NEWS

Partnership with Children was selected to participate in Year 2 of NYC Summer Quest. This is the second year of the three year pilot established by the NYC Department of Education (DOE) to combat summer learning loss. Summer learning loss is defined as the lost knowledge students experience over the summer months due to a lack of structured educational programming. Studies have found that summer learning loss contributes to the achievement gap between low and high income students.

The NYC DOE has partnered with the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development and The Fund for Public Schools to develop a summer learning program that will deliver engaging hands-on enrichment opportunities for students. NYC Summer Quest is designed to meet the needs and interests of students, in addition to aligning with the DOE curriculum standards. The program is being piloted in the South Bronx, where the need is the highest.

Partnership with Children continues to offer our Summer Quest program at the South Bronx Academy for Applied Media (SBAAM) for rising 6th through 8th grade scholars, during Year 2. We are fortunate that we work in SBAAM throughout the school year with our Open Heart-Open Mind school program, so we have a deeper understanding of the students, families, school staff and the surrounding community. As a result of our year-round involvement, we have the capability to explore each scholar’s academic progress, social emotional learning needs, behavior, level and quality of family engagement and attendance record.

Our Summer Quest program integrates social emotional learning into a framework of academic rigor in real world contexts to provide opportunities for creative expression, honoring the needs of the whole child. We are embracing the Common Core goals of deepening scholars’ contextual understanding of their world through collaborative problem solving and independent exploration. Through our program, we hope to encourage scholars to become life-long learners by challenging them with educational adventures that are meaningful to them while learning that it is more fun to be kind to and inclusive of others.