The Youth Development office of Sac City Unified is focusing on connects for youth. Focusing on the whole child and emotional well being for youth. They are redefining what after school looks like from a distance learning perspective. Using AVID methods, they host 2 days of emotional well being, 2 days of academic enrichment and 1 day of virtual fieldtrips. SCU works with community partners to increase arts in afterschool programs.

Maintain a laser-like focus on equity by providing education and awareness that promotes cultural humility and relevance in all approaches and services for youth.

Youth Development
916-643-7919

In Tulsa, 40% of all school year learning loss occurs over the summer. To improve this statistic, The Opportunity Project’s Relate918 initiative along with the support of the national consultant BellXcel, opened the Super Summer pilot. Since this program opened during the COVID-19 pandemic, it had to deviate from what the team had originally planned. Facilitators and Americorps members conducted sessions over Zoom, while other staffers delivered activity kits, meals, and snacks along the bus route and to school pick-up sites.

Super Summer programming was tailored to under resourced communities. Because the need for childcare during the pandemic disproportionately came from under resourced communities, Super Summer’s tailoring provided an important community support. Super Summer had the capacity to serve 250 marginalized youth of color. Its programming was rooted in equity through our positive youth development practices which emphasized SEL skills. Super Summer also provided an avenue to distribute food for under resourced students.

Jameelah Stuckey
The Opportunity Project
Jameelah@theopp.org

Playworks and Boys & Girls Clubs are collaborating to bring safe and healthy play and the sense of belonging, physical activity and social and emotional learning that comes from that play to thousands of children across the country. This partnership launched in 2019. Two aspects make this collaboration unique: first, Playworks is giving away its intellectual property to BGCs in hopes of expanding impact; and second, the reach of BGCs offers an opportunity to provide significantly more kids with healthy social and emotional development than Playworks could not achieve on it's own. Here's how it works: Playworks is training and supporting BGC front-line staff in delivering Playworks' model of safe and healthy play for students during the school day at their local elementary school. This approach serves to transfer Playworks' expertise to the BGC staff, who are then equipped to independently support safe and healthy play for kids at the school, and in their after-school programs, going forward. In addition, the positive relationships established by BGC staff with children during the school day, leading to more kids joining the BGC programs after-school. As a result, more children have opportunities to play both during the school day and after school, with the support of caring, consistent adults.

Safe and healthy play is not available to all children equitably. Fewer kids experience the benefits of play in low-wealth communities and in schools where resources are so limited that there are no available investments in staff, training or attention to the experience. We anticipate these inequities are only exacerbated by the pandemic and the challenges of re-opening schools. This initiative pairs a proven approach with a high-quality community-based organization that is present in nearly every community in the nation to more equitably make safe and healthy play available to all students. To the degree this initiative spreads widely, the current systemic inequities for kids will be mitigated, and more joy and fun and physical activity will be experienced by kids who deserve it!

Eileen Pedersen, Director of Program Innovation, Playworks, eileen.pedersen@playworks.org
Meg Pitman, National Director, Quality Improvement at Boys & Girls Clubs of America, mpitman@bgca.org

The new program—held in-person all across the state—pairs college students with kindergarten through sixth graders in Tennessee to provide the older students with a paid summer job and the younger students with a chance to reduce academic summer slide (i.e., some of the learning and curriculum content that was either lost or never covered in the spring).

The program addresses summer learning loss which affects all youth, and low-income youth in particular.

tntutoringcorps@gmail.com

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and Tulsa students fully engaged in distance learning, The Opportunity Project, Tulsa Educare, and City Year Tulsa have partnered to provide weekly distance learning support for up to 10 students at a time, with 7 sessions available per week in the fall 2020 semester. The Learning Lab is staffed by a bilingual site coordinator and City Year AmeriCorps member tutors. Each student who attends will receive support for distance learning, SEL skill-building, a healthy meal, STEM activity kits, and free high-interest books. There are also opportunities for enrichment activities, including trauma-informed yoga.

This initiative is a free program for any child in the area. We offer bilingual supports and are rooted in equity through our positive youth development practices. We intentionally targeted recruitment at the schools in proximity to the center, which are Title 1 schools and are in low-income areas.

Amy Anderson, The Opportunity Project, aanderson@theopp.org

The Opp and Friends, a new digital pre-recorded program, features expanded learning content for students ages 4-12. The program will be aired Monday through Friday from 4:00-5:00 p.m. on RSU-TV cable channel and streamed via YouTube. Aimed at filling a void of expanded learning opportunities for Tulsa area students during distance learning, over fifteen (15) partner organizations submit weekly, pre-recorded, engaging activities, exercise videos, STEM career exploration, and virtual tours for students and families to view.

We recognize that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, youth across the county have limited access to high-quality expanded learning opportunities. Our goal with this program is to pivot organizations that typically provide in-person programming and make that programming virtual while students participate in distance learning. With the use of technology, we hope to reach more youth across the county via homes, childcare centers, and school-based settings.

Jackie DuPont, The Opportunity Project
jdupont@theopp.org

Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) is the largest urban school district in Tulsa and serves over 36,000 students. Tulsa’s expanded learning intermediary, The Opportunity Project (The Opp), tangentially serves TPS youth through initiatives, Relate918 (a PSELI community) and AfterOpp. In both initiatives, programming is based partnerships with site coordinating youth-serving agencies, community and teacher Learning Partners (club leaders), and the school site itself. Funding for Relate918 and AfterOpp is also a collaborative effort. Due to intentional relationship-building with the district and school leaders, we were able to leverage Title 1 funds allocated directly to the school sites, to help fund out-of-school time programming at two schools: Robertson Elementary (a PSELI implementation site) and Monroe Demonstration Academy, a middle school with an established AfterOpp program.

This partnership speaks to the sustainability of the programs as well as intentional cross-sector relationship-building among community partners. Both Relate918 and AfterOpp seek to offer youth equitable opportunities to learn and practice social and emotional skill-building while building on and enhancing their in-school learning through experiential opportunities after school.

The Opportunity Project is committed to providing not only equitable access to OST opportunities for youth but also intentional professional development addressing these issues. TheOpp seeks to support schools in low-income communities with free and culturally appropriate and responsive programming. We are also supported by several national youth technical assistance organizations, all of whom are committed to address equitable opportunities in OST programming.

Caroline Shaw, Executive Director, The Opportunity Project, cshaw@theopp.org

Think Summer with about 27 hours of online programming a week for three weeks. Students enrolled in Think Summer participate in online courses on Zoom or Google Classroom in English, math, coding, culinary arts, and eSports.

info@thinktogether.org

Beginning in 2017, The Opportunity Project engaged community partners in participating on a data design team. This team met over the course of 8 months and reviewed three separate data systems. The team created a list of system priorities which helped guide the decision making process.

In partnership with Cityspan, The Opportunity Project launched TIDEL, Tulsa’s Integrated Data-system for Expanded Learning during the Fall of 2019. This data management software gives youth-serving organizations a comprehensive method to track participation and document progress across programs, services & sites. TIDEL is also integrated with Tulsa Public School’s PowerSchool management system to allow for outcome data analysis as well as collecting other data points collected by the school district. TIDEL is also integrated with a youth outcome measurement tool, SAYO-Y, as well as the Weikart Youth Program Quality tools so organizations can have all of their program data in one place. By uniting real data requirements with a deep understanding of day to day operations, TIDEL is designed to be used easily, so that it will be used consistently.

Collecting and analyzing real time data will allow partners and organizations to make informed decisions, ensuring the most equitable outcomes. Partners are able to see what groups of students are succeeding and which groups need more supports.

Paige Kennedy, The Opportunity Project, pkennedy@theopp.org