Ensuring that every child in a City Connects school is seen and known means going deeper than their academic performance.
It means discovering their needs as well as their passions. One student may be hungry at home, and love to play and invent with LEGOs. Another student may be worried that dad is out of work and mom is sick, but finds joy and comfort in singing on stage with friends.
City Connects is intentionally designed to understand and support the whole child. It provides tailored support that addresses needs while also helping each child to flourish and grow.
The reason behind City Connects’ commitment to supporting each student’s strengths, interests, and needs is rooted in developmental science.
“Access to diverse opportunities, including after-school programs, the arts, and sports, are vital to helping children build self-confidence, mastery, and connections to peers and adults. Approaches to student support that address needs and cultivate student strengths show robust positive outcomes,” City Connects executive director Mary Walsh explained.
Centering Student Voices
Finding these strengths and interests is at the heart of a City Connects Coordinators’ work. They are learning about students as they talk with teachers, coaches, nurses, counselors, and others in their school as part of a Whole Class Review process. They talk with the child’s family.
Importantly, they also ask students what they are curious about or enjoy doing. That’s why Coordinators have a student interest survey available to them. The survey helps students to tell the Coordinator what they enjoy, by selecting activities or interests from a list, or writing in their own choices.
The survey is also adapted to meet students on their level. There is flexibility for students to provide feedback via the survey online, on paper, verbally with a teacher or Coordinator, and in both English and Spanish. Surveys for younger students have pictures of activities that they can circle.
Gathering students’ responses and combining them with the information gathered from a Whole Class Review helps build a more well-rounded understanding of each student – the foundation for creating a tailored, comprehensive, integrated student support plan for each child.
“Including student interests in the Whole Class Review process ensures that student voice is part of every support plan,” said Cynthia Scheller, Director of Programs and Practice. “It helps Coordinators to better understand who students are—their passions and strengths and what motivates them to thrive”.
Expanded Possibilities
Understanding students’ interests is also useful to teachers and school administrators. Teachers who know more about their students can create lessons and projects that tap into a variety of students’ interests. Teachers and administrators can set up after-school activities, such as a LEGO club, film club, or basketball league, or form new community partnerships.
In Springfield, Ohio, Coordinators discovered students’ interest in gardening, so the school partnered with Springfield Neighborhood Promise to help students work outside in their community, raking, planting seeds and flowers, and painting murals.
“My favorite activity has been the garden,” City Connects Coordinator Shannon Baker said in this blog post. “We have a community garden through Springfield Neighborhood Promise, and they have volunteers who work on the garden and plant food. Then the community is invited to come and reap the harvest of the garden.”
Zoom out on student interests across a whole community, and powerful change can be enacted.
That’s the goal of the ConnectIndy dashboard. This dashboard aggregates information about student interests, service gaps, and community partnerships.
“The goal of ConnectIndy is to show what matters most to our students, schools, and communities,” said Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett in this blog post. “From cooking classes and robotics clubs to reading and math support, our young people have a wide range of interests and needs that can be met through local partnerships with nonprofits and businesses. With the dashboard, these partnerships will be more effective by targeting already-identified needs and interests.”
Student voices matter. City Connects helps to amplify them and make students’ strengths, needs, and interests something that teachers, school leaders, community agencies, and even the Mayor’s office, can respond to. They are powerful and important in shaping the opportunities that children need to thrive.
