, 2021). Data on student and adult experiences will serve as the ultimate truth teller to help understand where they are and how we can move forward in addressing the necessary protective factors to engage our students academically. 

CCEE invited Dr. Peter Senge, co-founder of the Center for Systems Awareness and author of The Fifth Discipline, to be a part of the Leading Forward 2021 initiative. In his keynote session, Dr. Senge shared a conversation he had with a group of educators about the scar tissue left on our learners and adults after the pandemic.

“They talked about scar tissue. It’s one of the first images that was used. The damage has been done, and healing is actually more important in a way than learning in the traditional sense. Without healing, without recognizing and attending to the deep social, emotional traumas that students have gone through, we can think we’re focusing on learning and we can think we’re making up ground, but we won’t make much.”

As schools prepare to reopen, we must be prepared to address the reengagement of students and what that means in our current context. This begins with building or rebuilding staff-student, staff-staff, student-student, and staff-family relationships, which are fundamental in supporting the social, emotional, and academic needs of students. Consider the following strategies to strengthen these relationships:

Staff-student: Map out relationships so each student is assigned a staff member who develops and maintains a relationship with the student through regular scheduled check-ins. Greet students at the door, organize fishbowl discussions, and design activities for students to have fun and show school spirit, focusing on strategies that strengthen relationships and build trust. 

Staff-staff: While resources and attention, appropriately, are front and center in supporting students, less focus is paid to assessing and addressing the mental health of educators who have also struggled to find balance and safety during the pandemic. Conscious efforts should be made to leverage staff-staff relationships by promoting relationship-building and peer-to-peer support through “wellness committees,” mentors, professional counselors, social workers, school psychologists, or other trained professionals.

Student-student: Facilitate the process of creating a shared agreement for classroom norms, set the expectation that every voice matters, and provide opportunities for students to develop individual relationships and build a class community (e.g., “mix and mingle” activities, “glows and grows,” team projects) – virtually and face-to-face (as deemed safe).

Staff-family: Staff-family relationships have probably never been more important. Using culturally and linguistically responsive approaches, regularly communicate with families to schedule individual check-ins and distribute climate and culture surveys. Listen to what worked and didn’t work for them during the pandemic and use these opportunities to understand the needs of their children. Additional trauma-informed trainings or resources can support families in approaching difficult conversations with their children to help them cope with changes and prepare for the transition back to school.

As schools bring more students back for in-person instruction, we must create psychologically safe learning environments to accelerate learning, while advancing equity for our vulnerable student groups. The March edition of the CCEE newsletter will feature tools, strategies, and resources focused on reengaging students and building relationships, to ensure we are addressing the whole child. 

AUTHOR

Tom Armelino, CCEE Executive Director

Resources To Support Reengagement

Engaging Students During the Pandemic and Beyond (San Diego COE)

Refocus on the SEL Roadmap: Actions for a Successful Second Semester (CASEL)

School Reentry Considerations (NASP and ASCA)

Multi-Tiered SEL and Mental Health in Distance + Blended Learning (Orange CDE)

Student Well-being with CCEE Executive Director Tom Armelino (Leading Forward Podcast, Ep. 3)

Creating Safe and Supportive Classrooms

As we prepare to welcome students back to campus, one thing is abundantly clear – status quo will never be the same. Returning students will need unprecedented access to mental health supports to overcome trauma stemming from the COVID-19 crisis, social injustice, wildfires, and a multitude of other experiences. Schools must prioritize the psychological safety of all students, families, and educators as never before. Left untreated, trauma, anxiety, and depression will impair students’ ability to engage in learning, leading to greater academic skills gaps and exponentially increased social-emotional/behavioral needs. 

The research is clear—early intervention yields positive outcomes. Key to unlocking student success are credentialed school-based mental health professionals (school psychologists, counselors, and social workers) who play an integral role in the early identification of mental health issues. These highly trained professionals must be included in each phase of the school reopening plan, as they collaboratively support the social-emotional well-being of students, families, and educators. Within the Multi-Tiered System of Support framework, they implement culturally sensitive, trauma-informed supports for the whole child by: helping teachers embed social-emotional learning into the curriculum; helping students reconnect through back-to-school events, peer buddies, looping, and more; developing and communicating re-entry plans; examining infrastructure to conduct universal screening and informal check-ins with students; and managing a referral system for students at higher risk. Administrators—now is the time to embrace your Pupil Personnel Services (PPS) team as mental health providers. 

AUTHOR

By Jeannine Topalian, Psy.D., LEP#3365, CASP President

RESOURCES

California Association of School Psychologists (CASP) Website

Fostering the Whole Child: A Guide to School-Based Mental Health Professionals

The Critical Role of School-Based Mental Health Professionals