As our Summer Changes Everything™ national conference nears, we’re bringing you glimpses of our conference site, Indianapolis, from the people who know it best: our 2010 host committee. Here, Roderick Wheeler of the Central Indiana Community Foundation tells you about all the things you can do just within a short distance of the conference hotel, the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown:
Downtown Indianapolis is one of the most beautiful places you have probably never seen, and once you visit, you will not want to leave.
–Enjoy the innovative architecture of the elevated glass Artsgarden (hovering above the intersection of Washington Street and Illinois Street) and the unique amenities offered by White River State Park.
–Literally connected to the hotel is the Indiana Convention Center, soon to be the sixteenth largest convention center in the country.–Arrive on Sunday, Nov. 7, before the pre-conference workshops, and you can watch the 2006 NFL Champions and soon to be 2010 Super Bowl Champs, the Indianapolis Colts, play the Philadelphia Eagles at my favorite place, Scotty’s Brewhouse. On Monday, Scotty’s offers all-you-can-eat wing night.
–On the way back to the hotel, pass by the 63,000 seat Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the 2012 Super Bowl (and of our conference welcome reception Tuesday evening).
–Visit the Indiana Repertory Theatre (IRT) and see a love tale, Mary’s Wedding, just a block from the hotel.
–Circle Centre Mall is in the center of downtown, connected to your conference hotel, but you will never know it. The mall is actually hidden behind the facade of buildings that once graced our city’s skyline.
–Connected to the mall you will find some of the best fine-dining restaurants, including the Oceanaire Seafood Room (one of my favorite places to dine. We can argue all day about the best steakhouse, but St. Elmo, on nearby South Illinois Street, is easily a hometown favorite. But if you are anything like me, and on a budget, then there are more than 260 dining choices in the downtown area that will meet your needs.
–After your session on Tuesday, for as little as $10, come watch the Pacers destroy the Carmelo-led Denver Nuggets at one of the most intriguing stadiums in the NBA.
The Summer Youth Program Fund (SYPF) partners in Indianapolis focus on investing in world-class youth programs so that we may develop world-class citizens. We are especially proud that this great city consistently ranks high as one of the best places to live and to raise children. We are particularly honored that America’s Promise named Indianapolis as one of the top 100 Best Communities for Young People. We can’t wait to see you in Indy at the 2010 Summer Changes Everything™ conference!
September 7th, 2010
andrew
Picture is courtesy of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project.
Each year, the National Summer Learning Association brings all hands on deck for a nationwide search for the best summer learning programs. We solicit applications broadly and wait eagerly to read rich details of programs serving youth in different ways all over the country. Inevitably, we all find a bit of ourselves and our own childhoods in the applications. Programs focusing on the arts find a soft spot with me, and stories of leadership development, college and career preparation and service learning always inspire and remind us why our work is so important.
Every program that applies has something to teach the field, but to award the Excellence in Summer Learning Award, we are looking for a program that is exemplary in both its organizational infrastructure and its model at the point-of-service. The review process is rigorous; programs are first scored on their written applications, using a rubric that encompasses nine domains of program quality and that aligns with our Comprehensive Assessment of Summer Programs. We engage past Excellence Award winners and other experts in the field as application reviewers and always find their diversity of thought and experience to be an invaluable addition to the process.
After applications are scored, 10-12 programs are selected for phone interviews with Association staff and external experts. This year, for the first time, we also conducted site visits to five finalists. Site visits certainly added additional rigor to the process and made this year one of the toughest competitions yet.
We are so excited to award Horizons Colorado Academy/Horizons National and Sadie Nash Leadership Project with the 2010 Excellence in Summer Learning Award. While both programs are already leaders in the field of summer learning, we hope that this award will elevate and celebrate their work with youth to reach an even wider audience of practitioners, policymakers, families and researchers.
Sadie Nash Leadership Project is a program for high school women based in Brooklyn, New York. During the six-week summer program, young women look deeply at the role of women and examine how society’s traditional power structure impacts disenfranchised communities. Association staff members Jennifer Brady and Jody Libit visited the program this summer and reported back that the learning taking place in group discussions was “phenomenal” and reminded them of a college seminar on women’s studies. Sadie Nash is a fantastic example of a program that pushes youth to think, create and achieve beyond the typical boundaries of what’s expected of them in school or in life. We never know how deeply youth can understand and contribute to complex topics until we set the expectation that they can. I’m so glad that Sadie Nash has set the bar so high for the 100 young women it reaches each summer.
Association staff speak often about our vision for summer learning programs that integrate academic acceleration with a focus on social and developmental growth, and Horizons National and Horizons Colorado Academy truly exemplify that vision. By bringing public school children to private school campuses, Horizons program build confidence in youth in their ability to succeed in new settings. Horizons offers hands-on, project-based learning opportunities that integrate rigorous academic content into engaging, youth-driven experiences. Instead of losing reading skills in the summer, or even maintaining them, Horizons youth gain an average of four months of grade level equivalency in reading over the summer — something that is sure to help them enter school confident and prepared, year after year. Horizons also teaches all youth how to swim during the program, meeting a very real and specific need of its community of learners. Of course, the end of summer camping trip isn’t too shabby either!
It’s hard to believe that we’ll be releasing the 2011 Excellence Award application in just a few months at our November conference in Indianapolis. The Excellence Award process is one of the best tools we have to learn about programs all over the country, and there is nothing we love more than spreading the word about innovative, high-quality programming. So to all the programs out there — we want to hear from you! Look for the 2011 application to be posted on our web site in November. Or better yet, get it firsthand in Indianapolis!
August 10th, 2010
Sarah Pitcock
Last month, the Association awarded planning grants to three innovative school district and community partnerships to support a six-month planning process to enhance their summer programming for students transitioning from middle school to high school. The partnerships selected for this planning opportunity are the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) and the School District of Philadelphia (PA); Open Meadow Step Up and the Portland Schools Foundation’s Ninth Grade Counts Initiative (OR); and BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) and the Springfield Public Schools (MA).
The Association’s summer transition team is excited to kick off our work with the “pilot sites” with visits to their current programs this summer. We will use what we learn about the unique needs of each site to help guide the focus of a professional learning community, which will include planning meetings and field experiences that aim to expose pilot sites to expert knowledge and exemplary program models, in order to help them build knowledge in a collaborative manner to inform their enhanced program plans. We’re also looking forward to presenting with the pilot sites on this initiative at the Association’s national conference in Indianapolis this November.
The grants were made available through the Association’s ongoing field-building work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to use the summer time strategically to support the needs of youth entering high school to help keep them on track to graduate. The grantees were selected based on feedback from advisors and experts from the field on the key needs for supporting the bridge to high school during an event hosted by the Association this past march in Tampa, Florida.
If you would like to learn more about this work and contribute ideas about inventive ways to use educational technology and digital media to boost college readiness, please visit the Next Generation Learning Challenges website or visit the initiative’s page on Facebook or Twitter.
August 5th, 2010
Hillary Hardt
A TIME Magazine article posted online today highlights the importance of keeping children engaged in high-quality summer programs that provide both learning opportunities and fun. “Americans have a skewed view of childhood and summertime,” says the article, which also describes summer as “among the most pernicious — if least acknowledged — causes of achievement gaps in America’s schools.”
Featuring our CEO Ron Fairchild and model programs in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Corbin, Kentucky, the article suggests that expanded access to summer enrichment programs can help combat summer learning loss – particularly for children from low-income families – and improve American competitiveness.
The more in depth August 2, 2010 print version features additional program examples.
July 22nd, 2010
Debra Carroll
Today the Food Research and Action Center releases Hunger Doesn’t Take a Vacation: Summer Nutrition Status Report (2010). This year’s report shows that while participation in school lunch programs during the 2008-2009 school year went up, fewer children than the year before were fed by nutrition programs over the following summer.
This annual report by the center analyzes data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about two federal Summer Nutrition Programs: the National School Lunch Program and the Summer Food Service Program. As summer program providers know, children who receive healthy meals during the school year often struggle to get those same meals during the summer months when the school doors may be closed. Summer Nutrition Programs were created to ensure that all children experience summers free from hunger. (more…)
June 29th, 2010
Susanne Sparks
Today is National Summer Learning Day and we could not be any more proud of the movement we see around the country to recognize the importance of quality summer learning programs in the lives of young people. Since 2004, we’ve seen this event grow from a nice idea to powerful demonstration of the strength of programs and the need for them to expand across the country. We kicked things off last week with a Capitol Hill event designed to engage members of Congress is supporting legislation that would increase funding for summer learning. As I write this post, more than 500 events are registered in small towns like Corbin, Kentucky and big cities like San Diego, California. One of my personal favorites is happening early next month when (more…)
June 21st, 2010
Ron Fairchild
A Washington Post article Monday reported on the summer school cuts being made around the country as districts struggle to deal with budget deficits. It is a predictable but shortsighted step, given the research showing how summer learning contributes to the achievement gap.
Our own CEO Ron Fairchild and Policy Director Jeff Smink took to the back page of Education Week this month to make the case for more, not less, summer learning. In the commentary piece (may require free registration) they outline the role that high-quality summer programs can play in education reform. (more…)
May 27th, 2010
Debra Carroll
The American Association of School Administrators recently released a survey involving over 400 school administrators that found more than one-third (34 percent) of respondents are considering eliminating summer school for the 2010-11 school year, a rate that has roughly doubled each year, from 8 percent in 2008-09 to 14 percent in 2009-10.
What’s happening in your local school district? We agree with the U.S. Secretary of Education who recently described this trend as the “wrong way to go”. But what if you were in the role of a serving on school board where you had to make difficult budget choices? How successful have you been in making the case for summer in an environment where resources are scarce? What are the most compelling arguments you can make?
May 25th, 2010
Ron Fairchild
A report released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation today makes a compelling case for summer learning as one strategy for addressing the nation’s student achievement crisis and getting more kids on the path to reading well by 4th grade.
The special report, “Early Warning: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,” is part of the Baltimore-based foundation’s KIDS COUNT initiative, and includes state-by-state statistics on academic and social factors that impact student learning. It makes the case for a more coherent system of programs and services for children from birth through grade 3 that lay the foundation for reading development and future academic success. It cites the research on summer learning loss and the importance of high-quality out-of-school resources, such as books, community programs, summer camps, and technology. (more…)
May 18th, 2010
Ron Fairchild
There was a very interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times about alternative pathways into the teaching profession. The article highlights some of the creative, practical new approaches for preparing teachers for the classroom. We’ve seen that summer learning programs can provide a powerful training opportunity for new teachers. We typically describe this as the two-for-one benefit of investing in summer learning programs – they benefit kids directly and help attract and prepare future teachers. How have you used your program for this purpose? What are your ideas for moving this agenda forward in the context of the work that you do during the summer?
April 20th, 2010
Ron Fairchild
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