A Tribute to CNYD, Part 2

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

As a former practitioner and CNYD staff person, I was saddened to receive an announcement letter from Founder and Executive Director, Sue Eldredge, that the Community Network for Youth Development (CNYD) was closing its doors. To review the full announcement letter and where you can still access CNYD resources, click here. 

CNYD served as a true pioneer in promoting the ideas of youth development by creating youth program training methods and tools, and a large demonstration through a citywide initiative, the San Francisco Beacon Initiative. CNYD staff had a large influence on the early afterschool movement in California, producing the Youth Development Guide for Afterschool with CDE and for advocating and offering training for the first statewide high school afterschool initiative in the United States. CNYD also served as a training ground for some of the most influential trainers and consultants in the afterschool field. 

CNYD has generously allowed the Learning in Afterschool & Summer project, and other leading organizations, to post CNYD's publications and tools on their websites. You can access those by going to our research and literature page and scrolling down. Access the page by clicking here.  

You can join us in thanking CNYD for all its contributions to the field and your work by adding a message of appreciation to this group card by July 15, 2013.

I contacted Sue Eldredge for responses to a few questions. Below is part 2 of a conversation with Sue Eldredge. 

Q: What do you believe is CNYD’s legacy?

A: I think CNYD's greatest contributions to the field have been in the practice arena with breakthroughs in assessing program quality and youth experience to drive continuous improvement at program and organizational levels.  When the field was struggling to define realistic and legitimate measures of accountability and tangled in debates that mostly centered on longer-term measures of healthy development, CNYD was an important force that shifted the conversation to focus on more immediate measures of program quality and the resulting developmental experiences of young people in youth programs and youth organization settings.  We were fortunate to form a very productive practice/research partnership with Jim Connell and Michelle Gambone to

Sue Eldredge

develop the CNYD's Youth Development Framework for Practice, associated measures of quality youth experience and one of the first research-based youth survey instruments.  These tools were used in learning communities that engaged youth workers and organizational leaders in continuous improvement processes that led to some of the first examples of youth development supports and opportunities that were "measureable and moveable".  This work was recognized in the National Academy of Science's study, Community Programs to Promote Youth Development, the definitive research effort that validated the youth development field's contributions to the healthy development of young people.  This field blazing work has had long-lasting influence in the afterschool and out-of-school time fields and is evident in the widespread focus on program quality improvement.

In the practice arena, CNYD was on the forefront of innovations in training and capacity-building.  We were one of the first youth development intermediary organizations to shift from traditional training approaches to lead learning communities where practitioners knowledge was mined to promote peer exchange and learning.  Some of our earliest professional development in the mid-1990's taught practitioners how to integrate assessment into practice so they could use the data that program leaders collected to understand if the new practices they were putting into action were making a difference for young people,  These new approaches set a standard for the field of youth development capacity-building. 

In very practical terms, CNYD's talented staff and those we worked with helped shape the youth development field in the Bay Area that we know today.  When our work began no one identified professionally as belonging to the youth development field.  The community of practitioners that CNYD supported grew over time to become just that—a professional community that identified as a unified field, with a shared vision and values, common practices and standards of accountability.  Most importantly, the youth development community came to identify as allies and partners working with young people to support them to grow up with optimism in the future, in communities where healthy relationships with adults and their peers are fostered, and with meaningful opportunities to contribute, to lead and build real skills.  While CNYD is sometimes described as an important catalyst for this field development, it was the rich partnerships we were so fortunate to have at all levels that enabled all of these gains.

Q: As you look ahead, what do you see as the major hurdles that the youth development field will face in the future?

A: The youth development field's commitment to the holistic development of young people and the principles of partnership and respect for young people are deeply rooted.  Skilled practitioners have always worked with young people from this place of understanding.  In many ways we took great concern not to name the "youth development movement" as new, but rather an important shift in focus at a policy level.  The real field breakthroughs were at a practice level.  In order to keep the field alive and thriving we will need to continue to reframe and refresh key youth development principles and practices so that they are relevant to the current dialogue and focus for policymakers, funders and practitioners.  You can see this demonstrated artfully in strands of the work that are being done at the Forum for Youth Investment, the Weichert Center for Youth Program Quality and in the Learning in Afterschool and Summer learning principles that are guiding afterschool work.  There are some very promising new research understandings about how young people grow and learn, especially in the arena of neuroscience.  Aligning this new understanding of research to practice to provide new and better ways to support young people's development seems very promising.

Q: Do you want to share your future plans?

A: After so many years of leading and growing CNYD, I am pausing to catch my breath and look with fresh eyes at new opportunities. I am intrigued by the potential that neuroscience research has to inform break-throughs in practice.  I am loving having more relaxed time to spend with my nine year old daughter Gracie.  And I am extremely thankful for my years leading CNYD and for the incredibly talented and committed staff and colleagues that surrounded me.  It was a very unique point in time when so many forces and talented people were aligned to have influence.  I have been extremely fortunate to have had my personal passions align with my professional commitments.   

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Sue Eldredge was the founder and Executive Director of the Community Network for Youth Development (CNYD) for twenty years. CNYD’s work led to the infusion of youth development practice into policy, capacity-building and evaluation efforts in the Bay Area and in ever wider arenas.  A graduate of Stanford University, Sue’s past experience includes work in the philanthropic world, research, and design and delivery of training and technical assistance systems for nonprofit, educational and governmental agencies.

CNYD, A Pioneer in the Youth Development Field, Is Closing Its Doors, Part 1

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

As a former practitioner and CNYD staff person, I was saddened to receive an announcement letter from Founder and Executive Director, Sue Eldredge, that the Community Network for Youth Development (CNYD) was closing its doors. CNYD served as a true pioneer in promoting the ideas of youth development by creating youth program training methods and tools, and a large demonstration through a citywide initiative, the San Francisco Beacon Initiative. CNYD staff had a large influence on the early afterschool movement in California, producing the Youth Development Guide for Afterschool with CDE and for advocating and offering training for the first statewide high school afterschool initiative in the United States. CNYD also served as a training ground for some of the most influential trainers and consultants in the afterschool field. 

I reached out to a few of my colleagues to get their response to CNYD's closing. You can also join us in thanking CNYD for all its contributions to the field and your work by adding a message of appreciation to this group card by July 15, 2013.

Below are comments from national, state, and local leaders in the field followed by a few quotes from my recent conversation with Sue Eldredge. 

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Karen Pittman

"CNYD was a pioneer, not just in advancing the core principles of youth development, but in bringing people together across sectors to support youth, and in organizational capacity building. CNYD’s work over the past two decades to deepen, strengthen and support the work of youth organizations and youth workers led the way and set a high bar for the many youth development and after-school intermediaries now operating across the nation. To ensure that we and others continue to learn from their pioneering work, we are happy to showcase terrific resources developed by CNYD over the years: http://sparkaction.org/content/cnyd-resources" - Karen Pittman, President and CEO, Forum for Youth Investment

Michael Funk

"Very early in my career, CNYD helped me understand the asset based movement in the early 1990s. I remember a CNYD conference on Community and Youth Development. It was one of the first of it's kind. CNYD also supported me as the new director of the Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center where I met Sam Piha for the first time.  I "cut my teeth" for the work I do now through the work of CNYD. I am now the After School Division Director at the California Department of Education. I continually draw upon and benefit from the lessons learned from the staff at CNYD. Thanks to Sue, for being an early pioneer in our collective work!" - Michael Funk, Director of the After School Division, California Department of Education

Claudia Jasin

"Jamestown’s work with CNYD in the late 1990’s set the course for the our steadfast commitment to providing kids in our programs with the highest-quality youth development experience.  Over the years, CNYD provided invaluable training, tools, and advocacy to support our work towards this goal.  To this day, we are still using many of those resources when training our staff or talking to funders. In a nutshell, CNYD has left an indelible fingerprint on the organization." - Claudia Jasin, Executive Director, Jamestown Community Center

Katie Brackenridge

"I was in the first Youth Development Learning Network, back in 1997.  It was so exciting to find out that all the things I thought could work for youth actually fit into a framework, linked to research and with specific strategies for implementation.  What a relief and resource!  More than 15 years later, the supports and opportunities still underpin my work in youth services, policy and advocacy.   And, there are CNYD trainees and staff anchoring excellent youth service organizations around California.  I am continually grateful for the creativity, innovation and critical thinking that made CNYD such a powerful agent of change for youth and the people who work with them." - Katie Brackenridge, Sr. Director, Out of School Time Initiatives, Partnership for Children and Youth

AN INTERVIEW WITH CNYD'S SUE ELDREDGE

Q: Can you describe why and how CNYD was originally formed? 

Sue Eldredge

A: In 1992, the Carnegie Foundation on Adolescent Development published A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Non-School Hours, the result of five years of study highlighting the contributions of the largely invisible community-based youth serving sector.  During the same period, I led a local community research project based at the Stanford Center for the Study of Children, Youth and Their Families, that highlighted the important ways grassroots community agencies throughout the Bay Area were responding to the unmet needs of young people outside of the schools.  The study was shaped and guided by an advisory group of organizational leaders and youth workers from agencies doing some of the most exciting and groundbreaking work locally. We surveyed, interviewed and brought together over 1000 Bay Area practitioners to talk about their work and how it could be strengthened.  One of the resounding recommendations was the need for an organization that could support this growing and almost invisible sector. Our earliest efforts centered on educating the public, policymakers and funders about the growing youth development field and providing professional development opportunities for youth workers.  We were greatly influenced by the leadership and early framing and language that Karen Pittman and her colleagues at the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research provided and connections to a handful of other colleagues that were just beginning to provide emerging intermediary support for the youth development field.

Q: Can you say a few words about why CNYD is closing its doors?

A: It was a difficult and long deliberated decision to close CNYD after so many years of contribution to the field and lasting impact.  However, in the current climate, there is simply neither the sustained focus on youth development nor the resources necessary to work deeply in ways that take advantage of CNYD's unique capacities for longer lasting systems change.  Organizations have lifecycles and the Board and I are felt that CNYD had amply fulfilled its mission to build and support the youth development field.  There are many skilled organizations and individuals that continue to provide youth development training and we have made our sizable resources available so that they can be used by all that carry on the important work of youth development capacity building.

Q: What do you believe are the major contributions that CNYD brought to the youth service field?

A: We are very proud of CNYD's long lasting influence.  Our approach and our resources continue to be evident in the work of many organizations throughout the Bay Area.  These are some high points of all that was accomplished over two decades by so many talented CNYD staff working in partnership with the Bay Area youth development community:

• In the early 1990's CNYD played an important role in galvanizing support for the growing youth development movement throughout the Bay Area, educating and mobilizing youth organization leaders, practitioners, policymakers and funders.

• As widespread acceptance of a focus on positive development was cemented, CNYD was in the forefront nationally, developing training and assessment resources that supported the field to make breakthrough changes in practice, and move us from principles and ideals to measurable outcomes in our work with young people. 

CNYD's footprint is also  very strong in the afterschool and out-of-school arenas. 

• CNYD served as the intermediary for the first six years of the San Francisco Beacons Initiative, the first and largest California school-based project, demonstrating the importance of community-based agencies working in partnership with schools to create youth development-centered supports and services.  Fifteen years later, the San Francisco Beacon Center continues to flourish as a long-term part of the fabric of the youth services system in San Francisco. 

• Because of CNYD's Beacon leadership, we were called upon to work across California in the early years of federal and state funding for the expansion of school-based afterschool programs.  CNYD played an important role in helping policymakers and practitioners understand why youth development practice was critical to the impact of afterschool programming and developed training resources and approaches that are still used today.  We championed the expansion of high school afterschool programming and we were an important influence in broadening afterschool outcomes to include measures beyond academic learning.

________________________

Sue Eldredge was the founder and Executive Director of the Community Network for Youth Development (CNYD) for twenty years. CNYD’s work led to the infusion of youth development practice into policy, capacity-building and evaluation efforts in the Bay Area and in ever wider arenas.  A graduate of Stanford University, Sue’s past experience includes work in the philanthropic world, research, and design and delivery of training and technical assistance systems for nonprofit, educational and governmental agencies.

Kickstarter Campaign: Digital Badges for Afterschool & Summer

By Sam Piha

The Learning in Afterschool & Summer project is very excited about joining

Youtopia and Public Profit in developing a system that will allow afterschool and summer programs to recognize the advanced skills and valuable experiences that young people gain in their afterschool programs. This recognition can come using digital badges that young people can earn in their programs and share with peers, on college applications, and job resumes.

We created a Kickstarter campaign to help us raise money to develop and pilot a web-based badge system that others can use across California. You can learn more about our project and view our Kickstarter campaign by clicking here. Please help us spread the word by sharing this blog post with your networks! 

A Framework for Thinking and Learning

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Below, we have reposted an interview conducted by Marc Tucker with Kai-ming Cheng, Professor and Chair of Education and Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China. You can find the original post here. (This is an edited version of the full interview, which can be found here.) In this interview, Professor Cheng talks about the changing workplace and the needed change in how we educate children. His framework for thinking and learning is very much aligned with the Learning in Afterschool & Summer learning principles. 

Marc Tucker

Marc Tucker: In your essay, Learning and society in a post-industrial era, you describe the way the nature of work is changing in advanced industrial societies and how that is affecting the kinds of skills people now need.  How and when did that research begin? 

Kai-ming Cheng: I started my study of the workplace about 12 or 13 years ago by looking at the way work was organized at investment banks like Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong.  I found that the investment bankers work in small task forces and teams, just a few people — a one-stop shop.  In other organizations, these task forces are often called a deal team, an account team, a project team and so on.  These teams function semi-autonomously, with great freedom to respond to the quickly changing environment in which they work.  The team members bring different skills, knowledge and experience to the work and are expected to draw on one another constantly to get the work of the team done. 

Kai-ming Cheng

This is very different from the typical pyramidal structure in the traditional industrial company where you usually find a whole army of front line workers all of whom look upward in the pyramid, looking for close direction from their superiors.   In that structure, the expertise is above each worker in the pyramid, each worker operates only in a narrow sphere and the autonomy of each worker is very limited. 

The client is no longer expected to move around and be served by different department of the organization, nor is each department expected to face all clients.  Instead, the client is assigned a team whose job it is to meet that client's unique needs, needs that are constantly changing.  Those needs are often very complex and demand a holistic service by integrating all kinds of expertise on the part of the firm. This is happening more and more and in many workplace situations. 

MST: Tell us how this impacts the work that people do and what they have to know to do it.

KMC: In the pyramidal situation, typically the front line worker only needs to know how to follow instructions and what the procedures, rules or regulations are.  The workers don't have to design, run risks or face the clients directly, most of the time. They are protected by bureaucracy.  They are not liable for their mistakes as long as they follow procedures.  They are not at risk of facing any moral dilemmas or personality conflicts with clients.  But now, in small groups, even the frontline workers have to interact with clients, they have to solve problems and design, they have to run risks. 

MST: How are the changes in the workplace leading to the types of skills workers must have today?

KMC: Everybody has to share the same responsibilities such as brainstorming,

thinking of what to do next, working with others on a team, being creative all the time regardless of where you are and you have to constantly face ethical challenges and moral dilemmas, and you have to think outside the box, you have to run risks, you have to face changing networks and changing markets, and no one is doing the same thing all the time, you have to adapt to change on a daily basis. 

MST: Your paper presents a picture of an increasing distance between what educators are doing and what people actually need to function well in this world.  

KMC: Let me first give you the other story about the changes now taking place. Today, individuals may not do what they learn.  In [the past, people were] bound to organizations and occupations, in much the same way their predecessors were bound to the land and nature.  But now, that is all coming unglued.  Individuals are increasingly less bound to either organizations or occupations, but now they fall into insecurity and uncertainty.  More and more people in Hong Kong are freelancing and serving several companies at one time, or working in home offices.  A ballet dancer I know performs, teaches, designs for other people, invests in real estate, and joined an NGO to work on rural China.  So what kind of occupation is she really in?  More and more people will be working outside organizations and more and more people will have to create their own work. 

MST: What are the signs that the education system is still organized to produce people for a world that is actually disappearing before our eyes? 

KMC: The education system is trying to turn human beings into human resources according to the labor market pyramid, which unfortunately no longer exists.  We have to turn a system that has been organized to sort students out and instead organize it to make sure that virtually all students are very well educated.  Because of that, educators who are trained in the 20th century are perhaps not the best candidates for reformers.  They only know education as assisting a few instead of everybody.  This is the challenge.  If we think different people should be allowed to learn differently, how do we do it?

MST: You evidently believe that if we are going to enable people to cope with changes, we should focus less on the structure of the system and the resources it requires, and more on learning and the kinds of learning experiences people deserve.  Why is this true?  What does it mean to you? 

KMC: The system we have is based on credentials. What we do not focus on is what is actually learned at each stage of the structure, which brings about implications for life.  We need to move away from the focus on credentials.  It is certainly true that workers will have to have real expertise that is deep.  But that will no longer be enough.  There is no guarantee that what you have already learned will enable you to do well in the future.  At Morgan Stanley, they seldom appoint people in investment banking with financial, economic or accounting backgrounds.  Even the accounting companies like KPMG, are hiring people other than accountants.  Employers are looking at how well the candidates for their jobs will be able to cope with a very uncertain future, how fast they will be able to learn and what they will need to know. 

MST: You have developed a framework for thinking about learning.  Would you share it? 

KMC: I looked into the science of learning and realized there are five points that may summarize what learning is: 

• Learning is meaning-making, that is, making sense of the world around us;
• Learning is about construction of knowledge, rather than transmission of knowledge;
• Learning is about experience, hence "learning by doing"—real life experience is the best learning;
• Learning is about understanding and using knowledge—you can't claim understanding before you can successfully apply it in practice; and
• People learn in groups.

I use these as guidelines to understand the education system.  It really matters whether we are giving students the kinds of learning experiences they deserve, whether the pedagogy is helping the student to be an active learner, and whether the assessments are helping students understand, experience and apply the knowledge, or whether we are simply testing how much students have stored in their brains.  I use these guidelines to determine which reforms are moving in the right direction and which ones are not. 

MST: What would schooling look like if it answered to that description?  What would a classroom look like? 

KMC: Central to this question is whether or not they are having real-life experiences.  If you put learning in context and make experiences central in the learning process, things would be very different, and students would learn not only more, but much more efficiently.

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Marc S. Tucker (born 1939) is the president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy. He is an internationally recognized expert on education reform and a leader in benchmarking the policies and practices of the countries with the best education systems in the world.

Kai-ming Cheng is Professor and Chair of Education and Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor at the University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China. As a member of China's State Advisory Committee on Curriculum Reform and of the Hong Kong Education Commission, Kai-ming has been instrumental in the education reforms taking place in Hong Kong and mainland China.  He is a member of the Center on Intentional Education Benchmarking (CIEB) advisory board. 

16 Ways to Be Sure Your Kids Keep Learning Over Summer Break - A Recommended Article From One of Our Readers

We received the following message from one of our readers, Allen Miller. He stated:

"We at PartTimeNanny.org, wanted to let you know that we found your blog in one of our recent Google search & would love to share a recent published article '16 Ways to Be Sure Your Kids Keep Learning Over Summer Break' linked below and if liked by you, it could be a fun way to share this announcement with your readers.Either way, I hope you continue putting out great content through your blog. It has been a sincere pleasure to read."

Below is a portion of an article that Allen recommended. You can find the full article by clicking here.

16 Ways to Be Sure Your Kids Keep Learning Over Summer Break

Summer vacation is a time for fun in the sun and enjoying freedom from the drudgery of school in the minds of most children. Making sure that they retain some of the things they’ve learned over the school year and continuing to develop important skills during the dog days doesn’t have to be a chore, even though it can seem daunting. These 16 tips will ensure that your youngsters keep learning, even when they’re not in a classroom.

1. Cook Together – Kids can make a mess in the kitchen, but they can also gain practical mathematic knowledge from the experience. Encourage your kids to handle the measurements when you prepare a favorite recipe, work on doubling or halving the yield and focus on the basic chemistry of baking.
2. Shop as a Family – A trip to the store with all of your kids in tow might not be flirting with disaster, as long as you get them involved in the process. Compare prices, talk about unit pricing and how buying more of an item might be cheaper and work on the percentages during retail sales. When your kids are involved, there’s no room for the boredom that can lead to misbehavior.
3. Take Advantage of Community Programs – Many community centers offer summer classes and workshops designed specifically to help kids retain knowledge over the break in fun, exciting ways. Do a bit of research to see what’s available in your area!
4. Explore Animal Life – Visiting a full-size zoo, a petting zoo or even a local farm can put your kids in touch with animals, helping them learn more about the life sciences while keeping them entertained.
   
5. Limit Screen Time – Educational videos and software might teach your kids a thing or two, but they also encourage the kind of sedentary lifestyle that leads to childhood obesity and all the related health problems. Video games and television with no educational merit steal time that your kids could be using to actively pursue new knowledge. Putting realistic limits on screen time will help you encourage kids to keep learning while also being active.
6. Encourage Summer Reading – There’s a reason why so many schools used to have summer reading lists. Take advantage of your local library or make regular visits to the bookstore to keep your kids stocked with books so they can sharpen their reading and comprehension skills.
7. Choose Vacation Destinations With Educational Value – Summer break is often a time for family vacations, which can be great learning opportunities if you choose the destination wisely. Instead of spending a week at an amusement park or resort, why not explore sites of historical significance?
8. Put Kids in Charge of Navigation – In a world where technology is king, kids that have been raised with GPS systems in every pocket may not have the slightest idea of how to actually read a map. Invest in an atlas and plan an imaginary road trip with your child as the navigator. He’ll be so wrapped up in his fantasy vacation that he may not even realize that he’s learning something new!
9. Spend Evenings Stargazing – If you live in an area with a relatively low level of light pollution, take advantage of the warm summer nights by stargazing as a family. Point out constellations and learn more about the stars together.
10. Explore Nature – One great thing about the long, sunny days of summer is that going outside to get up close and personal with nature doesn’t require a heavy coat and mittens that can make little hands a bit clumsy. Slather on the sunscreen and reinforce natural science lessons by exploring the great outdoors.

To read the full article, click here.

The Power of Creativity and the Arts

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Last week, I continued my annual tradition of attending the end of the year dance performance by the youth from San Francisco's School of the Arts (SOTA). I was reminded once again of the power of the arts and creativity in promoting young peoples' learning, engagement, and drive for mastery. 

In an age in which we value academic test scores and more recently, STEM, so highly, the importance of creativity and the arts gets the short end of the stick. Afterschool and summer programs are the perfect place to foster creativity, and we should be ready with pride to defend these activities. In a series of upcoming blog posts, we will explore this with interviews with local artists, art teachers, and young people who have much to say on this topic. Below are five of the top ten skills that young people learn from the arts. For the complete list of skills, see the link further below.

The Top Ten Skills Children Learn From the Arts

By Lisa Phillips

1. Creativity – Being able to think on your feet, approach tasks from different perspectives and think ‘outside of the box’ will distinguish your child from others. In an arts program, your child will be asked to recite a monologue in 6 different ways, create a painting that represents a memory, or compose a new rhythm to enhance a piece of music. If children have practice thinking creatively, it will come naturally to them now and in their future career.

2. Confidence – The skills developed through theater, not only train you how to convincingly deliver a message, but also build the confidence you need to take command of the stage. Theater training gives children practice stepping out of their comfort zone and allows them to make mistakes and learn from them in rehearsal. This process gives children the confidence to perform in front of large audiences.

3. Problem Solving – Artistic creations are born through the solving of problems. How do I turn this clay into a sculpture? How do I portray a particular emotion through dance? How will my character react in this situation? Without even realizing it kids that participate in the arts are consistently being challenged to solve problems. All this practice problem solving develops children’s skills in reasoning and understanding. This will help develop important problem-solving skills necessary for success in any career.

4. Perseverance – When a child picks up a violin for the first time, she/he knows that playing Bach right away is not an option; however, when that child practices, learns the skills and techniques and doesn’t give up, that Bach concerto is that much closer. In an increasingly competitive world, where people are being asked to continually develop new skills, perseverance is essential to achieving success.

5. Focus – The ability to focus is a key skill developed through ensemble work. Keeping a balance between listening and contributing involves a great deal of concentration and focus. It requires each participant to not only think about their role, but how their role contributes to the big picture of what is being created. Recent research has shown that participation in the arts improves children’s abilities to concentrate and focus in other aspects of their lives.

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To read more articles and studies on the importance of creativity and the arts in youth development, click on the titles to view:

- Video: Ken Robinson says Schools Kill Creativity

- Article: Does Arts Education Matter? 

- Article: Top 10 Skills Children Learn From the Arts 

- Article: Arts Engagement Linked to Academic, Civic Benefits 

- Article: The Relevance of Creativity in Education 

- Online Resource: Creativity Culture & Education

   

A Conversation with UCI Professor and OST Researcher, Deborah Vandell

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

In late 2012 and early 2013, we conducted a number of videotaped interviews with educational and out-of-school experts on the Learning in Afterschool & Summer learning principles. These taped sessions included interviews with Deborah Vandell, State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, neurologist Judy Willis, youth development specialist Karen Pittman, Professor Pedro Noguera, two Bay Area school principals, CDE After School Division Director Michael Funk, and others. These videos will be excellent training tools and will be made available very shortly. The videos were shot by youth videographers and produced by Temescal Associates.

Below is a portion of an interview with UCI Professor and OST researcher, Deborah Vandell. To view two short videotapes of our conversation, click here.

Q: The LIAS learning principles were not intended to apply to strictly afterschool settings. In your experience as an educator and researcher, how are these principles, when taken together, relevant to young people’s learning? 

A: I think that the learning principles in after school and summer really get at the core of learning for students - starting in early childhood, going through to university. So if we think about those core principles, the first is active. We know that young people learn by being active. Many years ago, Piaget started talking about the key to learning being children’s activity. It’s in the context of activity that children and young people develop new skills.  

A second principle is the principle of collaboration. And this is also very important. The most influential of the psychologists would be Vygotsky, who talked to us about collaboration, and that children really learn through what we call the zone of proximal development. What young people can do alone is not as advanced as what they can do with others in a group.  So in a group where they’re collaborating, we're able to actually move them into that zone to develop their skills further.  

A third principle, really important within the learning and after school framework, is that learning needs to be meaningful, it needs to be embedded in activities that are important for young people. When I think about the importance of it being meaningful, what really comes to mind is the work of Reed Larson, who did some really important work looking at development of initiative and engagement. What he found is that when young people are in school, what they often are doing is putting forth a lot of effort, but they’re not really motivated - its not something they really care about. What happens in afterschool activities, when they’re really working, when they’re active, they’re choosing those activities and they are also focused on them, it’s the best combination for learning that is meaningful.  

The fourth principle is that programs and activities should be working towards mastery.  Now the striving towards mastery is not an activity that you can do in one day, in half a day, its really an activity that you’re building over time.  When you’re building for a concert, you're practicing, you're developing those skills. When you are getting out to put together a newspaper, when you’re planning a play, which is a complex activity, it gives young people a chance to put those skills together. Notice many of them are also working with others in a group, often with a culminating event. Jacqueline Echols, in a very important book on the role of positive youth settings for development, as part of the National Academy of Science report back in 2002, talked about this learning to support mastery as a key element to support positive youth development.  

And then the fifth principle is that of expanding horizons. Our young people live in a global society. Our young people are living in a society in which science is becoming increasingly important, mathematics and those activities have to really happen in context.  Part of what students can do in afterschool and in summer, in really fine programs, is that we can expand the horizons, beyond where they are in this moment in time.

(This is only an excerpt of our complete interview. To view a complete videotaped interview, click here.)
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Deborah Vandell is a Professor of Education and Psychology and Dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, discusses the relevance of the Learning in Afterschool and Summer Principles. Ms. Vandell has longstanding interests in three areas: (1) early child care and education - its effects on children's social, cognitive, and behavioral development and strategies for improving the quality of early care and education, (2) after school programs and activities - their impact on children and youth and strategies for improving the quality of after-school programs, and (3) children's relationships with peers, parents, siblings, teachers, and mentors as developmental and educational contexts.

How Summer Learning Strengthens Students' Success

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

We know from research that summer learning loss suffered by kids who do not have access to engaging summer programs is significant. Public Profit, an evaluation and technical assistance firm, has just released their findings on the benefits that children accrued by participating in pilot summer programs across the state. This publication also identified features of quality programs, which are well-aligned with the learning principles promoted by the Learning in Afterschool & Summer project. 

Below is a partial list of benefits that were found and a citing of quality program features. As positive evidence about the effectiveness of summer learning programs mount, so must our advocacy efforts to increase young people's access to these programs. To read a full copy of the executive summary, click here. To access the full report, click here. 

Key findings include:

• Students ended the summer with vocabulary skills much closer to their grade level, increasing their instructional grade level by over 1/3 of a grade. 

• English language learners demonstrated significant increases in their grade-level vocabulary, a gateway to English language fluency. 

• Parents reported that their kids improved their attitude towards reading (68%) and reading ability (62%). 

• Overall, 86% of parents reported the summer programs gave their kids opportunities to develop leadership skills. 

• Parents and educators emphasized summer learning programs’ critical role in providing students with new experiences and opportunities – such as field trips and community service projects – that they do not have during the school year. 

• Students in Fresno and Los Angeles summer learning programs reported improved academic work habits and reading efficacy, both key contributors to academic achievement. 

Elements of high quality summer learning:

• Broadens kids’ horizons – by exposing them to new adventures, skills and ideas. These could be activities like going on a nature walking, using a new computer program, giving a presentation, visiting a museum or attending a live performance.  

• Includes a wide variety of activities – such as reading, writing, math, science, arts and public service projects – in ways that are fun and engaging. 

• Helps kids build skills – by helping them improve at doing something they enjoy and care about. This could be anything from creating a neighborhood garden, to writing a healthy snacks cookbook to operating a robot. 

• Fosters cooperative learning – by working with their friends on team projects and group activities such as a neighborhood clean-up, group presentation or canned food drive. 

• Promotes healthy habits – by providing nutritious food, physical recreation and outdoor activities. 

• Lasts at least one month – giving kids enough time to benefit from their summer learning experiences. 

To learn more about the Summer Matters initiative, click here.