Hasbro summer initiative sees reading, math gains

HEAD START: From left: Jarilyn Lizana, Taina Polanco and Anthony Maione,  president and CEO of United Way of Rhode Island. The students are participating in the Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative at the Sophia Academy in Providence. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
HEAD START: From left: Jarilyn Lizana, Taina Polanco and Anthony Maione, president and CEO of United Way of Rhode Island. The students are participating in the Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative at the Sophia Academy in Providence. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

When evaluated by metrics and by standing in a national competition, students who’ve been participating in the Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative have been found to be making critical gains in literacy and math.
There’s another, more telling measure, however: the voices of the students involved.
Jaden Hernandez, 10, of Providence, who is entering fifth grade at Sophia Academy this fall, has been participating in YWCA Rosie’s Girls, a program that the YWCA of Rhode Island runs and that the initiative has helped fund. The program focuses on exposing girls in grades 5-8 to nontraditional technical careers and building confidence, said Meghan Grady, the YWCA’s chief operating officer.
“The most fun I have is construction, because I didn’t know how to use tools and I like using them,” Hernandez said. “We use measuring tapes to measure where screws go and build benches and stuff you can use. I think every kid should have a chance to come here. If I didn’t come here, I would have been home bored, watching TV.”
Added Grady: “Jaden had done a great job as a participant in the Rosie program. Since the first day, we’ve seen her confidence increase. We’ve seen her grow as a young woman, and we’re excited to see she can consider careers she might not have considered.”
In its third year and newly expanded to 17 sites in 12 communities, the Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative supports experiential learning with a wide variety of partners, including Rosie’s Girls, Save The Bay, Boys & Girls Clubs and participating school districts, to teach math and language skills so that learning isn’t lost during the summer months.
Summer-learning loss is a known phenomenon that organizers are seeking to counter, said Anthony Maione, president and CEO of United Way of Rhode Island, and Karen Davis, vice president of community relations for Hasbro Inc. in Pawtucket. Hasbro introduced a service-learning component as well, they said.
“Many summer-learning programs are for the kids who have failed,” said Maione. “This program is open to any child who wants to participate, and we think that is a plus. They are not being singled out; they are being invited in to participate in something engaging.”
The Family Foundation also provides some funding, said Joseph Morra, a project manager for quality initiatives at the Rhode Island Afterschool Plus Alliance. “We provide [and administer] the bulk of the funding, which is awarded to sites to add to their funding,” said Davis. “[During] summers, kids lose three months worth of learning, and that’s particularly true in financially stressed populations. We not only want to stop that loss, but come into the new school year with gains.”
For the past two fiscal years, the programming also has been awarded $250,000 annually in funding from the state legislature, Morra said. That will continue through fiscal 2014-15. Combined, the United Way, Hasbro and the Family Foundation contribute more than $300,000 a year on top of that, he added.
Kids from kindergarten through high school participate in learning seven hours a day, five days a week, for six weeks. The programs run primarily from July through August, though a few start earlier, said Morra and Adam Greenman, executive vice president for community investment at United Way.
The initiative’s success is quantifiable, said Maione and Greenman.
For the summer of 2013, when there were 16 different sites available to students around the state, from Woonsocket to Westerly, results demonstrated on average a 32 percent gain in literacy and a 27 percent gain in math for 1,225 students. The figures are based on testing performed before and after programming by Mark Motte, a professor at Rhode Island College, said Morra.
The areas measured are grounded in Common Core standards and include comprehension through verbal expression, real-world comparisons of studied topics, the formatting of numeric data and other mathematical analysis. Some sites had more gains than others, he said.
The program’s success has led to expansion into North Providence and Warwick, organizers said.
Most of the programming is free, though some charge a small fee on a sliding scale, Greenman said.
“No child is turned away because they can’t afford it, but for those who can it varies by program,” he explained. “Conditions vary by community and range from $5 a week to $40 a week, [but] few pay the high-end [fees].”
Innovative teaching methods abound, Maione says. At the Pawtucket Boys & Girls Club, for instance, teachers are having students make smoothies, compute ratios for how much fruit, ice and milk goes into a drink, then poll their peers and figure percentages on which flavors were the most popular, he said. In the Westerly school district, kids are riding a Save The Bay research vessel, hauling up buckets of water and testing water temperatures, as well as examining marine-life samples under a microscope while on the boat, said Donna Nabb, director of the summer-learning program in Westerly and family-education coordinator for the public schools there.
Forty-seven students participating this summer also took fruit labels from foreign countries and crafted a chart based on how many miles plums from Argentina and other produce traveled, Nabb said. Another project involves cooking and recipe building, she said.
“We have a lot of children who are at risk for summer-learning loss, with lower literacy,” she said.
“Instead of just sitting at a desk, which is a real struggle for some students … they’re weighing tomatoes, measuring sunflowers and cooking. They’ve made sushi, stir fry, homemade mozzarella. There’s something going on all the time,” she said.
The Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative also was one of eight finalists out of 62 applications for three $10,000 prizes, based on last summer’s progress, said Monica Logan, vice president of program quality for the National Summer Learning Association in Baltimore, Md. The initiative did not win this past year, but with its developing track record, could be a contender in future years, Logan said.
The Rhode Island programming served slightly fewer than 1,600 students this summer, said Greenman and Morra.
“The size of the program and implementing quality at that level is really commendable,” said Logan, referring to what led to the initiative’s ranking as a finalist. “It’s a different type of challenge than a program at one location. ”
The extensive partnering, not only with established programs and school systems but with some universities and colleges that introduce students to potential college careers, also is an indicator of the initiative’s strengths, Logan said.
“What we also value at NSLA [is], we have standards and indicators for success. One is having an intentional approach to learning. We found they use a very intentional and energetic approach,” she added. •

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