# data[].attributes.headline
Ideas for Lesson Design, Assessment, Inclusivity & Relationship Building

# data[].attributes.subject
Ideas for Lesson Design, Assessment, Inclusivity & Relationship Building

# data[].attributes.body
This blog offers ideas to consider for implementing during summer school and the fall.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
No More Easy Button: A Suggested Approach to Post-Pandemic Teaching | Cult of Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
With this fresh start, let’s take the wisdom we’ve gained over the last year and use it. Let’s not go back to the way things used to be.

# data[].attributes.headline
Ideas for using online formats strategically

# data[].attributes.subject
Ideas for using online formats strategically

# data[].attributes.body
This article offers a variety of ideas for using online platforms for coursework or activities to enhance student access or opportunities for learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This story is part of a group of stories called

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education.

A year ago, as the country was thrust into remote schooling, I found myself thrown unwittingly - and uncomfortably - into the role of "expert." For the past decade, I've been a champion of online learning as I taught in and led online schools. And yet, while I worked around the clock offering webinars to teachers about the possibility of community online, I was struggling.

Once, as I wrapped up a television appearance exuding optimism about remote school, my then almost one-year-old climbed onto my lap for a virtual "baby and me" and promptly unplugged the monitor. The next room over, my then 3-year-old fumbled with the mute button in her newly virtual preschool.

The truth is, this past year was an educational disaster, marked by learning loss and wild inequity. Schooling in America was never meant to be online for all, with little training or preparation for educators.

Like so many parents, I rejoice that more and more schools are opening for in-person instruction. Children need their schools, and working parents need our children out of the home. No online learning evangelist should suggest this was an experiment worth having.

Let's not make it worthless, either.

When I first started in this field, much online learning was self paced, featuring uninspired message boards and video-on-demand. An online learning skeptic myself, I questioned whether community could exist online, but I figured I'd test that assumption by running student life at Stanford Online High School - a role many thought was actually a joke.

In that role, I saw that we could build community intentionally. Many students from around the world thrived in virtual debate clubs, assemblies, and even movie nights that accompanied their real-time academic seminars. What I learned is that online learning is not for everyone, but it is fantastic for some.

Over the course of 2020 and into 2021, I have worked with well over a thousand teachers across the country and the world looking to sharpen their skills teaching online. They saw a rise in student stress, disconnection, isolation, and mental health challenges among students learning online. Amid their frustration, they also reported that introverted students were suddenly their strongest class participants. First-person reports from teachers and families alike point to benefits of online instruction for some Black students and students with ADHD.

Clearly, online learning works best when students and families have chosen it to meet their specific needs. Done well, and especially in cases where families can opt in, online learning can mean connection and expansion of opportunity. I'm thrilled to hear that, according to a Rand Corporation survey, about one in five American public school districts is somewhere on the path toward launching a virtual schooling option after the pandemic.

For most students, though, the more appropriate role for online learning is providing targeted experiences that meet their specific needs.

In the program I now lead, the Malone Schools Online Network, students log in from their own school buildings to join live, online seminars to study subjects not offered at their high schools, like LGBTQ literature, medical bioethics, or Arabic.

I work with brick and mortar independent schools, where resources are often abundant, but we don't need abundance to do online schooling well. Online education can help schools share resources efficiently, offering courses or services they could not otherwise provide. Imagine a world in which all students could access high-quality online education to meet a particular interest or need - but also socialize in-person with other children or connect from a physical classroom, eliminating some of the darkest moments of "Zoom school" this year.

Set up that way, online learning can breed democracy and help students develop their own identities. I have seen students benefit from being "in class," sometimes for the first time, with someone from a wildly different place - literally and metaphorically. Especially in more homogenous schools, online learning expands horizons for students and broadens our notion of community.

Just as students encounter differences online, so too do they sometimes meet the first classmate who has ever shared an aspect of their identity. I have seen an aspiring computer scientist encounter her first female STEM teacher, and a young woman typically known as a "math girl" in her school blossom in a language class with peers from other schools who did not know her reputation.

So how do we get there? It will take some collaboration, and a willingness to accept two realities at once: that much of this year's online learning was painful and ineffective, and that we may be better equipped than ever to use online learning to reach some students who would benefit from it.

With so many classrooms already set up for hybrid learning, schools could find one talented teacher able to work virtually with students from another, less-resourced school. Amid the calls for tutoring to help fill education gaps, let's follow the lead of some students and districts to create small-group tutoring online with the right teacher for those students, no matter their location. Or picture this: two teachers of the same course, in the same state, following the same standards, could co-teach, bringing together a rural and an urban classroom.

This spring, pulling up in a preschool carpool line, unbuckling car seat straps, and entrusting my children to their teachers felt like a dream come true. I know millions of parents feel the same way. I will never again take for granted sending my children to a school building; I feel privileged and grateful every day I can.
Claire P. Goldsmith is executive director of the Malone Schools Online Network, a national online learning consortium.
But I'm still more excited than ever about the emerging power and possibility of the virtual schoolhouse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's been a year of Zoom and gloom. Here's how we can build something better.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education. A year ago, as the country was thrust into remote schooling, I found myself thrown unwittingly - and uncomfortably - into the role of "expert."

# data[].attributes.headline
have students attend live set them up with edmentum courses and they will have one teacher to help with the courses for a full day and have content teachers for the edmentum for two hours a day and they are fully remote

# data[].attributes.subject
have students attend live set them up with edmentum courses and they will have one teacher to help with the courses for a full day and have content teachers for the edmentum for two hours a day and they are fully remote

# data[].attributes.headline
Academics in the morning, Community work at the end

# data[].attributes.subject
Academics in the morning, Community work at the end

# data[].attributes.headline
2 week splits w flexibility for early finishers

# data[].attributes.subject
2 week splits w flexibility for early finishers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Resolving NX Grades from Spring 2020 (10/1/20)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Recovery for All of Us Arts Education1.pdf

# data[].attributes.body
Advisory period is offered at least 3 x a week, early in the day on Mondays & Fridays and mid-day on Wednesdays.

# data[].attributes.headline
Revolution School: When "Reimagining School" Actually Happens

# data[].attributes.subject
Revolution School: When "Reimagining School" Actually Happens

# data[].attributes.body
Several ideas that might be worth exploring in Summer 2021 are listed here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to my interview with Henry Fairfax, Mike Pardee, and Jane Shore (transcript):
Sponsored by Today by Studyo and Parlay

In almost every conversation I have with another educator -as long as we have the luxury of time to let our thoughts wander around some-we end up at a place where we start to fantasize. In talking about problems and challenges of teaching, or of school in general, one of us will say something like, "If only we had more time in the day with students," or "Wouldn't it be great if students could just work on big, long-term projects that really meant something to them?" or "I would love to get students out in the community, solving real problems and making a real impact."

Usually, the fantasy dissolves after a few seconds, when the dreamer remembers the limitations placed on them by standardized tests, lockstep schedules, pacing guides, and grading expectations, a set of constraints that all fall under the umbrella of The Way We've Always Done Things. Most people locked in these systems have dreams of how things could get better, but they have no idea where to start.

Some teachers figure it out by building a school-within-a-school, like the three who started the Apollo School, a three-hour interdisciplinary program at a high school in York, Pennsylvania. Others do it within a single class period, like Indiana teacher Don Wettrick did with his innovation class.

Other people go even further and start from scratch, building a whole new school with the fantasy at the center, rather than forcing the fantasy to work around existing limitations. Today we'll be looking at a school like that: Philadelphia's Revolution School. Currently nearing the end of its second school year, this high school is the end product of a group of brave, forward-thinking educators who saw what education could be, and instead of trying to work within the system, asked themselves, "Why don't we just build it?"

Head of School Henry Fairfax welcomes students to Revolution.

To learn more about Revolution I interviewed three people: Henry Fairfax, who is Revolution's Head of School, Jane Shore, their Head of Research and Innovation, and Mike Pardee, one of Revolution's Master Educators. You can listen to our whole conversation above, or stay here for an overview.

One last thing: I realize that almost everyone reading this is in a situation where they can't necessarily replicate what this school is doing. It would be understandable if you learned about Revolution and thought, W ell that sounds great, but it's basically impossible in my district. I'm spotlighting this school because I want you to start thinking about ways you could do something kind of like this, how you might be able to reconfigure some part of your school day, collaborate with other teachers, reach out for community partnerships, or at the very least brainstorm some possibilities. This exact thing may not be doable in your school-at least maybe not in the near future. But it might take shape as an elective, a two-hour combined class, a special program within your school, or even a summer program you might launch together with a few other teachers, as Mike Pardee puts it, a group of "crazy innovative people who are willing to take such a leap."

My hope is to get you thinking about what your leap might look like.

How Revolution School Works

The Basics

Revolution School is a private high school in Philadelphia with a current student population of 17 students. They started their first year (2019-2020) with only ninth graders, then added a new freshman class for the current school year (2020-2021). Although Revolution is its own program, they share a building with Community Partnership School, which serves students in kindergarten through 5th grade. Tuition is charged on a sliding scale based on each family's ability to pay. The remaining funds come from grants.

Curriculum

Learning at Revolution is built around inquiry lanes, interdisciplinary study pathways that focus on big questions like these:

What's Driving What? How do public decisions around transportation impact access to educational and economic opportunities?

Neighborhoods in Transition: What defines a neighborhood? How do stories give us a lens into neighborhoods? How can public artwork and public service promote community empowerment and instill pride of place?

WaterWays: How has Philadelphia's location at the confluence of two rivers provided both opportunity and challenge to its residents?

As part of a food production project, Maria and her fellow students took a trip to Greensgrow Farms to prepare to build their own hanging gardens at school.

Each semester, students choose two interdisciplinary projects in these lanes, with one full day per week devoted to each one. These flexible blocks of time allow students to focus deeply on their work, collaborate with others, travel off-campus for research, and "learn to organize (their) time without shifting focus at predetermined intervals."

Students spend the remaining hours in writing and math labs, reading, doing personal development work in Advisory periods, and participating in Mastery Workshops, where they work to refine their skills in specific areas, such as performance or design, alongside skilled artists and practitioners from the city of Philadelphia.

The chart below shows a typical week's schedule at Revolution, with two large blocks of time set aside for inquiry projects (an interactive version of the chart can be found here). Note that the top and bottom row are duplicates: Students choose between an 8am-3pm schedule, or a 9am-4pm schedule.

Click image for larger view.

Assessment happens through multiple pathways. Students also give end-of-semester "Presentations of Learning," where they share what they've learned and support it with various artifacts as evidence. Revolution does give grades, but they don't arrive at them in a traditional way. Here's how they describe their approach on the website: "Our goal is not to hand out letters or gold stars, but to help you go from good to better to best. Our focus is on growth, not grades. Revolution School teachers will never use low grades to pressure you into achieving. Instead, they'll look at your progress over time. Students who need a bit more time to gain certain skills will receive a 'not yet,' then work with teachers to take concrete steps toward achieving mastery in that area."

Tasneem edits her podcast at PhillyCAM, who collaborated with Revolution students on their mural project podcasts.

And what about standards? Does Revolution hold itself accountable for meeting any kind of defined academic standards? Because they are a private school, they are not legally required to document this kind of alignment, but that doesn't mean rigorous academic work isn't happening.

"We have a slightly different approach to pedagogy and curriculum than state standards necessarily often entail," Pardee says. "It's a work of art to build the bridges between what was and what will be."

Still, as they craft their vision, "We don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater," Pardee says. "It matters to us that we deliver academically enriched curricular education that prepares kids for college or whatever beyond, but we want to do it in ways that leverage their passions and interests and connect with them in ways that I no longer found most conventional educational approaches doing."

Journey and Sodd practice bandaging a bleeding wound as part of getting their CPR and First Aid certification.

Community Partnerships

From its inception, Revolution's founders wanted the school to be firmly embedded in the community, so they work hard to make sure community partnerships are an integral part of the learning.

"We really see the city of Philadelphia as an extension of our classroom," says Shore. "In the development of the school, we began to look at the assets of our city and plan around a systems thinking approach to education. So our school is all about co-creation with students and also co-creation with the community."

In their weekly Culinary Café class, Simon and Gabe prepare fruit custard tarts, a favorite with the students.

The partnerships are formed with an incredibly diverse group of individuals and organizations, including journalists, small businesses, charities, media and tech companies, and artists, to name just a few. And these are real relationships: The partners get to know the students and invest time in their growth, and in return student work often enriches and improves the community.

"Our partners do more than give tours and guest lectures," reads the partnerships page on Revolution's website. "They sit in on student Presentations of Learning and become active mentors in our students' lives. Some work actively alongside faculty to build out rich Project Inquiry Lanes that have real relevance in our community. Others are instrumental in our wellness program, using their expertise in food, health, and physical fitness to help our students make informed choices around personal well-being."

School of Thought: Revolution's Online Community

So much of the work at Revolution happens in real time and (before and after COVID) in person, so part of the school's architecture needed to include an online space for exploring ideas and having important conversations. To meet that need, School of Thought was launched.

The weekly blog and newsletter serve as ways to gather all interested parties-from inside and outside of Philadelphia-in conversation around the work Revolution is doing.

"We see the School of Thought as an extension of the school to both fuel the school with the learning that's taking place outside and also to fuel a learning community of people who are out there answering questions and building community around change in education," Shore explains.

Adjusting to COVID

Revolution's inaugural year began in September of 2019, so they only had a few months behind them before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the world shut down in March 2020. Suddenly the school, which was created to allow maximum engagement with the community, was cut off from its most important resource.

Community partners, who would normally engage with students in person, met with them over Zoom instead.

Instead of letting this new set of circumstances crush them, Revolution regrouped, found ways to accomplish their mission through virtual means, and reframed the way they looked at the problem.

"You have to change your lens and say, okay, where are the opportunities in this moment?" Fairfax says. "One way of looking at challenges is to say 'how are we going to get through it?' and the other is to say 'What opportunities can we unpack?'"

Could this work in your district?

One big reason Revolution works so well is that they were able to start from scratch, in a private setting, with a small group of students. They didn't have to build it within an established system or push back against any existing limitations.

But that doesn't mean you couldn't create something similar where you are, building a program that preserves the ingredients of co-creation, community partnerships, flexible scheduling, and an emphasis on inquiry and personal development. It might not look exactly the same, but it could accomplish a lot of the same goals.

What advice do the Revolution folks have for people who want to create a similar program in their own districts?

The first piece of advice is to find like-minded people to join you. "You need a team," Pardee says. "The trans-disciplinary and co-creating and collaborative aspects of this are built into the DNA. They're dealbreakers if you don't have them."

Along with a team, you need to establish time and space to work with them. "We are in a much more labor-intensive faculty culture here," Pardee explains. "We do a lot more planning among and between teachers than I think is typical in many schools where they just shut the door and the teacher just does his or her thing. In order to realize this vision more fully, you kind of need a more micro-schoolish approach, some collaboration and synergy and symbiosis among some group of crazy innovative people who are willing to take such a leap."

The basic building blocks of Revolution School-inquiry-based learning, community partnerships, co-creation with students, and flexible scheduling-are available to anyone who believes in them enough to bring them to life in some form in their own district. Maybe you're already doing something like this; if you are, please share with us in the comments and provide a link to your school or program. If this kind of thing is still in the "fantasy" stage for you, start building your team of crazy innovative people now, then come back later and tell us how it went.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Revolution School: When "Reimagining School" Actually Happens

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Instead of trying to create their dream school within the system, this group of brave, forward-thinking educators just built it from scratch.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NYC Summer Rising Instructional Guidance and Collaborative Planning Guide.pdf

# data[].attributes.headline
Resources from DOE Citywide Youth Focus Group

# data[].attributes.subject
Resources from DOE Citywide Youth Focus Group

# data[].attributes.body
Resources include slide deck, session recordings and note-catcher to inform your planning.

# data[].attributes.body
Offer students option to enroll in College Now summer opportunities --some options online--to earn course credits.

# data[].attributes.body
Offer 9-10 day courses in hybrid format --mix of online/in-person--to meet 45-hour threshold. Allows for students to earn up to 3 credits over six weeks by tackling one course at a time. Allows for teachers to commit to shorter two-week stints of summer school teaching to address burn-out/exhaustion from current SY20-21.

# data[].attributes.body
Deadline is coming up to indicate affiliation with host building for Summer 2021.  This is being updated daily. They just added DYCD seats

# data[].attributes.headline
Important to identify school-based coordinating team w/CBO

# data[].attributes.subject
Important to identify school-based coordinating team w/CBO

# data[].attributes.body
Internship Coordinator and/or Industry Coordinator.  Most CTE schools have someone in that role full or part time.

# data[].attributes.body
This is an interesting article on this topic:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Brooklyn high school freshman Alandinio Cineas was stumped: the algebra assignment asked him to write and graph an equation showing how many different pieces of fruit he could buy with $15.

As he worked from a quiet office at his school's Canarsie campus on a recent afternoon, he shared the problem on his computer screen with senior Chahima Dieudonne. The students were in the same room, but divided by a cubicle and logged into a virtual meeting. With masks pulled over their noses, they were close enough to hear each other speak but kept their distance to limit their chances of spreading COVID-19.

Dieudonne read the problem a few times and thought out loud, in both English and Creole. Then she and Cineas spent the next hour figuring out his math homework together.

Dieudonne is one of roughly 15 students at Brooklyn Community High School for Excellence and Equity who is paid through a school internship program to provide one-on-one peer tutoring to students like Cineas who need extra help.

After more than a year of interrupted learning, many education experts are pinning their hopes on tutoring as an answer to some of the academic challenges students are facing. At this tiny Canarsie school, known as Brooklyn X, paying students to tutor their classmates has been a solution to a host of overlapping problems in a community reeling from the coronavirus.

The small-scale program has helped seniors fight off the fatigue of their last year in high school, much of which has been spent on screens. It's provided a way for freshmen to forge social connections despite, for some of them, never stepping foot on campus. Crucially, it has put money in the pockets of tutors, some of whose families found themselves struggling to buy groceries as the virus raged.

The academic benefits are clear as well, especially in this school where many of the students are Haitian immigrants still learning English. Everyone who reached out for tutoring help last year, when schools first shut down, managed to stay on track to graduate, said Patrick Fernbach, who helps run the program.

That encouraging outcome "was definitely the highlight of remote schooling last year," said Fernbach, the assistant community school director at Brooklyn X. He helps oversee the array of social services offered on campus through a partnership with the nonprofit Counseling in Schools.

'Motivating the troops'

Wedged between a wide avenue and a vast public housing complex, Brooklyn X sits just beyond the last stop on the L subway line. Students come mostly from nearby Canarsie, while others take a bus from East New York, Flatbush, or Brownsville - neighborhoods in Brooklyn where a persistent lack of investment has weighed heavily on school performance.

A carousel of mayors and school turn-around programs have aimed to lift graduation rates and test scores at Brooklyn X and schools like it. Formerly known as Brooklyn Generation, the school changed its name last year in the latest attempt for a fresh start after graduating out of Mayor Bill de Blasio's Renewal program, a school improvement effort that poured almost $800 million into social services like mental health supports and even washing machines so families could do laundry on campus.

With an enrollment of only about 200, attendance rates are higher than the rest of the city, and every family who answered surveys last year said their child was made to feel like they belong at the school. Still, at 72%, the graduation rate is about six points lower than the city average, and many students reported that they don't feel safe in the hallways.

When COVID hit, it came hard at the neighborhoods that Brooklyn X serves. The ZIP code where the school is located is home to the largest number of frontline workers in the city, leaving them more exposed to the virus as they headed to jobs that could only be done in person. In neighboring East New York, the death rate is the highest in the five boroughs, according to city statistics going back to the start of the outbreak.

The same week that students began logging into remote learning for the first time last spring, Principal Louis Garcia came down with aches and a fever. Testing was scarce, but Garcia eventually learned he was in the first wave of New Yorkers to come down with the coronavirus.

With so much work to be done, and Zoom still a novelty, Garcia tried to lead a meeting with teachers when one interrupted him to ask why he was laying on the floor.

"I was just trying to find a comfortable position, and at some point I was just lying down on the carpet, not realizing I was on camera," he said. "We didn't know in the beginning to wear masks and do all those things while we were in the building."

It quickly became apparent that Brooklyn X's students would need help with more than just securing Wi-Fi hotspots and learning how to log into English class. Their families were short on food as the virus gripped their community.

The school is part of the city's community schools program, which partners with nonprofits to provide social services and remove barriers that can get in the way of students trying to learn. At Brooklyn X, Counseling in Schools provides mental health support to students and families. Administrators and the Counseling in Schools team pivoted from their usual work and raced to open a food pantry. They also set out to track down students who had not connected online.

This year, the freshmen class was especially elusive: Many had never been on campus, meaning the school couldn't tap into existing relationships or even, in some cases, up-to-date contact information. Staffers would eventually track down a few in homeless shelters; others had left the state entirely.

"You take for granted if you have a good address," Garcia said. "If you have a kid in the building, you can say, 'What's your uncle's number?' or whatever."

At the same time, Fernbach, the assistant community schools director, was grappling with what to do with the school's paid internship program that had kicked off a few months before the pandemic. Placing students in jobs outside their homes was suddenly impossible, and among the most pressing problems was keeping students connected to their classes.

So the school decided to put students to work helping each other. If someone wouldn't show up for virtual class with a teacher, maybe they would be willing to connect with a fellow teenager.

"They were in charge of motivating the troops," Garcia said.

'I wanted to help in return'

Dieudonne signed up to be a tutor because she wanted to help the same way her classmates had helped her when she came to Brooklyn from Haiti just days before starting ninth grade.

As a freshman, she often stayed late to get homework help from her teachers, rather than struggle alone at home and have to look up every word in a Creole dictionary. In class, whenever she got confused, her classmates jumped in with a translation or, if they didn't speak her language, they explained the material again but using different words.

"If it wasn't for the people who helped me, I wouldn't be able to pass my classes when I first came because I didn't speak English," she said. "So I wanted to help in return."

On a recent afternoon, she spent more than an hour working through algebra with Cineas. Dieudonne shot questions at him in English in a rapid clip. Cineas just looked at the screen. When she switched to Creole, something seemed to click. In a voice almost too small to hear, Cineas offered a response while typing in answers.

About 45 minutes into the assignment, they hit a roadblock, both confused by the online program Cineas used to graph an equation with X and Y variables. Dieudonne urged him to ask his teacher for a lesson on the platform the next time he was in class.

"I never used this," she said. "I'm not used to being in algebra when it's, like, paperless."

Fernbach monitors sessions when students are first paired together, sometimes troubleshooting technology but leaving the material up to the students to tackle. He'll check in afterwards to make sure the student who asked for help found the time useful, and that the tutor didn't feel out of their depth.

He is thoughtful when pairing the peer tutors, trying to weigh academic needs along with personalities. When Cineas messaged asking for help with math, Fernbach knew he was a new student who could benefit from making more social connections. And while there may be students among his stable of tutors who are stronger with numbers, he knew that Dieudonne is approachable, well-liked, and dedicated to her studies - someone who also shares the same native languages of French and Creole.

The tutoring sessions have been valuable in giving recent immigrants more exposure to English even while they're mostly at home, and therefore, with limited exposure to hearing and practicing their new language. He hopes that partnering students who have mastered English with their peers just learning it will serve as a point of inspiration and pride.

"I hope they learned that being bilingual is a skill," he said. "I hope part of what they learned is they should treat it as an asset and it improves their value."

'My goal is to pass all my classes'

Dieudonne tutors between two to 10 hours a week, depending on her schedule and when other students need a session. She earns about $15 an hour, money she spends on the kinds of items many teenagers covet - clothes or a new pair of shoes. She joked she recently "broke" her bank account after buying a Swarovski crystal necklace as a birthday present for her mother, who is a home health aide, and cologne for her brother, who loads packages at a FedEx facility while working his way through college.

Other tutors help contribute to household bills. In some instances - often after a death in a family - students would ask for more work, Fernbach said.

"There were definitely students who, when things started to get really bad in May of last year, were saying, 'I have more responsibilities with my family now so I could really use extra hours,'" he said. "We made as small a deal of it as possible, but just made sure they got the extra hours."

Amid rising needs among students, Counseling in Schools has expanded its work at Brooklyn X, shifting money towards more mental health services and daily check-ins with students. In the background, however, the organization has contended with an uncertain budget. The city has yo-yoed between proposing major reductions, and restoring funding for nonprofits and other social services. To spread out the budget and invest in other crucial services, Counseling in Schools had to shrink the tutoring program from 25 students the previous year, to 15 this academic year.

"It's not catastrophic to the program but it reduces the size of it and the scope," Fernbach said.

The paid internships offer a valuable return on investment, Fernbach said. All of the students who participated last year passed their classes or graduated - an even more remarkable accomplishment considering that students who are learning English are among the most likely to fall behind. The citywide graduation rate for those students last year was below 46%.

The results click with a host of research that has proved that small group tutoring, when done well, is one of the few school interventions that really works. Researchers, universities, and think tanks have called for a national emphasis on tutoring to help students fill learning gaps ripped open by the pandemic. The massive federal stimulus package passed this spring has earmarked billions to help schools get students caught up, which means that tutoring programs could very well see a boost. The research, however, hasn't looked at programs run by students' own peers.

As the school year draws closer to ending, Fernbach said requests for tutoring sessions are only increasing.

Cineas admitted that online school was "not easy at all." When high schools recently reopened, after a four month shutdown triggered by rising infection rates, his father pushed him to return to the building for in-person instruction, insisting it wasn't good for his son to attend classes while lying in bed.

On only the third day back with students back on campus, Cineas was in Fernbach's office. He logged on for a tutoring session. Dieudonne flashed on the screen.

"My goal is to pass all my classes," Cineas said.

With Dieudonne's help, maybe he will.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
COVID hit this Brooklyn high school hard. Paying students to tutor their peers is helping them get through it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Brooklyn high school freshman Alandinio Cineas was stumped: the algebra assignment asked him to write and graph an equation showing how many different pieces of fruit he could buy with $15. As he worked from a quiet office at his school's Canarsie campus on a recent afternoon, he shared the problem on his computer screen with senior Chahima Dieudonne.

# data[].attributes.body
Offer NX supports in short, one -week cycles with tutoring/office hours format.  Remote and/or in-person options.

# data[].attributes.body
What are guidelines regarding seat time for academic coursework? NX resolution --no seat time, just complete assignments to meet course passing requirements. Do NC/Failed courses have seat time requirements? Does format --remote only, blended learning or in-person only--impact seat time requirements?

# data[].attributes.body
identify implications of WBL/internship opportunities and/or conflicts on academic program hours.

# data[].attributes.body
Confirm status of CBOs to choose from and parameters of partnership with individual schools vs. host building.

# data[].attributes.body
Provide SummerBridge opportunities for both Rising Gr 9 and Gr 10 students to orient them to school culture and tee up SY21-22.

# data[].attributes.body
Tapping into CBO partnerships to provide support and/or facilitate SEL and community building activities tailored to student needs during PM hours.