Tag: engage

  • Conversation and Coursework: Strategies to Engage Undergraduate Students with Course Content – Faculty Focus

    Conversation and Coursework: Strategies to Engage Undergraduate Students with Course Content – Faculty Focus

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  • Five Ways to Use Group Work to Engage College Students (opinion)

    Five Ways to Use Group Work to Engage College Students (opinion)

    A few years ago, we hired an adjunct professor to teach a three-hour night class. After a few weeks, he came to us in frustration because he couldn’t get the students to discuss the material, and when he asked if there were any questions, they never responded.

    We probed more. Upon further discussion, we found that his course plan for each night was a three-hour lecture using PowerPoint slides; he didn’t take class planning beyond that. He felt overwhelmed by the responsibility for teaching the content of the course, but he didn’t know where to begin to get the students to contribute, ask questions and actively participate. We immediately put on our coaching hats, working to help him actively engage his class so that students had a deeper learning experience.

    We have heard about this frustration with getting students to participate actively in conversations with many other faculty members, in one-on-one coaching or during faculty development sessions. This often happens because faculty members are relying on lecture because that was the way their own professors taught and often the way they were trained to teach in their graduate programs.

    When moving into team projects, here are four key actions to take:

    1. Assign students to their teams in a way that is transparent and purposeful. Definitely don’t let students pick their own groups.
    2. Show students your grading rubric when you assign the project. We guarantee your students will be more successful when you do this.
    3. Train students on how to conduct peer evaluation, and include peer evaluations as part of the grade.
    4. Check in frequently with teams to see how they are progressing, and to answer any questions. Your students will appreciate this.

    In addition, the distractions that students face when preparing for class and during class time are increasing exponentially. Many are not doing the reading, some are on their phones, more than a few are shopping online during class and some just don’t have the bandwidth left to participate because of their very busy lives outside of school.

    How do we help these faculty members start to turn things around? In our experience as professors, group work is a great way to help instructors, new and experienced, to actively engage classes in discussions.

    The two of us have had extensive experience using in-class group work and executing in-depth team projects across many different disciplines. On most surveys, employers report that one of the top skills they want from college graduates is the ability to work in teams. Given what employers want, we’d of course like everyone to move away from lectures to engaging students with project-based teamwork. But not everyone is comfortable moving to a system that is so different from their current teaching methods.

    So how can we help our struggling adjunct faculty member, and other professors who want to more actively engage their students? Here are five quick and easy ideas to try.

    1. A think-pair-share exercise. This occurs when you pose a question, give students a brief time to reflect and think, and then ask them to turn to their neighbor and share their ideas. If you want them to develop their thoughts even more, you can ask them to turn to another pair and join them to discuss the issue (how many times you do this depends on the size of the class); you can even join up more dyads. Then ask the groups to report back with a few key points.
    2. Prepared discussion questions. Prepare a series of discussion questions based on the reading for that day or about a problem on which the class is working. Next, organize the class into four- or five-person groups. Give students a reasonable amount of time to work through the questions. While they are working, make sure to circulate through the groups, answer questions, make comments to illustrate some of the ideas and provide prompts to help them. At the conclusion of the discussion, have each group report on the highlights of their discussion and use the opportunity to give a series of mini-lectures on points they described and things they might have missed.
    3. Learning through discussion. Developed by William Fawcett Hill, this method is an even more structured approach to group work. We used this method in an upper-level theory course with excellent results. Learning through discussion puts considerable responsibility on a group leader, but if the groups rotate this leadership position across the group each week, it should even out the work (and as a bonus, it can help students develop team leadership skills). The leader synthesizes the material and initiates the discussion. The leader doesn’t teach the group but leads them through an eight-step process to identify major themes in the material and how it integrates with previous knowledge and application. Keeping students in the same groups helps them get used to working together and develop a sense of camaraderie. If you find you need to hold students accountable to help some less motivated ones prepare, you can collect their notes and have the group do quick peer evaluations.
    1. Each one, teach one. These sessions are a great way to have students cover a considerable amount of literature in what might be a psychologically safe environment for them. Divide your class into groups of four to five people. Then assign as many readings as you have members of the groups. Each person in the group completes one reading and then leads a group discussion about the article, partially teaching it to the other members of the group. You can have them accomplish all the outside readings during one week, or across multiple weeks, depending on your needs. Students learn from each other, and the one leading the discussion has to spend time learning to dissect one paper. 
    2. Team projects. Ad hoc group work as we’ve described in the first four ideas is a great way to help students to learn course material for the long haul and spark discussion. Team projects can do this even better. They do, however, take a little more work. Once you are comfortable with breaking the class into groups for ad hoc discussion, you can think about planning a team project. If you’ve never run one before, you may want to start with a small project, something short term (think three to five weeks). As you gain more experience and learn what works for you, your style, and your material, you can then move to bigger, longer projects.

    These are just a few of the ways that you can use groups, or even teams, to actively engage students in the material.

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  • Fewer Students Engage in College Activities After COVID

    Fewer Students Engage in College Activities After COVID

    Higher education professionals have noted that today’s students are less engaged than previous classes. Many experts attribute this shift to the lack of socialization caused by COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. But according to a recently published study, students’ participation rates have been declining for the past decade.

    A March report from the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium found that while student engagement in various on-campus activities—including academic, civic, career, extracurricular and research work—has trended upward since 2020, rates are still lower than they were in 2019.

    “The pandemic brought great disruption to [engagement] … and the narrative around is that, ‘Oh, things are back to normal. We’re operating normally.’ And it looks like, you know, on campuses, the pandemic has been forgotten … but in the data, in fact, we don’t see that,” said Igor Chirikov, senior researcher and SERU Consortium director.

    Methodology

    The report includes 10 years’ worth of survey and institutional data by the SERU Consortium, including 1.1 million student survey responses from 22 major research universities. The consortium is based at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and research was done in partnership with the University of Minnesota and the evaluation firm Etio.

    “Pre-pandemic” data is categorized as responses collected between 2016 and 2019, and “post-pandemic” data reaches 2023. Survey respondents were all students at R-1 residential universities with high retention and graduation rates (ranging from 82 to 94 percent).

    Overall declines: Researchers used the engagement indicators from 2018–19 as the reference point to mark the distinction between pre- and post-pandemic testing. All charts are focused on change, so they do not signify a decline in units (such as hours spent studying) but they do present an opportunity for comparison between indicators, Chirikov said.

    Most indicators of campus involvement have declined since the onset of COVID-19, with few recovering to pre-pandemic levels as of 2023.

    Academically, students reported significant differences in the amount of time studying in and outside of class, as well as in interacting with faculty members. Studying with peers also took a dip during the pandemic, but a relatively small one, which researchers said could be due to the shift to online and hybrid formats that created virtual study groups and other digital interactions.

    During the 2020–21 academic year, the share of students who indicated that their professor knew or had learned their name declined, as did their confidence that they knew a professor well enough to ask for a letter of recommendation for a job or graduate school. Both factors made slight improvement during the 2022–23 academic year, but they remain below pre-pandemic levels.

    The question about recommendation letters is one that interests Chirikov, particularly as universities are growing their enrollment and the student-faculty ratio increases. “I think that shows to what extent students have a person on campus, like a faculty member that knows them, that knows their work and can put in a good word for them,” he said.

    Participation in faculty-led research also dropped, from 25 percent of students in 2018–19 to 20 percent in 2022–23. Wealthy students were 50 percent more likely to assist in faculty research, compared to their low-income peers.

    “These are research universities, so part of their mission is to engage students in research and work in the lab, and we see, again, both declines and equity gaps in all this,” Chirikov said. “A lot of these opportunities are unpaid, and students coming from low-income families, they just cannot afford it. It’s becoming a luxury for rich kids.”

    Involvement in extracurricular activities, interestingly, increased during the 2020–21 academic year, which researchers theorize could be due to students seeking new ways to connect with their peers amid social distancing measures.

    “This indicator relies less on university infrastructure and opportunities; students worked themselves to restore that, to extend and create a different environment and spaces for communication and development friendship,” Chirikov said.

    The following year, extracurricular involvement declined to below pre-pandemic levels. Students committed fewer hours to student groups and were less likely to hold a leadership role.

    Since the pandemic, students have spent less time performing community service or volunteering and are less likely to have academic service-learning or community-based learning experiences.

    On-campus employment also took a hit—fewer students indicated they worked on campus during 2022–23 compared to 2018–19, and employed students reported working one fewer hour per week. In addition, a smaller number of students said they completed an internship, practicum or field experience, which aligns with national trends that show that students are having more difficulty securing internships. Conversely, off-campus employment rates increased after the pandemic, though the number of hours students work has dropped.

    Sowing Success

    Noting barriers to access or confusion among students over how to get plugged in on campus, some colleges and universities have created new programming to address participation gaps.

    • Goucher College created micro-experiences in service learning to allow learners to participate in small-scale or one-day projects, opening doors for students who are engaged in other spaces on campus.
    • The University of Miami offers a precollege webinar series to support incoming students who receive Federal Work-Study dollars in identifying and securing on-campus employment opportunities.
    • San Francisco State University, part of the California State University system, established an online hub for students to identify research and creative activities that may interest them, removing informational barriers to participation.
    • Virginia Commonwealth University encourages faculty members to hold open office hours that meet across disciplines to facilitate greater interaction between learners and professors.

    Across various engagement opportunities, college juniors and seniors were more likely to report participation, which could be tied to previous involvement before the COVID-19 pandemic, or an increased personal investment in achieving postgraduate success.

    All demographic factors were controlled, so a changing student population has no effect on the overall trends, Chirikov said.

    So what? Based on their findings, researchers recommend higher education revitalize engagement opportunities for students, particularly in the fields of research, community connections, student organization and career development programs.

    Federal cuts to research may further disrupt this trend, which Chirikov hypothesizes will differ according to discipline and funding losses.

    Additionally, institutions should address gaps in participation among different demographics, such as low-income and working-class students, who may experience financial and time deficits, Chirikov and his co-authors wrote.

    Researchers are currently unpacking 2024 data to see which of these trends have continued or if there were new changes, Chirikov said.

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  • Mid-Semester Course Corrections: Using the MSF Model to Engage Students and Improve Courses – Faculty Focus

    Mid-Semester Course Corrections: Using the MSF Model to Engage Students and Improve Courses – Faculty Focus

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  • Mid-Semester Course Corrections: Using the MSF Model to Engage Students and Improve Courses – Faculty Focus

    Mid-Semester Course Corrections: Using the MSF Model to Engage Students and Improve Courses – Faculty Focus

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  • Beyond Syllabus Week: Creative Strategies to Engage Students from Day One – Faculty Focus

    Beyond Syllabus Week: Creative Strategies to Engage Students from Day One – Faculty Focus

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  • How colleges engage faculty in student career development

    How colleges engage faculty in student career development

    It’s spring semester and a junior-level student just knocked on a professor’s office door. The student has dropped by to talk about summer internships; they’re considering a career in the faculty member’s discipline, but they feel nervous and a little unsure about navigating the internship hunt. They’ve come to the faculty member for insight, advice and a dash of encouragement that they’re on the right track.

    A fall 2023 survey by the National Association for Colleges and Employers found 92 percent of faculty members have experienced this in the past year—a student in their disciplinary area asking for career advice. But only about half of instructors say they’re very comfortable advising students on careers in their discipline, showing a gap between lived experiences and preparation for navigating these interactions.

    Career readiness is a growing undercurrent in higher education—driven in part by outside pressure from families and students to provide a return on investment for the high costs of tuition—but also pushed by an evolving job market and employers who attribute less weight to a college major or degree for early talent hiring.

    With a fraction of students engaging with the career center on campus, delivering career development and professional skills to all students can seem like an impossible task.

    Enter the career champion.

    The career champion is a trained, often full-time, faculty member who has completed professional development that equipped them to guide students through higher education to their first (or even second) role.

    The career champion identifies the enduring skills students will develop in their syllabus and provides opportunities for learners to articulate career readiness in the context of class projects, presentations or experiential learning.

    The career champion also shepherds their peers along the career integration path, creating a discipleship of industry-cognizant professors who freely give internship advice, make networking connections and argue for the role of higher education in student development.

    Over the past decade, college and university leaders have anointed and empowered champions among their faculty, and some institutions have even built layered models of train-the-trainer roles and responsibilities. The work creates a culture of academics who are engaged and responding to workforce demands, no longer shuffling students to career services for support but creating a through line of careers in the classroom.

    The Recipe for Success

    Career champion initiatives serve a three-pronged approach for institutional goals for career readiness.

    First, such efforts provide much-needed professional development for the faculty member. NACE’s survey of faculty members found 38 percent of respondents said they need professional development in careers and career preparation to improve how they counsel students.

    “Historically, faculty are not incentivized to do this work, nor are they trained to do anything really career readiness–related,” says Punita Bhansali, associate professor at Queensborough Community College and a CUNY Career Success Leadership Fellow. “This program was born out of the idea, let’s create a structured model where faculty get rewarded … they get recognized and they receive support for doing this work.”

    Growing attention has been placed on the underpreparation of faculty to talk socio-emotional health with learners. In the same way, faculty are lacking the tools to talk about jobs and life after college. “As they’re thinking about careers in their own work, [faculty] are used to being experts in the field, and being an expert in careers feels daunting,” explains Brenna Gomez, director of career integration at Oregon State University.

    Second, these programs get ahead of student questions about the value of liberal arts or their general education courses by identifying career skills in class early and often. This works in tandem with shifting general education requirements at some institutions, such as the University of Montana, which require faculty members to establish career as a learning outcome for courses.

    “We knew we weren’t going to move [the] career-readiness needle by being the boutique program that you sometimes go to,” says Brian Reed, associate vice provost for student success at Montana. “If we really want to have an inescapable impact, we’ve gotta get into the classroom.”

    A May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab found 92 percent of college students believe professors are at least partly responsible for some form of career development—such as sharing how careers in their field are evolving or helping students find internships—in the classroom. Just 8 percent of respondents selected “none of the above” in the list of career development–related tasks that faculty may be responsible for.

    “It’s getting faculty on board with [and] being very clear about the skills that a student is developing that do have applicability beyond that one class and for their career and their life,” says Richard Hardy, associate dean for undergraduate education of the college of arts and sciences at Indiana University Bloomington. IU Bloomington’s College of Arts and Sciences also requires competencies in the curriculum.

    Third, career champions are exceptionally valuable at changing the culture among their peers. “Champion” becomes a literal title when faculty interact with and influence colleagues.

    “That’s a general best practice if you’re looking to develop faculty in any way: to figure out who your champions are to start, and then let faculty talk to faculty,” says Niesha Taylor, director of career readiness at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. “They have the same interests in hand, they speak the same language and they can really help each other get on board in a more authentic way than sometimes an administrator could,” adds Taylor, a former career champion for the City University of New York system.

    Becoming an Expert

    Each institution takes a slightly different approach to how they mint their faculty champions.

    Oregon State University launched its Career Champion program in 2020 as part of a University Innovation Alliance project to better connect learners with career information in the classroom, explains Gomez.

    The six-week program is led by the Career Development Center and runs every academic term, engaging a cohort of five to 15 faculty members and instructors who belong to various colleges and campuses at OSU. During one session and a few hours of work independently, program participants complete collaborative course redesign projects and education around inequities in career development.

    By the end of the quarter, faculty have built three deliverables for their course: a NACE competency career map, a syllabus statement that includes at least one competency and a new or revamped lecture activity or assignment that highlights career skills.

    After completing the program, professors can join a community of practice and receive a monthly newsletter from the career center to continuously engage in career education through research, events or resources for students.

    IU Bloomington and Virginia Commonwealth University are among institutions that have created workshop series for faculty to identify or embed competencies in their courses, as well.

    Training the Trainer

    Creating change on the academic side of a college is a historically difficult task for an administrator, because it can be like leading a horse to water. Getting faculty engaged across campus is the goal, but starting with the existing cheerleaders is the first step, campus leaders say.

    3 Tips for Launching Faculty Development

    For institutions looking to create a champion program, or something similar, NACE’s Taylor encourages administrators to:

    • Get leadership on board
    • Make the professional development process meaningful through incentives or compensation
    • Provide ways for professors to share their stories after completing the work.

    To launch career champions at the University of Montana, Reed relied on the expertise and support of instructors who had previously demonstrated enthusiasm.

    “We found our biggest champions who always come to the programs that we do, who traditionally invited us into the classroom. When we said, ‘Hey, you’ve been a fantastic partner. Would you want to be part of this inaugural cohort?’ they said, ‘Absolutely.’ And so that’s who we went with,” Reed says.

    Montana’s faculty development in careers has expanded to have three tiers of involvement: a community of practice, career champions and Faculty Career Fellows, who Reed jokes are the Green Beret unit of careers. Fellows collaborate with a curriculum coach to research and implement additional events, training and other projects for instructors.

    After completing the championship program, some returned to continue education and involvement, Reed says. “We had [faculty] that wanted to come back and do it again. They wanted to stay part of the community.”

    The City University of New York selects a handful of Career Success Leadership Fellows annually who drive integration, innovation and research around careers across the system. In addition to training other faculty members, each fellow is charged taking the model to present and share with other campuses, as with their own projects for advancing career development growth.

    With added time and energy comes an added institutional financial investment in career fellows. Montana’s fellows receive a $1,000 stipend for their work, drawn from funds donated by the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, and CUNY’s fellows receive $2,000 for the academic year.

    The Heart Behind It All

    For some of these engaged professors, their involvement is tied to their experiences as learners. That junior knocking on their office door asking about internships? That was them once upon a time, and they wished their professor had the answers.

    “All of us have gone through undergrad. We know that we’ve taken some courses where it’s like, ‘Why did I take that?’ and the professor is just in their heads,” says Jason Hendrickson, professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, part of the CUNY system, and a Career Success Leadership Fellow.

    “[Career champions] are the people who, when you talk to them, they all say, ‘I wish I had had this in my undergrad experience … I didn’t know this stuff existed, the depth of the programs and services that we offer,’” Reed says.

    Faculty are also starting to feel the heat, particularly those belonging to disciplines under attack in mainstream media or that have historically less strong occupational outcomes for learners.

    “I think over time, what’s happened is faculty have seen how this is actually beneficial … from the point of view of our disciplines and allowing students to see why engaging with the liberal arts is actually hugely beneficial for career and life,” IU Bloomington’s Hardy says.

    “The question that keeps me up at night is how to retain college students,” says Bhansali of CUNY’s Queensborough Community College. “The data is bleak in terms of college retention, and each faculty needs to show how the content and skills covered in their classroom are going to help students in the future, regardless of the job they choose.”

    Sometimes instructors can feel overwhelmed by the programs, trying to incorporate eight competencies into their courses, for example, or feeling as if they have to be an expert in all things career related.

    “They can feel like, ‘How can I do all of this?’ And it’s really not any one faculty [member]’s job or any one class’s job. It has to be systemic in the college,” NACE’s Taylor says.

    The best part of the job is seeing students successfully land that job in their field. Sebastian Alvarado, a biology faculty member at Queens College and CUNY Career Success Leadership Fellow, ran into former students from his genetics class at a specialist’s appointment he had.

    “It feels really rewarding—they were really there as a result of their bio major training,” Alvarado says. “When we see students getting placements in their jobs, it feels like we’re doing what we’re supposed to do.”

    Looking Ahead

    There remain some faculty members who push back against careerism in higher education—and some who remain undersupported or -resourced to take on this work, Alvarado points out—but programs have been growing slowly but surely, driven in part by champions.

    Since launching, IU Bloomington has had over 300 faculty complete the program in the College of Arts and Sciences, Hardy says.

    Montana interacted with 235 faculty members in workshops and events in the past year, which Reed expects to only increase as more faculty members rework curriculum for general education requirements.

    OSU has had 105 participants since 2020, and the College of Liberal Arts established a commitment to train at least two faculty members in each school to be Career Champions in their strategic plan for 2023–2028, Gomez says. Campus leaders are also creating professional development for academic advisers and student-employee supervisors to train other student-facing practitioners in career integration.

    Furthering this work requires additional partnerships and collaboration between faculty members and career services staff, Taylor says, where traditionally there are not relationships due to institutional silos.

    “I’m always—and my career success team, they’re always—scanning for these partnerships, and we use our network of existing people to sort of make referrals,” Reed says. “It’s a benevolent Ponzi scheme.”

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  • How Spokane Public Schools is helping kids engage in real life

    How Spokane Public Schools is helping kids engage in real life

    Key points:

    Social media has connected kids like never before, but what they get in likes and shares, they lose in real, meaningful engagement with their peers and classmates. Lunch hours are spent hunched over smartphones, and after-school time means less sports and more Snapchat.

    The adverse effects of this excessive screen time have significantly impacted students’ social- emotional health. Forty-one percent of teens with the highest social media usage struggle with mental health issues, and between 2010 and 2020, anxiety among adolescents skyrocketed by 106 percent.

    At Spokane Public Schools (SPS), educators and administrators are reversing the side effects of social media by re-connecting with students through school-based extracurricular activities. Through its transformative Engage IRL (Engage in Real Life) initiative, the district is encouraging kids to get off their devices and onto the pickleball court, into the swimming pool, and outside in the fresh air. With more than 300 clubs and sports to choose from, SPS students are happier, healthier, and less likely to reach for their smartphones.

    An innovative approach to student engagement

    Even before the pandemic, SPS saw levels of engagement plummet among the student population, especially in school attendance rates, due in part to an increase in mental health issues caused by social media. Rebuilding classroom connections in the era of phone-based childhoods would require district leaders to think big.

    “The question was not ‘How do we get kids off their phones?’ but ‘How do we get them engaged with each other more often?’” said Ryan Lancaster, executive director of communications for SPS. “Our intent was to get every kid, every day, involved in something positive outside the school day and extend that community learning past the classroom.” 

    To meet the district’s goal of creating a caring and connected community, in 2022, school leaders formed a workgroup of parents, community members, coaches, and teachers to take inventory of current extracurriculars at all district schools and identify gaps in meeting students’ diverse interests and hobbies.

    Engaging with students was a top priority for workgroup members. “The students were excited to be heard,” explained Nikki Otero Lockwood, SPS board president. “A lot of them wanted an art club. They wanted to play board games and learn to knit. No matter their interests, what they really wanted was to be at school and be connected to others.”

    Working with community partners and LaunchNW, an Innovia Foundation initiative focused on helping every child feel a sense of belonging, SPS launched Engage IRL–an ambitious push to turn students’ ideas for fun and fulfillment into real-life, engaging activities.

    Over the past two years, Engage IRL has been the catalyst for increasing access and opportunities for K-12 students to participate in clubs, sports, arts activities, and other community events. From the Math is Cool Club and creative writing classes to wrestling and advanced martial arts, kids can find a full range of activities to join through the Elite IRL website. In addition, five engagement navigators in the district help connect families and students to engagement opportunities through individual IRL Plans and work with local organizations to expand programming.

    “All day, every day, our navigators are working to break down barriers and tackle challenges to make sure nothing gets in the way of what kids want to be involved in and engaged in,” said Stephanie Splater, executive director of athletics and activities for SPS. “For example, when we didn’t have a coach for one of the schools in our middle school football program, our navigators mobilized for really good candidates in a short amount of time just from their personal outreach.”

    In only two years, student engagement in extracurriculars has nearly doubled. Furthermore, according to Lancaster, since the Engage IRL launch, SPS hasn’t experienced a day where it dipped below 90 percent attendance. 

    “That’s an outlier in the past few years for us, for sure, and we think it’s because kids want to be at school. They want to be engaged and be part of all the cool things we’re doing. We’ve had a really great start to the 2024-2025 school year, and Engage IRL has played a huge role.”

    Engage IRL also helped SPS weather student blowback when the district launched a new cell phone policy this year. The policy prohibits cell phone use in elementary and middle school and limits it to lunch and periods between classes for high school students. Because students were already building personal connections with classmates and teachers through Engage IRL, many easily handled social media withdrawal.

    Creating opportunities for all kids

    Key to Engage IRL’s success was ensuring partnerships and programs were centered in equity, allowing every child to participate regardless of ability, financial or transportation constraints, or language barriers.

    Establishing a no-cut policy in athletics by creating additional JV and C teams ensured kids with a passion for sports, but not college-level skills, continued to compete on the court or field. Partnering with Special Olympics also helped SPS build new unified sports programs that gave children with disabilities a chance to play. And engagement navigators are assisting English language learners and their families in finding activities that help them connect with kids in their new country.

    For Otero Lockwood, getting her daughter with autism connected to clubs after years of struggling to find school activities has been life-changing.

    “There are barriers to finding community for some kids,” she shared. “We know kids with disabilities are more likely to be underemployed as adults and not as connected to the community. This is something we have the power to do that will have a lasting impact on the children we serve.”

    Through Engage IRL, SPS has redefined student engagement by expanding access and opportunity to 6,000 students across 58 schools. In just two short years, the district has seen attendance increase, student wellness improve, and dependence on smartphones diminish. By continuing to listen to the needs of students and rallying the community to partner on out-of-school activities, Spokane Public Schools is successfully fostering the face-to-face connections every child needs to thrive.

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