Plan B and C and D: How Two Principals are Hoping to Avoid the Summer Slide

Transcript

From New Leaders, this is our Leadership Changes Everything series, where we're continuing to elevate leader voices from across the country as they share how they are leading through COVID-19. Today we hear from John Gravier out of New Orleans. He is the school director at Dolores T. Aaron Academy. It's a PreK through eighth school. We have with us Nancy Martinez from Cohort 9-Milwaukee. She now resides in Charlotte, where she's a principal at Starmount Academy of Excellence, a PreK through fifth grade school.  

Gravier:

Right now we're right in the middle of planning for our virtual summer learning experience. All of our students are going to go home in the summer with some sort of additional printed student materials. We're also sending home reading books with our students, almost kind of like a mini book fair for them. Just to put extra books in their hands over the summer. And, then we're going to select three grade levels. In our case, one from our PreK through second grade band; one grade from our third through fifth grade band; and then one grade out of the sixth to eighth grade band. We're going to pilot a couple different virtual learning experiences for each of those grade levels over the summer. So in the fall, or throughout next school year, we’ll have a pretty good plan in place based on what we do with the second grader is going to have to look different than what we do with an eighth grader. We want to be able to try out and see what works best for our students, our families and also for our teachers.

Martinez:

Our thought process was that we wanted to make sure that there was continuity of learning. We have read some research that says that students can absorb about 70 percent of what they have learned in reading throughout the year. So they're at risk already of losing 30 percent of their learning because of the situation that we're in. And not to mention the summer slide. So when we added those numbers – and these are students that have all the advantages. So when we have our kiddos that have some language acquisition challenges and other connectivity challenges and things like that. We said that that sent us on high alert. So I said we have to do more than what the district is required to ensure that that 30 percent doesn't become 40 or 50 percent for our kids.

Starmount has always had a plan to avoid the summer slide. We create opportunities with different partners so that every family, even if they don't know they want it, can have access to educational opportunities over the summer. We partner with the YMCA for Y readers, with Forest Hill Church with a program called Urban Promise which is also one of our after-school programs, and with the Boys and Girls Club. And then there are the summer opportunities for third and fourth graders with the district. So with all of those, we were able to reach almost 90 percent of our families. Now with this situation where we don't know if there's going to be live learning or if it is going to be online learning. We are in constant communication with our partners to see what that is going to look like. The district is going to offer distance learning opportunities for our kids. They have been extended, not just to our students, but for everybody. Because again we have read the research and we have to get ahead of the curve on this.

Gravier:

I feel like in the past, we would rely a lot more on social media to deliver information, emails, robocalls that go out to families to just get information out. I think due to what's happened the last couple months and moving over the summer that we're going into a lot more, I would say, personal connection route because we've established those relationships with those families. And they’re just going to need more information and more contact over the summer. There's more information that we want to be able to help with. We want to make sure they're supported on some of the learning materials we're sending home. So I think it's going to be a lot more of the person-to-person, personal relationship and not so much of the email blasts or stuff that maybe in past years we relied on during the summer months.

Martinez:

I think that the challenge is going to be to engage as many families as we can. Number one, because you know this has put a tremendous amount of burden on our families to be homeschoolers and they probably are going to be looking forward to a little break. But to communicate the need: that at least for some amount of time each day they're going to please allow the child to be in these learning activities and help them out because we don't want them to slide in their learning. So we have to do the same kind of promotional campaign that we do when we’re in the building, but we have to do it virtually. And under circumstances where families are a little exhausted. So we have to be cognizant of that too and make it as easy as possible. But at the same time making it happen. It has to happen.