Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:
Social media bans alone won’t improve mental health, students and advocates say.
A survey finds that most LGBTQ+ students’ mental health has been impacted by recent policies.
How a Connecticut middle school banned cell phones.
To read more, click on the following links.
Continue reading “The Weekly Connect 5/13/24”
Equity and opportunity have always been a key focus of City Connects. And over the years, we’ve learned more about how to increase equity and opportunity and how policymakers can promote these resources in their school districts, ensuring that all students have the resources they need to succeed.
“Our goal at the outset of City Connects was to address the inequities that we saw in schools,” Mary Walsh says, recalling the educational environment in the 1990s. Walsh is the founder and executive director of City Connects.
“It wasn’t intentional inequity,” Walsh adds, “but in some schools, student support staff spent 90 percent of their time working with students who had the most noticeable, most serious difficulties. At best that meant helping 10 to 15 percent of kids.”
We’ve seen how important opportunities are for students in City Connects schools. Our coordinators refer students to summer camps or music lessons or even summer school, and those students grow academically and personally.
There’s also evolving evidence that opportunities can lead to equity. In a cohort study that has followed children for 26 years, Boston College’s Professor Eric Dearing, found that increasing students’ opportunities closed achievement gaps, which helps create more equity. Dearing is a professor of Applied Developmental Psychology in Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development as well as the Executive Director of the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, home to City Connects.
Continue reading “Promoting equity and opportunity”Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:
Schools across the country are facing declines in student enrollment.
Research questions the value of having states takeover school districts.
California launches new apps that provide mental health support for families and youth.
To read more, click on the following links.
Continue reading “The Weekly Connect 5/6/24”
In 2021, well into the pandemic, an alarm rang. The American Academy of Pediatrics declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. Since then, students’ mental health needs have continued to alarm educators.
A recent National Center for Education Statistics survey found that “About 4 in 10 school leaders said they were ‘moderately’ or ‘extremely’ concerned about their students’ mental health (43 percent) and the mental health of their teachers or staff (41 percent).”
Here at City Connects, our Coordinators are addressing these needs, and as an organization we are reaffirming our longstanding commitment to focusing on students’ physical and mental health — one of the four domains in students’ lives that we look at, along with academics, social-emotional wellbeing, and family.
By focusing on the “whole child,” we take a broad view of how to support healthy child development and positive mental health. We recognize that access to opportunities like physical activities, a chance to learn a new skill, and places to build positive relationships with peers and caring adults create the conditions for students to successfully get through life’s challenges.
Today, City Connects Coordinators are seeing students navigate significant hurdles. Some have lost family members to Covid. Others face hunger, homelessness, and other challenges that come with poverty.
“I have seen more mental health challenges with middle schoolers,” Maggie Longsdorf, the coordinator at Risen Christ Catholic School in Minneapolis, says. “Kids have anxiety about the future and about where they are going to high school because in some of our families, parents haven’t gone to high school. There are a lot of new things.
Continue reading “Mental Health and Integrated Student Support”Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:
A federal study finds that the obstacles to implementing social-emotional learning curriculum include lack of time, funding, and teacher support.
Preschool enrollment of 3- and 4-year-olds hit an all-time high in the 2022-2023 school year. However the overall number of children enrolled is still lower than preschool levels.
Birdie’s Bookmobile brings the joy of reading to children in Detroit.
To read more, click on the following links.
Continue reading “The Weekly Connect 4/29/24”Earlier this month, the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects, hosted a webinar called “Helping Children Thrive in an Age of Uncertainty.”
The webinar is a dynamic conversation that addresses the question: “In this time of historic uncertainty and challenge, what does it mean for children to ‘thrive,’ and what will it take to promote thriving in enduring and equitable ways?”
The discussion draws on the work of talented academics and their visionary ideas of what thriving could mean. It touches on the importance of joy, flourishing, having the opportunity to dream, and how thriving could be a community-wide resource that community members share over the course of their lives.
Here at City Connects, these ideas are a crucial part of our model. Our coordinators focus on meeting students’ needs and on offering them compelling opportunities like music lessons and summer camp. The goal is to help children thrive in school, at home, and as they grow into adults.
Continue reading “A webinar explores how to help children thrive”Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:
A study finds that four-day school weeks have a significant negative impact on students’ math and reading performance.
As federal Covid funds run out, K-12 educators are skeptical about their schools’ financial futures.
In Indianapolis, a community organization helps a local school teach children to read.
To read more, click on the following links.
Continue reading “The Weekly Connect 4/22/24”
Last month in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area, when the temperature was only in the upper 40s, City Connects Program Manager Laurie Acker was getting ready for summer.
Acker was hosting the annual Summer Service Fair, an event where City Connects Coordinators learn about the community partners who are offering summer programs for students.
“These are high-quality programs at low- or no-cost,” Acker says.
Across the country, City Connects staff members are doing the same work, making summer plans for students and their families that range from food support to academic programs to summer camps. That’s because in City Connects schools, planning for summer means making plans to meet students’ basic needs for things like food and health care. It means planning for fun, planning for getting to try new things, and planning for the growth that comes from all kinds of enrichment.
Acker’s Summer Service Fair featured a diverse group of community partners that offer a full range of opportunities. Community partners who couldn’t attend the fair sent their information.
Continue reading “Working with community partners to prepare for summer success”
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