Our Academic Coach for Lana’s HIT program, Jenna, outlines the benefits of academic coaching in summer school programs.
This summer, we are continuing to implement High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) programming at Theodore Roosevelt High School. Due to maintenance work, we have moved to McFarland Middle School, but we are still working with Roosevelt High School students. We are continuing to dedicate time to both Algebra and ELA students.
The summer school cohort began on July 1st, and we will be working with students up until our grant end date of July 31st. So far, we have 100% attendance for both Math and ELA students that are on our roster for programming.
ELA students are working through 6 different writing assignments that focus on poems and short stories that were read over the school year. Students need to complete all 6 assignments for a passing grade in summer school, and to receive their credit recovery.
Algebra students are working through graphing equations. As they are working through their worksheet packets, we have used hands-on materials (such as a floor size graph) for students to visualize these Algebra problems.
The summer sessions have also been a great opportunity for students to not only have an opportunity for credit recovery, but HIT sessions have allowed for personalized academic sessions that are valuable to students.
Some ways in which academic coaching is valuable to students in the summer school setting are:
Remediation: Students who struggled with certain subjects during the regular school year can use summer school to catch up and strengthen their understanding. In small group sessions, or 1:1 students are able to have an individualized approach to content they struggled with during the school year.
Credit Recovery: Students who failed a course have the opportunity to retake it and earn the necessary credits to stay on track for graduation.
Skill Retention: Attending summer school helps prevent the “summer slide,” where students forget important information over the long break.
Accelerated Learning: Students can get ahead by taking advanced courses or fulfilling prerequisites, potentially allowing them to take more advanced or diverse courses during the regular school year. HIT sessions can also provide these accelerated learning spaces that continue to allow for students to be challenged in a healthy way in the classroom.
Focused Learning Environment: Smaller class sizes and a more relaxed atmosphere can provide a better learning environment, with more personalized attention from teachers and academic coaches.
We are eager to continue the summer school programming with Roosevelt students, and excited to see the progress our students will make by the end of the month.