The National Summer School Initiative (NSSI)

Meet the team of award-winning educators who have come together this summer to partner with teachers and leaders nationwide to deliver learning experiences that transcend the ordinary. Introducing Caroline Roth, returning for her third summer as an ELA Mentor Teacher at NSSI! Caroline began her career with Teach For America in Los Angeles, teaching high school English as a second language. After teaching middle school history and English, she returned to her hometown of New York City, where she taught seventh-grade English with Achievement First Endeavor Middle School and was named a Distinguished Teacher. As the school's ELA and history academic dean and principal-in-residence, Caroline led her team through the transition to Common Core standards and a 25 percentage point increase in student proficiency on the state’s ELA assessment. She then served as the school’s principal for five years; the school posted double-digit proficiency gains in both ELA and math. Today, Caroline is an educational consultant, specializing in school leader and teacher coaching and professional development. She earned her B.A in English from Dartmouth College and her M.A from Loyola Marymount University.

Working at The National Summer School Initiative (NSSI) over the summer has been a joy!! Great program and great leaders!

Last month, teachers and school leaders took part in specialized pre-service trainings to prepare them to deliver accelerated teaching this summer. Equipped and inspired by NSSI’s award-winning Mentor Teachers, they are ready to aim high—and watch their students soar. Read the full story in our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eKbHHtc8

Teachers and school leaders were overwhelmingly satisfied with the quality of NSSI's summer 2024 specialized pre-service trainings—designed to deeply prepare them to deliver the program's curricula and master accelerated teaching methods. A teacher from Forte Prep shared, "There was a clear goal and objective for each session and the time was used well. I enjoyed that the sessions were interactive!" A teacher from First Philadelphia Preparatory Charter wrote, "I enjoyed that this was fast-paced and I didn't feel like any part of it was just to fill the time. It was quality over quantity."

Meet the team of award-winning educators who have come together this summer to partner with teachers and leaders nationwide to deliver learning experiences that transcend the ordinary. Introducing Brian Johnson, one of NSSI's summer 2024 ELA Mentor Teachers. Brian’s career began teaching high school math with Teach For America at Thurgood Marshall Academy in New York City. He then was a founding eighth-grade math teacher at KIPP Infinity Middle School, where he received several teaching awards. Brian was a semi-finalist for the U.S. Department of Education Classroom Teaching Ambassador Fellowship for moving students beyond two years of growth in math and ELA for over a decade. A recipient of the The Sontag Prize in Urban Education, he studied pedagogy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and taught at-risk students in Boston. In 2023, Brian presented a TED-Ed Talk on student engagement and culture. Brian holds a B.A. in marketing from University of Kentucky, a M.S.T. in adolescent education from Pace University and an advanced certification in special education from St. Rose College.

End-of-session surveys from our first Leader Insitute of summer 2024 yielded exciting feedback: ☑ 94% of participating school leaders agreed or strongly agreed that session presenters were engaging and knowledgeable. ☑ 90% of participating school leaders agreed or strongly agreed that Institute helped them feel prepared to lead summer school. ☑ 91% of participating school leaders agreed or strongly agreed that Institute was a valuable use of their time.

Meet Season 5's award-winning team of Mentor Teachers. Our Mentor Teachers, chosen for their record of moving kids fast academically, are fired-up and ready to equip and inspire your teachers to accelerate learning this summer. Participating teachers will learn from award-winning educators from around the country. Using exceptional ELA and math curricula, your teachers will gain confidence in discourse-based instruction and put your students firmly on the path to college. Read the full story in this month's newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eS7SABsX

We kicked off summer 2024 this month with our first Leader Institute. Partner school leaders came together virtually to master the skills needed to set up a summer that centers the joy of learning. And they loved it! In our end-of-session survey, a school leader from Gem Prep shared: “Each year, this gets better and better. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into helping us launch and run successful summer programs with great opportunities for teacher growth and great student outcomes.” A school leader from Uncommon Schools Schools wrote: "It was great to get an opportunity to observe classroom instruction and craft feedback. It was very valuable to have this be a collaborative process so we could hear from other educators and push our own thinking."

Three weeks into my new role at National Summer School Initiative (NSSI) and I want to share a bit about the work.   The problems we solve While the lift to create equitable educational outcomes resists silver bullet thinking, summer learning can be a key driver of student success.    At best, summer learning is under-leveraged. At worst, it's a missed opportunity to provide kids with supplemental time on task while sharpening a teacher's instructional sword.  Many districts treat summer as a discretionary expense, not a non-negotiable investment with a clear purpose to accelerate learning. Other districts pay teachers to author their own instructional plan, with few quality controls. To be fair, it's challenging for districts to design and implement a high quality summer learning program when academic year priorities and firefighting gobble up important bandwidth. The solution   NSSI is designing best-in-class, turnkey summer learning models so schools and districts can focus their energy on other critical levers for student success. Summer creates additional learning time for kids, but also provides time to build teacher capacity--and strengthen Tier 1 instruction throughout the year. This is our unique contribution to the K-12 sector, and we're working to perfect it at an affordable cost to district partners. One partner will enroll over 60k kids in NSSI's program this summer.   As Robert Pondiscio recently wrote in The 74 Media, we can't expect teachers to lead killer lessons and also design them from scratch. If that practice persists, then a teacher's job will remain unwinnable and result in wild fluctuations in quality from classroom to classroom.   NSSI provides excellent lessons and then matches educators with master teachers who coach them on excellent delivery. The goal is to nurture discourse-rich, inquiry-based classrooms that are student-centered and buzzing with ideas. K-12 kids participating in NSSI programs are engaging with interesting math problems and reading amazing novels like Root Magic, Ninth Ward, and The Whole Story of a Half Girl. I spent my childhood summers playing Atari 2600 and lighting things on fire 😎. Do you believe that one experience with a great book can change a child's attitude towards school? Which book did that for you?

In summer 2023, 91% of participating district and school leaders agreed that “the curriculum and lesson materials provided by NSSI for teachers are strong.” One school leader from Alliance College-Ready Public Schools shared: "This is our third year partnering with NSSI and I always rave about how much I love the program. I really like the curriculum—the way it is laid out, the training provided to the teachers about how to use it, the slides and worksheets provided. I also really like the weekly PD offered to teachers to help along the way. Most of my teachers who teach summer school end up incorporating some of what they learn from the NSSI program in the fall."