PLEASE NOTE:  THE CONFERENCE IS AT CAPACITY.

WE ARE CURRENTLY ACCEPTING WAIT LIST REGISTRATIONS. Please contact Nancy Petkunas at npetkunas@mpwi.org or 617-262-3424 to be put on the waitlist.

AM SESSIONS

Summer Learning: National and Local Perspectives   This session will feature a soon-to-be-released report from RAND on the issue of summer learning.  Drawing on deep research on the latest in innovative practice from several cities, including Boston's Summer Learning Project, this session will focus on the implications for summer learning in Boston and beyond.                                         Jennifer Sloan McCombs, Ph.D., Senior Policy Researcher, RAND Corporation Gary Huggins, CEO, National Summer Learning Association

Partnerships to Increase Learning Time and Opportunities  This session will feature national leaders on the issue of expanded learning. As the idea gains momentum, several models are taking shape for expanding learning, both time and approaches. This session will focus on both what has been learned to date and the opportunities for the future.                                                                                       Jennifer Davis, Co-Founder & President, National Center on Time & Learning    Lucy Friedman, President, The After School Corporation

Stemming the Tide of Violence – Increasing Education Opportunities   This session will introduce two major Boston-based initiatives that link community development to education and violence prevention, a faith-based approach and the other, the creation of schools. Experiences across initiatives will be shared with the audience.                                                                                                                                    Jin Min Lee, Assistant Director, Emmanuel Gospel Center                              Reverend David Wright, Esq., Executive Director, Black Ministerial Alliance John Barros, Executive Director, Dudley Square Neighborhood Initiative

Embracing the Voice of Youth: A Perspective from the Arts  This session will explore how two nationally-recognized arts organizations, The Institute of Contemporary Art and Providence’s AS220, are using their programs as a means of strengthening the role of youth beyond that of audience. Session speakers will discuss the leadership role of youth within their organization as well as the larger field of arts education, and youth participants from both organizations will act as co-presenters. The ICA and AS220 are both recipients of the 2012 National Arts and Humanities Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and  Humanities.                                                                                                                                Monica Garza, Director of Education, ICA                                                    Shaquille Alberts, Teen Arts Council Member, ICA                                                     Anne Kugler, Youth Director,  AS220                                                                               Miguel Rosario, AS220 alum

PM SESSIONS

School, After-School and Mental Health  This session will present a case study of a school that has embarked on an entirely new student support system developed by PEAR.  Headmaster Kevin Andrews, will provide an overall rationale of why schools, even those with strong academic results, need to attend to mental health problems and to the socio-emotional well- being of the student and family population they serve.

Dean of Student Support, Michelle Arons, will describe the process of reorganization of the system -- from assessment to intervention --as well as the involvement of teachers in the process of change.  Assistant Headmaster Kate Scott will describe the data flow and the report strategies to outside agencies, combining academic data with socio-emotional development.  The PEAR team will describe the overall system and the applicability to schools and districts.                                                                   

Brooksany Coe, PEAR                                                                                             

Kevin Andrews, Headmaster, Neighborhood House Charter School                   

Kate Scott, Assistant Headmaster, Neighborhood House Charter School 

Michelle Arons, Dean of Special Education and Student Support,                 Neighborhood House Charter School 

Beyond Enrichment:  Credit-Bearing Partnerships  This session highlights recent partnerships built between community-based organizations and Boston Public Schools to offer teens credit-bearing, learning opportunities in civics and art outside their school environment.                                                                                    Ruth C. Mercado-Zizzo, BPS Arts Expansion Initiative Director, EdVestors Myran Parker-Brass, Executive Director for the Arts, BPS                                      Joe Douillette, Teen New Media Program Manager, ICA Boston                             Phil Jackson, Director of Teen Initiatives, Boston After School & Beyond        Hillary Salmons, Executive Director, Providence After School Alliance                   

STEM: Afterschool and Summer Learning in Boston and Massachusetts This session will describe the exciting state and Boston-based initiatives to increase STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) learning. The focus is on informal science education, strongly supported by NSF and many cultural institutions and the role of out-of-school time to get students interested and engaged in science reasoning, science careers and academic learning. We chose STEM not only because of its direct importance for young people's job opportunities in the future but also because we want to highlight the way in which academic learning can occur in a playful, exploratory, and non-scripted way that opens young peoples' minds. Two program examples will be presented.                                        

Peg Sprague, Senior Vice President, Community Impact, United Way Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley                                                                            Neil Sullivan, Executive Director, Boston Private Industry Council

Partnerships on the ground:  The professional coordinating school programs  Increasingly, full-time managers from nonprofit organizations are working in schools. These coordinators typically bring with them a group of in-school and after-school staff or volunteers and become an important part of the school culture and operation.  As schools move more into a partnering mode, this role of in-school manager representing out-of-school organizations is becoming significant. 

However, there has been little systematic work done to assess the essential ingredients of success and the continuous management of boundaries between the school staff and the nonprofit staff.  This session will bring together three examples of managers who coordinate programs, as well as, leader of organizations that are specialized in this work. City Year focuses on in-school and after-school support of students.  Citizen Schools is primarily focused on after-school but reaching into the school day and The RALLY program works within the school day supporting the socio-emotional development of students.

This roundtable discussion will include experiences from the audience and provide a status report on what we have learned in regards to issues such as confidentiality, team building, relationships to teachers, and participation in school management meetings.                                                                                                                        Elizabeth Rettig, RALLY Program Coordinator at Curley K-8 & Sarah Greenwood Schools, BPS                                                                                                        

Stephanie Wu, Senior Vice President & Chief Program Design and Evaluation Officer, City Year                                                                                                                    

John Werner, Managing Director & Chief Mobilizing Officer, Citizen Schools

Assessing Socio-Emotional Strengths and Vulnerabilities in Schools, After Schools and Community Settings  The identification of socio-emotional strengths and vulnerabilities is crucial for improving strategies fostering positive outcomes for at-risk youth in school, after school and summer learning programs. An introduction into non-academic data collection in educational settings will begin the discussion. After a Boston-based overview of data collection and data sharing, the workshop will introduce the Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) and the Holistic Classroom Assessment (HCA) and the theory behind their development and use. The session introduces participants to the assessment tools and illustrates how to use them to identify youth who show above or below average socio-emotional risks and resiliencies.                                                                                                            

Dylan Robertson, Ph.D., Director of Research and Evaluation, PEAR                Maura Boyce, Data Strategy Manager, Boston After School & Beyond                      Chad d'Entremont, Ph.D., Executive Director, Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy