Get Ready for Summer Series

Join the National Summer Learning Association Summer Bootcamp to gain tools and best practices to help youth thrive. Anyone who cares about summer learning is welcome! Leaders from schools, community-based programs, camps, libraries, outdoor education programs, and more. If you are working with youth during the summer months, you will benefit from these ideas and strategies.

Day 1 — March 30

Session 1: 1 p.m. — 2 p.m.

We’ll explore the research and data telling us the current state of the academic, mental, and physical well-being of children and families. With the data in hand, we’ll consider how to create strategies that meet this moment in time and help young people thrive.

Session 2: 2 p.m. — 3 p.m.

What’s known is that we need to think creatively and plan strategically to find and retain excellent staff that knows how to build relationships with young people. In this session, we’ll share tools and strategies to develop a strong workforce ready to make a difference this summer.

Day 2 — March 31

Session 1: 1 p.m. — 2 p.m.

Let’s explore how to access the investments and ensure impact. We’ll consider how to leverage partnerships across sectors, including schools, community-based organizations, business and more to make the most of the investment of public funding.

Session 2: 2 p.m. — 3 p.m.

In this session, we’ll dive into programs that have proven strategies, tools and courses that can be applied in your summer learning program. We’ll talk about how to access and apply learning strategies that ensure children and youth enjoy their summer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts and died from a lung disease on April 27, 1882. Although he was in poor health for most of his adult life, he still created numerous literary works which he later turned into essays. One of his greatest and most influential works was an essay called “Nature”. He also wrote poetry and was a well-known poet in America.

Emerson was a well-educated individual, but some of his ideas were considered to be quite radical (激进的) at the time. In September 1836, Emerson founded the Transcendental Club. He believed in things like self-reliance and individualism. These things were very hard for people to understand at the time. But for Emerson, it was simply an extension of the bigger picture. He had always challenged long-standing beliefs about everything and had always been a front runner when it came to change.

Besides “Nature”, he wrote essays such as “Self-Reliance” and “Circles”. He finished these works by writing as lectures. He was a skilled public speaker, so he would prepare these more like speeches and later edited them to make them read better for the general public. During his early career, he spent most of his time writing essays. But as his health declined, he was forced to change his lifestyle, and began writing some poetry.

Many of his essays and poetry are still popular today, which proves his success as a writer as well as a philosophical thinker. As a result, his works have become something that almost everyone has to read. In reality, he was a progressive thinker that led a number of people into a completely different way of thinking during the 19th century. He just happened to be a gifted writer and put many of his thoughts down on paper so people can still read them today.

When you were at school, were you ever told to stop daydreaming and concentrate? It was easy for your mind to wander if you weren’t interested in what you were learning or if you had better things to think about. Staying focused can still be a challenge in adult life, but understanding how to do it, and knowing what is distracting you, can help.

Scientists have looked at what makes us delay and found a number of ways to help us stay in the zone. One of the most obvious things is eliminating noise. Research by Science Focus magazine found silence is best for concentration, or a gentle background hum and coffee shop noise is great! It also found turning off notifications on your phone, or switching it off altogether, removes a major distraction and helps us focus on the task at hand.

Another possible cure for a short attention span is brain training. Psychologists and neuroscientists are increasingly interested in our ability to settle down and have looked at what we can change inside our head to make us concentrate. An article for BBC Future by Caroline Williams says that “Attention Researcher Nilli Lavie of University College London has found that making a task more visually demanding takes up more processing power and leaves the brain nothing left to process distractions.” So, keeping your mind busy might be the answer.

There are more practical tips to keeping your mind focused. These include making a list or timetable of the tasks you have to do, finding a workspace where you’re not tempted to do other things, or chewing some gum! It’s possible the movement in your mouth occupies parts of the brain that might otherwise get distracted.

But according to Science Focus magazine, distraction isn’t all bad. “If we were always so focused that we never got distracted, we’d miss potential changes, such as threats, in our environment. Distraction is vital for survival.”

For the majority of people, watching movies is their favorite pastime. Even for the deaf, subtitles make it possible for them to enjoy movies. But what about deaf children who can’t read yet, or whose reading isn’t fast enough to keep up with subtitles?

Mariella Satow, 17, a senior student, ran into these questions and spent over a year developing SignUp to solve them. SignUp, launched in August, is a free-of-charge Google Chrome Extension that provides American Sign Language (ASL) captioning over videos on streaming service Disney Plus. It puts a small box with a sign language interpreter in the corner of the screen while the movie plays.

Satow has been stuck in New York, US, since March 2020 because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Satow decided to learn a new language, specifically ASL. “Normally, I learn languages by watching television shows with captions, but I found nothing similar for ASL,” Satow said in her profile on SignUp’s website.

Realizing that some deaf children would come across the problem, Satow took action. Using her $ 3, 000, she made from part-time job during the pandemic, Satow employed an India-based company Softpulse Infotech to help her devise a coding system that could overlay ASL interpretation on streaming platforms. As of Nov 12, the extension has provided on-screen ASL interpretation for nine movies such as Moana. Satow has received positive reactions from parents and teachers.

“We watched Moana. My 6-year-old daughter’s smile face was priceless. She loved it. It was the first time she’s had full access to a movie. Thank you!” a user commented below on SigmUp’s Twitter account. Satow also revealed that some teachers would use the extension in their classrooms and arrange movie nights for their students.

“My hope is we’ll have a lot more movies interpreted,” she said. “I’m hoping to expand to a more adult audience and to other countries to make it as big as possible.” “We are very proud of her drive, vision and most importantly her commitment to service,” said Gareth, head of Rugby School.