While the blog goes on summer vacation, we’ll spend the next weeks sharing past blog posts about how City Connects helps students thrive.
This week’s roundup looks at the growing national awareness of how important it is to understand and meet the needs of the whole child.
* * * * *
A national conversation on integrated student support
November 29, 2018
“We need a comprehensive approach,” Mary Walsh said at this month’s conference, “Building Systems for Student Success: When Academics are Not Enough,” the first national conversation about the cutting edge science, practice, and policy of providing integrated student support.
That comprehensive approach, Walsh explained, means meeting the needs of the whole child by providing integrated student support, which is “a comprehensive, coordinated and school-based effort to connect students to specific district supports, enrichments and services.”
* * * * *
A national conversation on supporting the whole child
May 5, 2022
Last month, a federal summit – “From Recovery to Thriving: How the American Rescue Plan is Supporting America’s Students” – hosted by the U.S. Department of Education, brought together “education leaders, advocates, and philanthropic partners” to discuss how American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds are helping schools and students.
Among the summit speakers was Jillian Lain, Director of City Connects Midwest, which is based at Marian University’s Center for Vibrant Schools.
Lain spoke at a session on “Comprehensive Mental Health Supports” and explained how City Connects’ work in Indianapolis vividly shows ways that communities can use ARP funds to address the strengths and needs of the whole child.
Sharing City Connects’ approach now is particularly timely because the Department of Education announced at the summit that it will start “inviting applications for a total of $160 million in Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grants,” according to the education news website K-12 Dive. This funding will be invested in “15 to 35 projects aimed at increasing access to project-based learning and advanced coursework, closing gaps in educational opportunities, providing student social and emotional support, and more.”
* * * * *
A new brief: Strengthening “whole child-whole family” approaches in early childhood programs
June 28, 2024
“America’s young children and families are facing historic challenges and possibilities,” a new brief — “Strengthening Whole Family Comprehensive Supports in Early Childhood Implications for Head Start and Early Head Start” — explains.
“Families are confronting long-standing barriers to opportunity like poverty, systemic racism, and under-resourced neighborhoods, and also challenges related to a global pandemic, gun violence, and climate change including increasingly dangerous natural disasters and resulting displacements,” the brief adds.
However, families are “resilient, resourceful, and motivated to provide their children with a promising future. They are ready to tap into this era of unprecedented possibility, scientific discovery, and innovation that can buffer the impacts of adverse experiences.”
The brief was written by Joan Wasser Gish of Boston College’s Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children; Rachel Chazan-Cohen of the University of Connecticut’s Applied Research on Children Lab; and Tassy Warren of the Harvard Center on the Developing Child.
