Summer Learning At PBC

It’s National Summer Learning Week! Each year the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA) celebrates National Summer Learning Week to elevate the importance of keeping kids learning, safe, and healthy, ensuring they return to school ready to succeed. This year, the importance of making sure kids are prepared when they return to school is even more important than ever, and PBC is proud to be a partner in this work.

When schools first closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, many of us presumed that it would be a few weeks before students could return to the classroom; some districts did not plan for remote learning but rather used their scheduled spring break days and “snow” days to account for students not being in school for an extended period. As we know, those few weeks turned into months and, in some cases, more than a year of remote learning. Parents, teachers, and caregivers have seen the impact extended remote learning has had on students, particularly in the Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities. Students in these communities were more likely to have remained in remote learning situations longer than others and, according to a report from McKinsey, the cumulative learning loss could be six to 12 months, compared to four to eight months for white students.

Students at Achievers Academy in Trenton try their hand at the “walking A” activity, a teambuilding and communication challenge.

PBC’s award-winning Summer Bridge Program kicked off this month, bringing our summer learning experience to young people in Trenton and Newark completely free of charge. This one-week leadership and academic enrichment program designed to serve young people from historically marginalized communities in New Jersey was honored with the 2018 NSLA New York Life Foundation Excellence in Summer Learning Founder’s Award, which recognizes outstanding summer programs that demonstrate excellence in accelerating academic achievement and promoting healthy development for low-income children and youth between pre-kindergarten and twelfth grade. Summer Bridge is normally held on our Blairstown Campus, but hosting students overnight in small cabins seemed too great a risk given the ongoing pandemic. Therefore, PBC’s staff reconfigured the curriculum and logistics and came up with a plan to bring the Summer Bridge Program to participants in their own communities this year. PBC is continuing to partner with schools and community-based organizations in Trenton and Newark to provide 90 minutes of academic enrichment each day, along with a host of leadership, team-building, and problem-solving activities designed to build social-emotional skills in schoolyards and local parks.

The academic curriculum focuses on STEM and literacy in a series of hands-on, inquiry-driven, interdisciplinary outdoor learning experiences centered on equity and social justice, with a focus on the power of community gardening as a means of civic action and towards food justice. Students also form positive, supportive relationships with peers and adults while increasing environmental awareness and proactive stewardship of natural resources. In addition to meeting a wide range of Common Core Literacy and Next Generation Science Standards, the social-emotional elements of the Summer Bridge Program meet important Career Ready Practices and 21st Century Life and Career Skills that are critical pieces of the revised New Jersey Student Learning Standards.

A summer Bridge literacy lesson, held on-site at Achievers Academy as part of Summer Bridge 2021.

Students from Achievers Academy in Trenton participated in the first week of Summer Bridge and were happy with their experience. One student said she learned how to communicate with others when she was frustrated and another student said that this was the first time she had an opportunity to attend anything like a summer camp and how much fun she had canoeing. If the photos from their day at Blairstown are any clue, it’s safe to assume many other students felt the same way.

And as this year’s Summer Learning Week winds down, we are looking forward to a visit from the CEO of the National Summer Learning Association, Aaron Dworkin! He and several others from the team at NSLA, plus a potential future program partner, are slated to join us for an action-packed visit during a day of Summer Bridge on-site programming. We can’t think of a better way to send off this year’s celebration, and are excited for the many ways we might expand and enhance our partnership with the United States’ premier coalition of summer learning programs.

Virtual Summer Bridge - A New Learning Adventure

Last month we shared the disappointing news that, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC) would be unable to welcome groups of students to the Blairstown Campus for our award-winning Summer Bridge enrichment program this year. As most Compass Points readers know, the PBC Summer Bridge program is designed to ameliorate the insidious “summer learning loss” that particularly affects children in under-resourced communities. What made this announcement even more painful was the knowledge that many children from these communities were already experiencing an academic crisis caused by the hasty, but necessary implementation of online instruction and the broader economic and social distress caused by the pandemic. In fact, a recent study by the Brookings Institution reports that “these additional stressors suggest that the COVID-19 slump might have even more impact on children from under-resourced homes than the [typical] summer slump.” For these reasons (and many more), PBC is collaborating with two Summer Bridge partner organizations, Mercer Street Friends (MSF) and the Center for Child and Family Achievement (CCFA), to deliver an engaging blend of virtual STEAM, literacy, and social emotional learning programming to nearly fifty children throughout the month of July.

Students began the program developing a shared “Full Value Contract” that would govern interpersonal relationships in the virtual classroom space – the same way that we would help groups self-govern if they were physically present on Campus. Students then worked both alone and together to solve an array of STEAM and SEL challenges designed to foster critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and responsible decision-making, while strengthening their social awareness and building strong relationships with their facilitators, chaperones, and peers. Divided into small groups of fewer than ten students, each cohort was led by a trained PBC facilitator and adult chaperone from the partnering organization. This favorable “classroom” ratio enhanced personalized instruction and accountability, resulting in active student engagement during each two-hour synchronous learning session and additional hour of daily asynchronous programming.   

A screenshot of PBC Facilitator Makela reviewing the projects of students from CCFA during their Virtual Summer Bridge session.

During the program, participants contemplated scenarios such as being “lost at sea”, collaboratively prioritizing a list of life saving supplies to be loaded into their imaginary “lifeboat”. They designed and built boats using everyday household items and then developed a sales pitch to promote their model against the “competition.” They designed and played musical instruments built from found objects. They germinated and dissected seeds. They nurtured plant life for an indoor garden. They built and tested catapults, calculating the trajectories of objects launched (safely!) across their bedrooms. They made “Friendship Bracelets” and learned about indigenous American’s culture. They wrote poetry in several formats, including haiku. They dissected owl pellets, watched nature videos, and recorded their own insights in a nature journal. And perhaps most importantly, throughout the program students reflected on their progress and celebrated accomplishments. Our hope is that they also were reminded, discovered, or re-discovered that learning can be fun; working together trumps going it alone; and that there are people beyond the walls of their home who care about their well-being and success.

The feedback from our partner organizations has been uniformly positive. Wanda Webster Stansbury, Executive Director of CCFA remarked, “I want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone for an exceptional experience for all of the students who attended the Princeton-Blairstown virtual summer program. Today I enjoyed participating in sessions conducted by Makela, Handy and Tabs—you were all fantastic and the activities were fun and informative!”  Chelsea Jenkins, Program Manager for MSF, expressed her appreciation for the “original, creative, and engaging curriculum PBC developed for this virtual experience.” While all agree that nothing can truly replace a trip to PBC’s 264-acre outdoor classroom, our Trenton partners were grateful for the opportunity to work with our talented staff to provide meaningful programming that activated and challenged young minds and strengthened community bonds in these troubled times.

In designing and delivering the Virtual Summer Bridge program, the PBC staff lived the philosophy that guides our daily work with young people—growth occurs when we stretch beyond our comfort zone. While 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered for many things, our hope is that the students from CCFA and MSF will look back on this unusual summer and be inspired by PBC staff who put their own 21st Century skills to work to provide a fun and enriching experience. With the continued support of our generous donors, PBC remains committed to providing the very best in experiential and environmental programming—by any means necessary—until all can safely return to our beautiful campus in the woods.

Reimagining Summer Bridge Puts 21st Century Skills to the Test

Virtual Summer Bridge…it’s in the bag!

Some examples of items to be included in the “PBC in A Bag” totes - Snacks, Stem and art supplies, books, a Summer Bridge tee shirt, and more!

No, seriously – in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, Summer Bridge students will not be on Campus at PBC this year. But for those community partners willing to take a virtual learning journey with us, PBC will offer a Virtual Summer Bridge program throughout the summer via a mix of real-time and self-guided offerings, with all of the materials needed to complete planned activities (along with age-appropriate books, snacks, tee shirts, and other swag) delivered to participants in a PBC tote bag.

In conversation with our partner organizations, it was clear that hosting Sumer Bridge in this virtual format would require extra effort to ensure that students had a chance to truly remain engaged. It had to be expertly tailored to the needs of students who might already be struggling with, confused by, or just plain burnt out on distance learning. We continue to hear that it was a long, confusing, and often-bumpy experience for students, parents, and faculty as they navigated the challenges of teaching and learning in the unfamiliar world of virtual instruction required in the midst of a global pandemic.

With this in mind, the PBC Program Team did significant research and planning to develop the Virtual Summer Bridge curriculum that incorporates a variety of check-ins, challenges, creative outlets, brain breaks, and games. At the same time, the Program Team is preparing to spend time far outside of their own comfort zones by facilitating positive group dynamics and hands-on learning from many physical miles away.

21st Century Skills Illustration.

Courtesy of Battelle for Kids - p21.org

While it certainly isn’t the spring or summer that any of us had hoped for at the beginning of the year, it has repeatedly underscored that young people and adults all need to spend time developing and honing their 21st Century skills. Critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, technology literacy, and flexibility are some of the first things that come to mind when thinking about what we have all needed to manage the stressors and dynamic environment of the present – and future.