To support the work of the Vice President of NYC Program Implementation responsible for overseeing model implementation in NYC as well as program design and implementation, building and managing relationships with school partners, and supervising instructional coaches who work with teaching teams to help them shift teacher practices and mindsets, particularly as students and teachers adjust to a virtual (out-of-school) setting. They quickly shifted to a fully remote training and coaching model when the pandemic closed all schools as of mid-March, 2020. They seek to reach 1,200 students through 5 NYC school-based partnerships during the year ahead, offering high dosage coaching to co-teaching pairs, and to another 1,000 students through lighter dosage coaching focused upon key aspects of their model. Their model promotes inclusive, collaborative, and data-driven learning environments. Blue Engine trains and coaches co-teaching teams to develop the skills and expertise that are necessary to achieve meaningful relationships, promote a learning culture of high expectations, and, ultimately, thereby achieve higher gains in academic achievement among their students.

For continued support of the Director of Career Connections who leads a team seeking to increase their capacity to form hiring partnerships with companies, develop professional networks that their students can tap into, and support alumni through the job search process as they graduate. The Director will lead their team in rapidly expanding the internship opportunities they make available to their students via their partners; deepening the mentorship opportunities they secure for their students via their Career Champions and Go Far Volunteers initiatives; and ramping up the breadth of networking and skill-development opportunities they provide their students through their career events. Through all of these efforts, they believe they can make significant strides towards ensuring that all of their students have access to the work experiences and relationship capital they need to successfully transition to the workforce and fully capitalize on their college degrees.

For continued support of the Alumni Success Director who is responsible for seeing that their high school’s graduates: matriculate into their “best-fit” colleges and postsecondary institutions; persevere through a myriad of challenges – including the COVID-19 pandemic; and successfully persist and graduate. First-generation students, as many of their scholars are, often require additional guidance to navigate the obstacles involved with maintaining their financial aid and scholarship compliance, housing, academics, and managing time and relationships. The Director oversees all college matriculation and persistence efforts for their alumni, and in close coordination with the Alumni Success Manager, will stay in touch with their college students, track their progress, and offer academic, emotional, and financial advising and support, providing both immediate and long-term guidance that will increase the Charter School’s graduates’ ultimate college graduation rates. Coney Island Prep is a rigorous college-preparatory charter school located in the Coney Island community of Brooklyn that serves over 1,000 students in grades K-12.

To support the Director, College and Career Access & Success who will be responsible for managing a team that provides students with the resources and support they need to be college- and career-ready. While they currently offer significant supports to help students prepare for, apply to, matriculate into, and graduate from college and be prepared to pursue their careers, they do not have the same supports for those students who decide not to become college-bound or do not graduate. The Director will develop new strategies to augment their career readiness support to increase their capacity to assist these students while continuing the work to prepare their students for college. East Harlem Tutorial Program serves youth in grades Pre-K-12 through afterschool and summer programs and 3 public charter schools, providing children with opportunities for academic, social and career advancement while fully engaging parents and caregivers in their children’s development.

To support a new Education Specialist who will support students in Grades K-8 enrolled in their SchoolBridge after-school and Learning Lab programs through the development of instructional programming, implementation of student assessments, and the delivery of enhanced professional development for staff. While the Education Specialist will be responsible for helping to develop literacy enrichment activities across all grade levels, a targeted assessment and intervention program will be piloted to improve students’ literacy skills in Grades K-3. Overall, the work of the Education Specialist will provide consistent support to their SchoolBridge participants who need additional assistance to reach broader markers of academic success, including performing well on Math and English Language Arts exams, and advancing to (and being prepared for) the next grade level on time. Hudson Guild is a settlement house that provides comprehensive programs and services to families in the Chelsea neighborhood and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, many of whom reside in public housing.

To support the new Associate Director of New Teacher Development who will assist the Director in the expansion of their Teacher in Residence program to all 14 KIPP schools in Newark, NJ. Building excellent teaching skills is a developmental process, and new teachers need different supports through their first and second years to help them reach the levels of instructional proficiency that KIPP seeks so as to better ensure that their students are successful. The program helps aspiring teachers to get hands-on experience and the certifications that they need to become excellent teachers, fusing theory and practice as they work alongside experienced teachers in the classroom while earning their teaching certification. The goals are to formalize and standardize their new teacher recruiting and development processes across their network, provide new teachers with the programming necessary to become lead teachers within one year, and reduce the pressure on their recruiting team to only hire experienced teachers. Ensuring that every classroom has a great teacher is critical to their achieving consistent and high levels of academic performance across their schools and to closing the achievement gap.

To support the Managing Director of Academics K-8 who is responsible for the effective development, implementation, and execution of their instructional vision to better ensure Grades K-8 student growth and achievement. The Managing Director also oversees teacher development across all 15 KIPP NYC schools – 7 elementary schools, feeding 7 middle schools, feeding the KIPP NYC College Prep High School. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they implemented and trained staff and families on using new learning platforms (such as Google Classrooms and Zoom), and acclimated their families to remote learning, making sure they had access to technology and curriculum materials to ensure the best educational experiences for their children. This staff position is critical to their ability to continue to build, enhance, and maintain their remote learning platform which impacts over 6,400 KIPP NYC students. KIPP NYC is part of a national network of exemplary college-preparatory public charter schools which prepare students in underserved communities for success in college and in life.

Towards their Teen Campus programs which will run daily after school and during the summer, both in-person and virtually. The teen population is a major focus for Madison Square because adolescence is such a pivotal time in a young person’s life, when even small good or bad decisions can have big consequences. With education at the forefront of their mission, the programs will be focused upon preparing teens for high school graduation and college matriculation, in addition to helping them build critical leadership, social, emotional, and career skills. Their goal is to serve 625 teens across all 5 club sites through these programs. Madison Square Boys & Girls Club serves children and teens in some of New York City’s most neglected neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx by providing comprehensive afterschool and summer programs.

To iterate and refine their postsecondary advising model and develop new programming to meet the immediate and emerging needs of schools and students as they navigate a college and/or career path which has been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. The model aims to de-silo the postsecondary planning process and ensure all graduating seniors have a clear and supported postsecondary transition plan by standardizing the approach to postsecondary advising. Using the New Visions Portal, their graduation and postsecondary planning tool which provides student data (including progress to graduation), counselors track the postsecondary decision-making process to ensure that no student falls through the cracks and that every student is prepared to pursue the next path of their choice, whether college or career. With significant academic disruption for graduating and rising high school seniors, it is more important than ever that schools provide high-quality postsecondary advising support to help students navigate a college and/or career path that has been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. New Visions for Public Schools serves as a laboratory of innovation within NYC’s public-school reform efforts, creating and refining helpful new approaches to systemic challenges.

To help support staffing, including teachers and a full-time social worker, at the Oasis After-School Academy. The students’ need for enhanced academic and psychosocial support has greatly increased due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – especially for their more economically disadvantaged youths. Many children have lost months of previous academic gains, and are at a heightened risk for anxiety, loneliness, and behavioral and emotional problems. The Academy’s after-school program provides helpful remedial academic assistance, and social-emotional support, to low-income children whose needs are not being fully met by the public-school system during the daytime. They will serve a limited number of students onsite as well as offer a virtual component, enabling them to thereby reach more children. Located in Paterson, NJ, Oasis seeks to offer a holistic pathway out of poverty through educational and vocational training programs. It assists women to enter and better succeed in the workforce, and it helps children to better flourish academically – and to stay in school. They serve some 1,000 women and children annually.

To support the Program Manager for their Teacher Led Programs (“TLP”) in NYC, through which classroom teachers in under-resourced high schools are trained to deliver their Web Development curriculum so they can better teach their students the fundamentals of coding, a cutting-edge computer skill. In the TLP model, Code Nation provides ongoing, in-person training to classroom teachers who teach their Intro to Web Development curriculum. They provide classroom teachers with: a full curriculum including lesson plans, guided notes, activities, and homework; weekly check-ins with a Code Nation Program Manager; biweekly classroom observations; weekly volunteer support; and field trips to tech companies. A cohort of 6-8 volunteers will commit to coming to classes on a bimonthly basis. They will alternate so that there will be a volunteer in the classroom every week to provide feedback and guidance on technical projects, and to form personal relationships and a link to the tech industry. Code Nation equips students in under-resourced schools with the fundamental coding skills and professional experiences that together better create access to careers in technology.

To support the Manager of Data and Evaluation for SEO High School Scholars, a position which is important to their expansion efforts in New York City. The Manager will: lead all data analysis, reporting, internal research, and evaluation efforts; define program-wide policies and procedures around database design; and better ensure consistent, efficient, and accurate data management across the program. The Manager will also work with various teams to define research questions, design evaluative processes, and perform data analyses, and make recommendations on follow-up steps and future directions. SEO works to create a more equitable society by closing the academic and career opportunity gaps for motivated young people living in underserved and/or underrepresented communities. Through their 5 distinct programs including SEO Scholars, SEO currently serves more than 2,000 high school and college students.

To support their Managing Director of Program Continuum who will create a comprehensive arc of support and professional development reaching their staff, their corps members, their alumni, and the communities they serve. The Director will oversee the region’s specialized learning and training opportunities for staff and alumni facilitators, and collaborate with regional and national staff to determine the best courses of action to generate transformational leadership and learning experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. Through this effort, they will create a continuum of meaningful support for teachers, alumni, external partners, and their own staff, bringing TFA closer to ensuring that one day, all children will have access to a quality education. TFA-NJ is an affiliate of Teach For America, a national teacher corps that finds, develops, and supports a diverse network of educational leaders.

To support the new Director, Program Design & Implementation who will lead their work in adapting and designing their corps member leadership development programming to successfully help set the stage for their students’ dramatic learning this year, no matter what the learning format. This position works in partnership with key internal and external stakeholders to build cohesive, year-round programming that is responsive to the emerging needs of their students. The key goals are to: design and execute leadership development programming for corps members during their two-year commitment; create and deliver training programming, tools and learning experiences for the staff to effectively deliver their corps members’ leadership development curriculum; and partner with internal and external stakeholders to secure strong, cohesive, and innovative learning opportunities for their corps members’ leadership development.

To support the development of Jumpstart: Foundations to Early Reading Success, an offering focused on phonics to address the needs of Kindergarten and First Grade students struggling to read post-pandemic. The program develops teachers’ key instructional competencies so that they can better rise to the challenge of closing the reading gap by the end of Grade 2. It was created specifically: (1) for schools that require immediate support addressing reading challenges in Grades K and 1; and (2) to serve as an onramp to Early Reading Matters, their signature reading program, which is substantially impacting the reading outcomes for children by the end of Grade 2. It will: help Grade K-1 teams improve procedures and assessments that monitor students’ phonics progress (letter identification, letter sounds, and concepts of print); and better ensure that 70% of students move from “pre-readers” to “beginning readers” by the end of the program intervention. The grant will help Teaching Matters to reach approximately 100 students identified as “persistently struggling” readers in at least three NYC schools as part of their larger initiative to reach 3,000 students in 80 New York City schools next year. Teaching Matters works to increase teacher effectiveness, one of the most critical factors regarding student success, by transforming how educators work together at urban public schools, helping the most effective teachers to develop the necessary skills to then lead their peers and drive school-wide improvement.

To support the Director of Student and Family Services and the increase in service delivery to families and students who are coping with remote learning, social-emotional challenges, and basic needs hardships as a result of COVID-19. The Director oversees the GO Families team, including: 6 Success Coaches (who are trained social workers) who will provide ongoing high-touch case management services to families and develop holistic Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) programming; 1 Coordinator of Student and Family Services; and 3 Family Engagement Associates who will provide multi-lingual connections to families in crisis and serve as a critical resource by better connecting families to their public schools and the Department of Education’s plans for remote and hybrid (partly-remote, and partly in-school) instruction. By creating a holistic team collaborative that leverages community resources, GO will thus continue to increase parent engagement rates, strengthen student transitions into the 6th and 9th grades, implement high-touch case management that is more responsive to student and family needs, and positively impact upon student academic and behavioral growth. The GO Project provides year-round educational and family support services to 720 academically struggling public school children in grades K-8 in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.