New Educational Trends and Terms

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

In America, educational trends and thinking don’t evolve. Instead, they tend to swing like a pendulum or cycle back and forth. To see a good example, just look at the writings of John Dewey from the early 1900s. 

Regardless of these swings, it is important for afterschool leaders to keep up on “new” educational trends and related terms. Below are some new terms and their definitions, as well as some resource links to learn more. 

Photo Credit:
www.willbrattcounselling.com

Trauma-informed practice involves adults recognizing the high likelihood that some (or many) youth participants have or are currently experiencing trauma. Skillful adult mentors possess a basic understanding of how trauma can impact children’s behavior and development and they strive to organize a program that is sensitive to the vulnerabilities and triggers of trauma survivors. 

They focus on providing a safe, supportive environment to promote healing from trauma and healthy development so youth may not only survive, but also thrive. They orchestrate activities and form networks of care aimed at restoring a sense of belonging to young people, their families and communities. (Dr. Marnie Curry, UC Santa Cruz)

Photo Credit: www.lauranordstrom.wordpress.com

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings,1994).

Some of the characteristics of culturally responsive teaching are:

• Positive perspectives on parents and families

• Communication of high expectations

• Learning within the context of culture

• Student-centered instruction

• Culturally mediated instruction

• Reshaping the curriculum

• Teacher as facilitator

Photo Credit: www.npr.org

Restorative justice aims to shift the conversation away from how a punitive legal system can enact retribution on an offender and instead looks to help the offender make reparations to their community, usually through justice mediation, counseling, or even reparations. (Scott Johnson, Social Solutions)

Competency-based learning is a student-centered approach to instruction and assessment where students advance upon mastery of a set of skills and knowledge as they progress through their education. (AYPF, Forum for Thought Blog)

Photo Credit: www.wps.k12.va.us

Personalized Learning is student-centered education that involves a significant amount of student voice and choice. Personalized Learning can be broken down into five principles: competency-based learning, flexible learning, student-driven learning, dispositions for learning, and authentic learning. (Center for Collaborative Education)


Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. (CASEL.org)

Character education addresses many tough issues in education while developing a positive school climate. Educators from a diverse array of schools have transformed their school cultures, reduced discipline referrals, increased academic achievement for all learners, developed global citizens, and improved job satisfaction and retention among teachers.Character education includes and complements a broad range of educational approaches such as whole child education, service learning, social-emotional learning, and civic education. All share a commitment to helping young people become responsible, caring, and contributing citizens. (Character.org)

SEL Drive in Schools Is Opportunity for Youth Developers

By Katie Brackenridge 

Originally Published in Youth Today

Katie Brackenridge

Schools are finally noticing what youth programs have known for decades. The way kids feel about themselves and how they connect with other people really matters. It matters narrowly for how they do in school and more importantly for their long-term choices and opportunities for a happy, productive, fulfilling life.

What we call youth development, the school day has started to focus on as social-emotional learning (SEL). Schools’ interest in SEL is a pendulum swing away from the No Child Left Behind focus on standards and standardized tests. This is exciting news for youth developers because we have expertise in this work. It allows us to partner authentically — not about homework help and test scores — but around the deep work of self-awareness, social connections, confidence and perseverance.

The drive for schools to embrace SEL is coming from a variety of national movements. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to define “nonacademic” indicators, giving examples like student engagement, school culture and climate, and staff engagement. This won’t feel different for many districts that have already noted the symbiotic relationship between SEL and Common Core-style teaching, both of which require and support collaboration, communication and critical thinking.

Photo Credit:
Rodel Foundation of Delaware

The shift is also driven by an extensive body of research showing that a foundational set of skills, beyond those traditionally identified as academic, are needed for students to really be prepared for the demands of higher education and the workplace. These skills, labeled SEL (or 21st Century Skills or noncognitive or soft skills), are ones that the education system had long taken for granted. When we look at them, they make perfect sense — the ability to control one’s emotions and behaviors, build relationships, feel confident in one’s ability — are skills that teachers and employers alike want to see in young people and adults.

Youth development programs — whether school- or community-based — offer an amazing resource for schools around SEL, but we need to be able to clearly communicate our value. The first and most obvious value is time. While schools last, on average, six hours per day and nine months of the year, kids are playing, learning and growing all day and all year. After-school and summer learning programs can offer an additional 690 hours (or 115 days) of learning time.

Another key asset is expertise in SEL. With deep roots in youth development, expanded learning programs help young people understand their potential and reach for it. Staff are deeply committed to creating safe spaces, giving kids the opportunity to learn and practice skills, encouraging their ideas and actions, and teaching them about their impact on each other and the world. The essence of youth worker skill is captured in the many after-school quality standards that many states including California have adopted.

In California, the Partnership for Children and Youth (PCY) has gathered best thinking from partners and stakeholders across the state to be as clear and concrete as possible about what expanded learning has to offer. A foundational document — Student Success Comes Full Circle — explicitly maps California’s quality standards and practices to defined SEL outcomes. Finding Common Ground clarifies how SEL is already embedded in many existing initiatives and practices — from youth development to Positive Behavior Intervention Systems to restorative justice. These reports may be helpful messaging tools in your community.

Beyond the reports, PCY has been running a learning community for nine districts and their after-school programs for the past three years. They are working together to plan and implement concrete strategies for better coordination and better programming in both the school day and expanded learning. The work is not easy, but districts and their partners have succeeded in creating joint staff development, shared meeting and planning time, assessments to measure and improve quality, and most importantly, a deeper understanding of the value and potential of each other’s work. Ultimately, we expect these steps will result in kids having a consistently positive SEL experience from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and throughout the year.

As SEL momentum grows across the country, we must seize the opportunity to communicate the value of after-school and summer learning, and become authentic partners with the school day. This work will stretch our own SEL skills, as well as our students’, as we find new ways to collaborate, communicate, think critically and be creative. The time is ripe for expanded learning programs and the school day to leverage each other’s expertise, resources and time so every child succeeds.


-------------
Katie Brackenridge is the vice president for programs for the Partnership for Children and Youth. She oversees initiatives to improve the quality of and access to after-school, summer and community schools efforts in California. She also makes recommendations and advises decision-makers about policies related to the expanded learning field, and is a member of the Expanded Learning 360°/365 project. 

Worth Noting

By Sam Piha

Afterschool Professionals Appreciation Week is a joint effort of community partners, afterschool programs, youth and child development workers and individuals who have committed to declaring the last full week of April each year as a time to recognize and appreciate those who work with youth during out-of-school hours. Join us for celebrations and display your appreciation to thank afterschool professionals who make a difference in the lives of young people. 
- National Afterschool Association 

Photo Credit: National Afterschool Association

For more information and full toolkit, click here.

————

Diane Ehrensaft

Better understanding the issues surrounding gender, LGBTQ youth, and particularly transgender youth, is important for youth program leaders. 

Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D. has helped us better understand these issues by contributing to our LIAS blog and by presenting at the How Kids Learn V conference in San Francisco. Ms. Ehrensaft is a developmental and clinical psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Director of Mental Health and founding member of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, a partnership between the University of California San Francisco and community agencies to provide comprehensive interdisciplinary services and advocacy to gender nonconforming/ transgender

children and youth and their families. Her most recent book, The Gender Creative Child acts as a guide for parents who are raising children in a time of progressive change in cultural, medical and legal ideas of gender and identity.

For those who would like to learn more from Ms. Ehrensaft, she will be appearing at an upcoming City Arts & Lectures forum on June 13, 2018. For more information, click here. 




————

In our LIAS blogs and our How Kids Learn VII conference, we featured the issues surrounding childhood trauma and trauma-informed practice. We were very happy to learn that Oprah Winfrey is taking this on as an important issue for all communities to be aware of. View her 60 Minutes segment and CBS This Morning segment.

Photo Credit: CBS News

————

Milbrey McLaughlin

Milbrey W. McLaughlin is a leading researcher and advocate for youth development programs and the community schools movement. She is the David Jacks Professor Emeritus of Education and Public Policy at Stanford University, and the founding director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities. Dr. McLaughlin served as MC for our first How Kids Learn conference and is a frequent contributor to our LIAS blog. A future blog post will feature an interview with Milbrey regarding her work. 

Dr. McLaughlin authored a new book entitled You Can’t Be What You Can’t See. The result of a five-year research project, the book documents what happened to more than 700 Cabrini-Green youth two decades after they attended the Community Youth Creative Learning Experience (CYCLE), a comprehensive after-school program offering tutoring, enrichment, scholarships, summer camps, and more. Through data collection, and in-depth interviews with participants and staff, she finds that almost all had graduated high school and escaped poverty, and so had their children.

McLaughlin describes the design principles as well as the core features of the program that participants say were key to their success: mentoring, exposure to activities and resources beyond their neighborhood, and a culture of belonging in which staff committed to “never give up on a kid.” You Can’t Be What You Can’t See offers lessons for policy makers, educators, community activists, funders, and others interested in learning what makes a youth organization effective for low-income, marginalized children. To learn more, click here. 


————

Jane Quinn

Jane Quinn is Vice President and Director of National Center for Community Schools at the Children’s Aid Society. She has been a leading voice advocating for youth development programs for several decades. Ms. Quinn was a presenter at the How Kids Learn II conference in San Francisco and a frequent contributor to the LIAS blog.

Over 25 years ago, Ms. Quinn led a team at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which released a report entitled, A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours. This report pointed out how the hours outside of school provided a major opportunity to address some glaring needs of young people. It changed the national conversation about the needs of youth in the out-of-school hours and the value of afterschool programs. To learn more, click here.

Maker Spaces in Expanded Learning Programs

By Sam Piha

Ilya Pratt

The Maker movement is not new. In fact, one of the founders of the Maker movement, Dale Dougherty, was featured at our How Kids Learn III conference in 2013. However, with the growing interest in growth mindsets, STEM, and social emotional learning, maker spaces are being incorporated in both schools and expanded learning programs. 

Below is an interview we conducted with Ilya Pratt. Ilya was a Maker Leader for Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Project Zero, Agency by Design, and currently the Director of Park Day School’s Design+Make+Engage program and the Innovation Workshop. Ilya and her colleague, Paula Mitchell, will lead a Bay Area Speaker's Forum on May 7, 2018 in Oakland. 

Photo Credit: http://ideas.demco.com/

Q: Can you briefly describe the "maker movement" and how this relates to "maker spaces"? 

A: Over the last 8-10 years there has been a revival of interest in making and repairing things for oneself or others. Early on in the movement, the question “Can I fix this broken thing rather than just throw it away?” was asked—and along with this, there was a rejection of the consumer habits so common to our larger culture. In addition, engineering companies in particular realized that their engineers lacked intuitive understanding of the materials and concepts critical to their field. This missing knowledge base was described as that which you learn through tinkering—more often in dad’s garage and while playing in nature, for example. 

Meanwhile, digital fabrication has become more accessible to school and home due to simplified programming options and consumer-scale machines. This convergence has drawn attention to the fact that an immense amount of learning, sharing knowledge and cooperation are a part of making. At its best, this learning is about children developing agency—a belief that they can make change in their world. It is very in sync with our democratic ideals! And of course kids, with few exceptions, love making things. Which has led to the question, if there is so much learning—and social emotional learning—happening while making, how can we provide students with these opportunities? 

Why maker spaces? They offer dedicated space, materials and tools to support these interactions. Their ethos is reminiscent of the neighborhood garage or corner coffee shop—there is an open invitation to come on in and pursue your dreams!

Q: We believe that the expanded learning space is perfectly positioned to offer strategies related to maker spaces. Do you agree and if so, why? 

A: Absolutely! Expanded learning programs are perfectly positioned. They offer blocks of time unencumbered by state curriculum standards and standardized testing! To some degree, making has already been happening in many expanded learning programs, more often in the form of simple crafts. One push we need to make is to increase the complexity of the offerings. Students can do amazing things when they have the resources. Give them simple electricity parts and they will figure out how to light up a bulb and make their own flashlight. More importantly, there is subtle work on the part of teacher education that needs to be done. Shifting adults’ mindsets that all students will make the same thing to one of open-ended expectations is critical. Recognizing the leadership that students can bring to the group and each other—rather than the teacher always leading--is a game-changer!

Photo Credit: gainesvillems.pwcs.edu

Q: Can you briefly describe what you think are the major benefits of offering young people opportunities to create within "maker spaces"?

A: Opportunities to pursue their own passions, to lead, mentor and collaborate. To learn with their hands and develop an intuitive sense of how the things in their world are made—including increasing their understanding of materials properties and physics, electricity and electronics concepts that naturally come up when making. There are also opportunities to explore coding and physical computing—interacting with the computer in ways well beyond its typical and basic use as a productivity tool. There is so much more.

Q: Within the K-12 range, do you believe that maker spaces are appropriate for all ages? Or just some? 

A: ALL. If you’re worried about safety, please, please accept that with proper training, kindergarteners (and middle schoolers!) handle sharp tools very appropriately! Maker spaces are, in fact, excellent places to learn how to be safe and to learn the repercussions of violating community safety rules. 

Generally, there are opportunities for all ages to do so many things—and often with students younger and older than themselves.

Q: Of the "We are, we belong, we can" SEL categories, which do you think maker spaces best address? 

A: I believe maker spaces can support all three categories well. Maker spaces demand from their users a high degree of self awareness, and an awareness and support of others. There is an emphasis on community. “We can” is at the heart of the spaces. We can figure out how to do what we set out to do. We will learn what we need to learn to make it happen and learn from our mistakes along the way.

Q: The California Quality Standards for Expanded Learning Programs have identified six point of service standards. Which are best served by maker spaces? 

A: Maker spaces score 6 out of 6 of the Point–of-Service Standards. Yup, no question about it. That list could have been written in response to a survey of maker spaces!

Q: There is both a growing emphasis on STEM and on building the skills of girls. How are these served by young people participating in maker spaces?

A: The hands-on learning that happens in maker spaces is a terrific foundation supportive of STEM skills. Math, for example is everpresent in making. Engineering as well. Many maker spaces prioritize coding and digital fabrication in their programs. There are “fablabs” that are all about digital fabrication. These maker spaces, and any space that provides access to digital design and fabrication resources, should have the supportive ethos common to maker spaces. Everyone is in learning mode—figuring things out both independently and together. Risk taking is rewarded and failures are perceived to be learning moments. 

Q: For expanded learning programs that want to learn more, what do you recommend? 

A: Check out the resources at Makered.org. They have been working hard to gather resources supporting maker space development, curriculum, etc. There are many other online resources now, as well as some good books that provide curriculum ideas and educational reflection on approach and learnings. My favorite book is Maker-Centered Learning: Empowering Young People to Shape Their Worlds (Clapp, E., et al) because it both covers the teaching and learning strategies common to maker spaces, and it offers educators a framework to use to explore the thinking dispositions of makers and designers.  

Q: For expanded learning programs that want to integrate maker strategies, what are the greatest challenges? 

A: Two challenges stand out: First, do you have a key program staff member who has a making passion that they can share and build upon? Do you have a teacher who can say, “I don’t know, we’ll find out how to do that together? Let’s look on the internet!”

Second is the obvious—Resources. Making things takes stuff, and some stuff just has to be purchased. We can do a lot with recycled materials such as cardboard and food containers, but you’ll also need scissors, steak knives or another type of cardboard cutter, and connectors such as tape or zip ties.

--------------

About Ilya Pratt: At the heart of Ilya’s educational practice is a deep curiosity about how things work, whether it is a child’s approach to problem solving or an engineering design solution. Ilya has worked with children and educators for over three decades, in school and non-school settings. As the director of Park Day School’s Design+Make+Engage program and the Innovation Workshop, Ilya provides integrated and collaborative programming supporting STEM, community service and social justice curricula. 

In addition, Ilya is a member of the Agency by Design Oakland leadership team, facilitating a teacher fellowship in maker-centered learning classroom practices. Ilya was a Maker Leader for Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Project Zero, Agency by Design, a research project exploring the promises and practices of maker-centered learning. She has also been an instructional coach for the HGSE online course, Thinking and Learning in the Maker-Centered Classroom.