What a great idea–in addition to hosting a presentation and discussion, the First 10 team set up tables on play and learns, the transition to kindergarten, the First 10 community school at Hennessy Elementary, The Basics, and early childhood programs for the Mayor and city council and school committee members.
Category: Community Schools
Getting Started with First 10: Community Partnerships, School Hubs, and Work Currently Underway (Post #3)
The second post in this series showed how First 10 partnerships are funded, how they are advancing equity by using this funding to support urban and rural communities with significant low-income populations, and how some partnerships are combining First 10 with anti-racism efforts. In this post, I discuss how communities get started with First 10. I describe the two structures—community-wide partnerships and school-based hubs—First 10 partnerships employ to carry out their work, how they form teams, and how they begin their planning efforts.
Community-wide and School-based First 10 Structures, Sometimes in Combination
The First 10 initiative in York City, PA is a good example of a comprehensive First 10 community partnership (see Figure 1 below). York City is a district of approximately 6100 students, 91% are students of color, and 95% are low-income. The First 10 initiative spans the entire city. First 10 is overseen by a steering committee that includes a board member/parent representative and senior leaders from the district, several early childhood programs, the library, local funders, and other nonprofit organizations. York is forming a family advisory committee to allow for more direct community representation, and importantly, the school district is pairing its First 10 work with a major racial equity and cultural competence training push. At the beginning of the pandemic it established several First 10 teams to carry out a number of strategies that impact the entire community:
Continue reading “Getting Started with First 10: Community Partnerships, School Hubs, and Work Currently Underway (Post #3)”Hunt Institute Webinar this Thursday: First 10 in Action
I’m really looking forward to this conversation with Dan Wuori of the Hunt Institute about the great First 10 work underway in Maine and Pennsylvania. We’ll also talk about similar initiatives in Alabama and Rhode Island. I hope you can join us.
You can register by clicking the link here.
The Top 10 Takeaways from the ‘School-Community Partnerships for the Whole Child’ Webinar Series
New America’s Elise Franchino has summarized our recent webinar series in 10 takeaways. Check out her post here. She includes great insights from the presenters. Many thanks to all the panelists, moderators, and partner organizations! You can find the webinars and associated resources at these links:
How to Fix America: Think of Education as More Than Just School
The New York Times business reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, asked experts and industry leaders to name one thing we should do right now to “fix America.” Harlem Children Zone leaders Kwame Owusu-Kesse and Geoffrey Canada argue that we must, “We must broaden the focus of education to encompass the communities around the school building.” An excerpt:
“How do we make schools actually work for all children?
The nation has been pondering this question for decades, with answers that have fallen woefully short for poor students. But we think this is the wrong question. What the country should be asking is, how do we change the neighborhoods around schools to make them places where young people can find success — in school and beyond?
If we are going to break the cycle of poverty, we must reimagine education in America. We can no longer view education as simply the things that go on inside that building we call “school.” Such a narrow-minded focus has proved inadequate to the task of moving large populations out of poverty. We must broaden the focus of education to encompass the communities around the school building…
An emerging field of practice centered on “place” (i.e., where a child grows up) has championed the providing of comprehensive services to neighborhoods to effectively combat poverty. These services include high quality education and cradle-to-career youth programming, physical and mental health support, work force development, affordable housing and community leadership development.”
New Webinar Series: How School and Communities can Serve the Whole Child
Save the Dates. Such great work happening all around the country. We have lined up four engaging panels of fantastic leaders to share their expertise and experience. Our theme: Advancing equity through comprehensive approaches that address teaching and learning, deep family engagement, health and social service supports, and continuous improvement.
Excited to be working with terrific partners at AASA (The Superintendents Association), NAESP, CCSSO, New America, and the Early Childhood State Specialists in State Departments of Education to organize this event. Stay tuned for registration information.
Education Week Commentary: Getting the First 10 Years Right
See my Education Week Commentary on bridging the gaps between early childhood, elementary school, and health and human services. Please join me in getting the word out and supporting these important collaborations. In addition to the leading edge communities I mention in the essay, 13 communities in Maine and 13 in Pennsylvania are implementing First 10 initiatives, with more to come in Alabama and Rhode Island.
Four Strategies for Getting the First 10 Years of a Child’s Life Right (Education Week)
Education Week Reviews the All Children Learn and Thrive Study
Education Week’s Christina Samuels begins her review of the All Children Learn and Thrive study as follows below. I appreciate that she highlights several examples from the study. While the Executive Summary provides the key findings and proposes a theory of action, see the Full Report for numerous case studies and a fuller explanation of the theory of action in the Conclusion. You can click on specific case studies in the table of contents, including ones on Multnomah County, OR, Greater Omaha, NE, the Cherry Park and Earl Boyles Elementary Schools, Normal, IL, and Boston and Cambridge, MA.
From How Schools, Districts, and Communities Are Joining Forces to Bolster Early Learning:
“A common complaint in the early-childhood field is that several different entities exist to support young children and their families, but those organizations often don’t work together.
But in a number of communities across the country, schools, districts, and early-childhood providers have come together to dismantle those organizational silos.
For example, Cherry Park Elementary School in Portland, Ore., a part of the 9,700-student David Douglas district, runs a summer kindergarten transition program to prepare young students for school, supports a home-visiting program, operates a food bank, and offers cooking classes and financial literacy programs.
Another example: the city of Cambridge, Mass., established a birth-to-3rd grade partnership that includes representatives from the 7,000-student Cambridge district, as well as early-childhood and community-health providers. The partnership there includes creating home visiting and play-and-learn groups for infants, toddlers and their parents; working to boost the quality of family child-care providers; and providing coaching in early literacy, math, and science for the district’s prekindergarten and early-elementary teachers.
Those efforts and many more are catalogued in the report “All Children Learn and Thrive: Building First 10 Schools and Communities” by David Jacobson, released earlier this spring. Jacobson, a principal technical adviser for the Education Development Center, said he was particularly interested in capturing work that is blending academic support for the first decade of a child’s life, along with programs that also help parents and caregivers ….”
Video Recording: New America Panel on the First 10 Years
In case you missed it, here is the video recording of the April 30 New America panel event on my new study. The study, All Children Learn and Thrive: Building First 10 Schools and Communities, examines partnerships between school districts and communities to improve teaching, learning, and care throughout the first decade of children’s lives.
I provide a 20-minute overview of the First 10 approach and my major findings beginning at the 5:35 time mark. Then Education Week’s Christina Samuels does a great job moderating two panel discussions: the first with Deborah Stipek of Stanford and Kwesi Rollins of the Institute for Educational Leadership and the second with leaders of innovative First 10 projects in Omaha, NE, Multnomah County, OR, and Cambridge, MA.
Panel #1 discusses the implications of First 10 initiatives for building community systems that support young children and their families, how First 10 initiatives can strengthen developmentally appropriate practice, the challenge of sustaining ambitious initiatives, and the role of states in supporting this work.
Then in panel #2, Ms. Samuels talks with Brooke Chilton-Timmons, Cris Lopez Anderson, and Lei-Anne Ellis about their experiences leading First 10 initiatives. Topics include:
- The role of play-and-learn groups
- Improving teaching and learning in kindergarten through 3rd grade classrooms
- Addressing the needs of culturally-specific groups
- Community-wide quality improvement initiatives
- Garnering principal buy-in
- Governing First 10 Community Partnerships
Many thanks to Laura Bornfreund and New America for hosting the panel, to Christina Samuels and the panelists for their participation, and to the Heising-Simons Foundation for supporting this research.
New Study Released Today: All Children Learn and Thrive
We are pleased to release All Children Learn and Thrive: Building First 10 Schools and Communities.
This study examines First 10 Schools and Communities—coordinated efforts taking place around the country to improve teaching, learning, and care during the first decade of children’s lives.
First 10 Schools and Communities bring together school districts, elementary schools, and early childhood programs to improve the quality of education and care for young children and their families. They work to improve teaching and learning, deepen partnerships with families, and provide comprehensive services for children and families.
First 10 