How Virtual After-School Programs Can Increase Educational Equity

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Listen and learn : Snapshot

Tara Chklovski
In this session, attendees will learn to design virtual programs that help students become more resilient, confident and adept at problem-solving, despite COVID-19 exacerbating inequality through pandemic pods. I’ll describe what my nonprofit has learned after 14 years of working with girls and families in 60+ countries.

Audience:	Curriculum/district specialists, Principals/head teachers, Teachers
Skill level:	Beginner
Attendee devices:	Devices not needed
Topic:	Distance, online & blended learning
Grade level:	6-8
Subject area:	Computer science, STEM/STEAM
ISTE Standards:	For Coaches: Digital Age Learning Environments Model effective classroom management and collaborative learning strategies to maximize teacher and student use of digital tools and resources and access to technology-rich learning environments. Maintain and manage a variety of digital tools and resources for teacher and student use in technology-rich learning environments. For Students: Innovative Designer Students select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers design constraints and calculated risks.

Proposal summary

Purpose & objective

Participants will learn how to integrate virtual STEM programming into afterschool programming as a result of this session that teaches 21st century skills including computer science, real-world problem solving, and entrepreneurial thinking, even with challenges that have been exacerbated by COVID such as limited funding and resources They will have access to examples and tools for how to engage parents to support their children especially for families who have never been inclined to participate in STEM enrichment activities. They will also be able to plan how they can recruit and use industry or university mentors based off of Technovation’s learning over 15 years.

Outline

The Problem: COVID-19 Inequality and Opportunity — 5 minutes
Expanding access to opportunity
Educational organizations in poor neighborhoods need particularly good educators and too often the neighborhoods that require the greatest talent receive the most inexperienced educators.
Underrepresented groups in Computer Science has decreased despite investing millions of dollars into focused efforts towards increasing the number of girls and minorities in Computer Science.
The Pandemic Pod movement is an example where individual action is widening the opportunity gap in K-12 education and further segregating our school systems.
COVID has caused untold losses at all levels, worldwide, but it also presents three clear opportunities:
Providing more time for students to do real-world, project based learning
Using technology to bring high quality, social capital to under-resourced neighborhoods
Building capacity in educators and front-line staff to teach future-ready skills

A Solution: Technovation x STEMNext Afterschool Programs + UNESCO Pilot — 10 minutes
Technovation’s mission, background, objectives, and KPIs
STEM Next Opportunity Fund’s mission, background, objectives, and KPIs
Million Girls Moonshot, a national gender equity in STEM initiative leveraging the 50 state afterschool network
Best practices and research findings:
A syntax-first approach doesn’t result in resilient change
Learning how to code is not the same as being able to solve a problem with code
Students drop out at every level if there is inadequate social and technical support
Students drop out if they do not find an authentic purpose to their learning
Students are more successful when they have a community of support encouraging and helping them
Technovation’s work with STEMNext in 2020+ - highlights of successes, challenges
Technovation’s successes and challenges from pilot with UNESCO over 6 countries that can be applied here in the US or internationally

Afterschool and Low-Touch Pilot Program Successes and Challenges — 15 minutes
UNESCO Pilot Takeaways around All-Virtual STEM Enrichment
No shortcut to learning gains
Mentors need very straightforward path for engagement, easy to start
Students need actual live classes or support
Students want adult validation just as much as any “prize” - although prizes can be motivating for many too!

Afterschool Program Work Takeaways
Recruiting Process
What worked and what didn’t in recruiting front line educators to bring real-world problem solving and technology entrepreneurship curriculum to their students
Successes and challenges in training setup for novice STEM leaders
Trained them in a 3-session training series focused on building capacity for educators who have never led engineering or STEM before, and who were going to do it online
Goal was to build confidence and skills
Then opened opportunity for “booster” experience of longer more in depth 12-week program to individuals who were very interested and invested in their communities

What worked and what didn’t in Capacity Building & Training, & Ongoing Support
What was most successful in hybrid model of support - combining regular online trainings with community forums - for educators, parents and mentors, helping them develop skills and strategies to support students through real-world problem solving
Following training, we provided ongoing support to educators, mentors and parents
What we found most successful (and not) in our work with parents and mentors specifically
Community Celebrations
What worked in our efforts to support local communities to be able to celebrate their accomplishments

Interactive Portion: Community of Support Mechanisms - 20 minutes
Small breakout groups - guided silent write on Padlet then discussions around what participants have seen work or fail around:
Engaging parents in supporting STEM learning for kids
Engaging industry professionals or university students as mentors
Training educators with no experience in STEM to lead STEM learning
Each group shares out top notes with at least 1 recommendation and 1 open question

Success Metrics, Takeaways, and Conclusion — 15 minutes
Notes to consider when creating your own plan, specifically around
Capacity building
Learning gains
Tech industry mentor engagement
How to access our free materials we’ve used if you wish to use any as templates
Q&A

Supporting research

Wilson, 2012
Breton, 2008
Kabeer, 1999
Sharifi, 2016

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