February – April 2018: Summer Program Planning Tools You Can Use Now
The National Summer Learning Association (NSLA) co-hosted a free, three-part summer program planning webinar series with the National AfterSchool Association and the Afterschool Alliance. View the recordings and slides from the webinars below. If you joined us for any or all of these webinars, we’d love to hear from you so that we can continue to bring you relevant and resourceful content in the future.
Part I – Getting to Work on Summer Learning & Summer Learning Toolkit
Date: Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Guests:
- Jennifer Sloan McCombs, Director of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences Department, RAND Corporation
- Hillary Oravec, Managing Partner, The Learning Agenda
- Katie Willse, Senior Consultant, The Learning Agenda
Over 200 attendees participated in Part I of this exciting webinar series covering Getting to Work on Summer Learning, Second Edition, by the Rand Corporation and the accompanying online Summer Learning Toolkit, with over 50 practical tools and planning resources to help school districts and their partners design and deliver high-quality summer programs. The report and toolkit draw on lessons from the National Summer Learning Project, launched in 2011 by The Wallace Foundation.
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Part II – Summer Learning Toolkit, A Deeper Dive: Keys to Staffing & Professional Development
Date: Thursday, March 28, 2019
Time: 1-2:00 PM (ET)
Guests: Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Summer Dreamers Academy
- Melanie Claxton, Coordinator, Out-of-School Time for Pittsburgh Public Schools
- Kathryn Vargas, Director of the APOST (Allegheny Partners for Out of School Time)
Summary: In this second webinar, we highlighted The Wallace Foundation’s new Summer Learning Toolkit—a great resource to use for whatever stage of planning you are in with your summer programming! We also took a closer look at staffing and professional development to examine how to hire and train the best possible staff that suits the specific climate, culture, and goals of your summer program. Our guests included one of the school districts from the National Summer Learning Project who shared their first-hand experience with the summer program hiring process and best practices to optimize professional development opportunities.
Part III – Summer Learning Toolkit–A Deeper Dive: Creating Site Climate and Culture
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2019
Time: 3:30 PM (ET)
Guests:
- Michele Alberti-White, Executive Director of School Innovation, Rochester City School District
- Kelly Bauman, Director of Expanded Learning, Rochester City School District
- Katie Willse, Senior Consultant, The Learning Agenda
- Leslie Gabay-Swanston, Director of Program and Systems Building, National Summer Learning Association
- Gina Warner, President, National AfterSchool Association
- Erin Hegarty, Special Assistant to Executive Director, Afterschool Alliance
Summary: Summer learning programs offer the chance for kids to stay safe and remain engaged during the out-of-school-time months and build both academic and social and emotional skills, as they explore all that your program has to offer.
This third and final webinar showed participants how to establish and foster a positive site climate that creates the foundation on which successful youth and staff experiences are built. Participants explored tip sheets, sample handbooks, and other materials housed in the Summer learning Toolkit.