Normal Is Not an Option
One Community’s Journey to Build Forward Together
Karen Pittman, Senior Fellow and Co-Founder, Forum for Youth Investment
Katherine Plog Martinez, Consultant, Forum for Youth Investment
“We envision a porous system where what counts for learning is reimagined and the school district itself is a primary partner in this citywide effort, but we are working elbow to elbow with our partners, and we are learning from each other… We believe summer 2021 can be a springboard toward our commitment to help Tulsa become a city of learning.”
Paula Shannon, Deputy Superintendent, Tulsa Public Schools
“We chose to call Tulsa’s first out-of-school time intermediary The Opportunity Project rather than, for example, the Tulsa OST Network for two reasons. First, we recognize in Tulsa there is a huge divide between young people who have access to those opportunities and young people who do not. Second, we recognize this isn’t a one and done with a finish line, this is ongoing work that requires the whole of our community.”
Caroline Shaw, Executive Director, The Opportunity Project
Over the past few months we’ve been having regular conversations about how now, more than at any point in our careers, it seems we have a real, tangible shot at having the youth development, whole child, whole community approaches advanced by national “thought leaders” take root deeply in communities. Karen’s career spans 50 years, so this revelation led us to pause and ask: Why?
Because education leaders like Deputy Superintendent Shannon see making their school systems more porous and humble as central to their district’s commitment to upend educational equity. Because out-of-school time leaders like Caroline Shaw see the potential of engaging community-based as coordinated co-creators of a system of flexible learning experiences all children and youth need, but, in many communities like Tulsa, most families cannot afford.
But, most importantly, because these incredible leaders and their teams in Tulsa have prioritized working together, starting with the 2018 teacher walkouts and carrying through into a joint commitment to use summer as a springboard towards the city of learning vision.
With their announcement of Ready. Set. Summer!, Tulsa is among the first communities to sign on to the Readiness Projects Build Forward Together Summer Challenge that Karen introduced last month. Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) and The Opportunity Project (The Opp) have not just committed to a summer of robust, engaging programming, but to leveraging this summer as a starting place for their longer term Build Forward Together efforts, which include broader expanded learning opportunities for all students over the next 18 months.
Tulsa’s sign on is much more than just a public statement. It is a demonstration of ongoing attentiveness to the five key strategies shared in Five Strategies to Build Forward Together to Upend Inequity and Accelerate Progress.
BUILD BACK SMARTER. Acknowledge Learners’ Losses. But Affirm Learning Ability.
Rather than implementing a strategy of just tutoring or just instructionally focused summer school with the goal of addressing learning loss, Tulsa has set learner engagement as the goal. Tulsa’s strategy prioritizes relationships, hands-on learning experiences driven by interest, social emotional skill building, and fun, while still bringing in accelerated learning on foundational skills and credit recovery opportunities. Across the board, school staff and youth development professionals will leverage science-informed strategies and practices to create learning environments and experiences that are promote reconnection and reengagement.
In your community, consider asking those on the front lines — teachers, families, community educators, young people — what do our children and teens most need and want to know, understand, and be able to do and share? What are the range of effective ways we can help get them there?
BUILD BACK BROADER. Support complementary delivery systems and modalities. Invest in program-level staff and city-level coordinating structures.
The Opportunity Project was created to support the Wallace Foundation’s Partnership for Social Emotional Learning Initiative to align SEL practices across the school day divide. The name chosen for this out-of-school time intermediary signals its mission — to catalyze a steady stream of projects designed to increase the quality and quantity learning opportunities for children and teens in under-resourced neighborhoods. Together, TPS and The Opp are doing more than acknowledging the roles schools and partners can play in parallel. They are implementing coordinated planning to more effectively lean into the greatest strengths of each sector, each partner organization, and each individual staff member. And, with an eye towards sustainability and scale, they are also building collaborative systems of coordination, data sharing, and funding to support success at the program level.
In your community, take time to take stock of your systems of coordination. Identify areas of collaboration that can be formalized or expanded. Identify areas of duplication that can be minimized. Consider how data, funding, and other resources can be successful shared and blended.
BUILD BACK BOLDER. Focus on how, why, and with whom learning happens. Respect and diversify learners’ experiences and contexts and adults’ expertise and power.
Recognizing both student’s different learning needs and the different learning approaches available in the community, Tulsa is building a plan that maximizes student and family choice and maximizes connection to the places in the community young people are already spending their time, while more fully engaging the adults within them. It would have been easy for the district to call for every school to offer four weeks of summer school and checked the box that they were attending to summer. Instead, they have called for every school to offer a four-week program that includes relationship building, hands-on activities, culturally-connected enrichment, and learning acceleration. Instead, TPS has clearly articulated that schools are one player at the table to create a powerful summer experience in Tulsa, but only through collaboration can the reach of programming begin to match the need.
In addition, to more clearly articulate the power of community organizations as assets in the community, Tulsa providers have been using a new tool (currently in testing mode), Framing Your Community-Based Organization as an Indispensable Asset, to help widen their thinking on the role their organization might play. In your community, we invite you to test and give feedback on the tool as you think about how your organization can best leverage this moment for increase partnership.
In your community, consider where young people have been spending their time during school closures during the day, in the afternoons and evenings, and on the weekends. What does learning and engagement look like in those settings? How, might they want to shift the balance across these settings and experiences once their official school responsibilities end? Knowing more about how learners and families would like to adjust where, when, and with whom learning happens might help you fully engage organizations across the learning ecosystem and fully understand what you can learn from them about engagement.
BUILD UNDERSTANDING OF INEQUITY. Get the right baselines. Cover all the bases. Acknowledge the skepticism.
Caroline’s quote that opens this blog frames the understanding in Tulsa that there are deep inequities in opportunity to engage in the types of learning experiences described above. This summer, through data sharing agreements and the data system housed at The Opportunity Project, the Tulsa team intends to track where young people engage, where they stay and persist, and who specifically is left behind. With this baseline, they can then take targeted strategies into the school year to continue to expand their opportunities for breaking down barriers and biases that prevent engagement. Note that their success measure is sustained engagement. With absolute confidence in learners’ and their families’ hunger for engaging experiences, they see engagement data as the easiest way to assess their ability to remove barriers (e.g. transportation, cost, scheduling) and provide appropriate opportunities.
Reconnection is a major goal in most communities. In your community, consider what data is available and accessible that can help you not only find young people who disconnected from school but also learn where they found and want connections. Take time to hear from young people and practitioners about their aspirations and efforts.
BUILD ON ADOLESCENTS’ DETERMINATION. Don’t dismiss them.
Adolescents are voracious learners by design. They find environments and experiences that meet their needs and disengage from those that do not. Physical presence is not the same as engagement. Stripped of the opportunities for relationships, routines, and resources that come along with school attendance, many teens disengaged from online learning to prioritize other responsibilities and relationships. Reengaging them requires more than just reopening schools. Adolescents and young adults are demanding seats at the table to put their stamp on a new normal which includes them as learners, doers and decision-makers. One of the areas that generated great excitement in Tulsa is the consideration of how high school students can serve as near-peer leaders in the summer experiences being offered and how this summer, opportunities can be provided for meaning-making for adolescents by learning and growing from experiences working with children and youth in the community.
In your community, consider how you might outline multiple success pathways for young people and understand the road blocks to them getting there. What have young people been mobilizing around? How might that connect to or enhance your work to build forward together?
We will be working alongside the team in Tulsa as they carry out their Build Forward Together strategy — documenting, learning, and offering support. We’re incredibly grateful that Tulsa leaders have agreed to let us document their journey through the Build Forward Together lens. And we are incredibly eager to continue to share updates with all of you in hopes that it may help inform your journey ahead.
We recognize this work will look different in each community. While the work outlined here is grounded in Tulsa’s current goals of using summer as a springboard to long-term change, these five strategies should command equal consideration as you make plans to build schools back better, strengthen and leverage community partners, or invest in adolescents. The goal or goals you lead with will change the order or emphasis placed on these strategies. But whatever your entry point, we encourage you to think and talk about ways you can be smarter, bolder, or broader in your work; to see and hear directly from young people, families, and providers about inequities, needs, and strengths; and to act to intentionally ensure your Build Forward Together efforts are optimizing the lessons from recent disruptions — lessons that, if we are honest, have been with us for decades.
