Our workshops have been organized into three compelling strands:
Program Planning and Development Workshops will engage participants in developing quality at the program level based on the following domains of NSLA's Comprehensive Assessment of Summer Programs: purpose, sustainability, design, planning, staff, and partnerships. Successful workshops will provide concrete tools for improving these areas at the program level, supported by research and/or specific examples from the field. Sessions will target meeting the needs of executive directors, program managers and site coordinators.
Effective Learning Approaches How do you deliver instruction in informal settings? How do you target learning goals in an engaging way? How do you build program culture? Sessions offer practical strategies, examples, and approaches that support compelling, enriching, learning-centered programming that narrows the achievement gap and promotes healthy youth development. Sessions will target meeting the needs of program managers and frontline staff.
Community System-Building and Advocacy
These sessions will discuss resources, research, and strategies to set the stage for sustainable, community-wide summer learning systems. From effective policy to on-the-ground planning and implementation, community-wide summer learning and out-of-school time systems and policies lead to more youth served, higher quality programs, and positive outcomes achieved at scale. Sessions will provide tools, examples and resources for assessing the state of summer learning at the community level, planning a summer learning or out-of-school time system, capacity building around key system competencies, and advocating for public support of summer. These sessions will target the needs of community intermediaries, summer learning champions and others in leadership roles looking to address summer learning at scale.
