EDUCATION

First Connecticut, Then The World

Shelton’s robotics team once again makes national competition

For many competitive high school teams, the ultimate goal is to win State. Truly elite teams get to compete in national championships, and then there’s the Shelton High robotics team that was able to compete in the 2022 FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship.

After two years away due the pandemic, the Shelton team (which CT&C has covered previously for their world class efforts) has gotten back into the swing of things with their robot that has been nicknamed “Hawkeye.” The reference to the Marvel character that carries a bow and arrow who never misses a shot.

That’s because this year’s FIRST competition involved shooting balls into a goal that was suspended 8ft in the air, before it climbed on a monkey bars like course. Doing this is as a human is probably difficult enough, but to devise, create, and build a machine that can accomplish that in just a few weeks.

And then for that machine to be one of the best in the country.

Building robots is not cheap and the Shelton team, also known as the Gaelhawks, rely on sponsors and mentors to make the whole thing work. With nearly 20 sponsors, including major companies like Sikorsky, Raytheon Technologies, OEM controls and Hubbell.

One of the most important sponsors of the team is the City of Shelton itself. According to info in the Shelton Herald, the city made it’s largest donation to date to the Gaelhawks in the amount of $10,000.

Mayor Mark Lauretti, who traveled with the team to cheer them on in Houston where the world championship took place, said in the same article that he thinks it’s important for the city to do its part.

Many businesses look to the local schools, public and private, to see if they are creating a highly educated and capable workforce for the future. So it is crucial that towns and cities around the state support STEM programs like robotics teams.

While unfortunately they didn’t take the top spot, they were ranked as the 30th best team out of 3225 teams in the world, putting them in the top one percent of all teams.

Nearly 25 years after the town first robotics competition, the Gaelhawks are consistently champions. Members of the High School team actively recruit and mentor younger students in challenges. They aren’t just building robots, but an innovative future for all of us.

Options for Health Career Training

Certificate programs help workforce get ahead

Many people see value in entering the healthcare field due to the large number of job openings or the rewarding nature of the work.

For those considering the field, there are a variety of options available not requiring a two or fouryear degree. Gateway Community College’s downtown New Haven campus offers numerous certificate programs through the office of Workforce Development & Continuing Education. Current certificate offerings at Gateway include Certified Nurse Aide (C.N.A.) and Advanced Certified Nurse Aide, Central Sterile Supply, Community Health Worker, Medical Office Assistant, Patient Care Technician, and Pharmacy Technician.

Ct Hospice is a clinical site for Gateway Community College’s Certified Nurse Aide Training program.

Since fall 2020, 50 students have completed Gateway’s C.N.A. program. The program attracts a diverse mix of students; some are completing their C.N.A. training on their way to becoming a registered nurse, others are pivoting into healthcare later in their careers.

Students can complete the C.N.A. coursework in just six weeks, which includes 30 hours of clinical experience at a local nursing home facility. Most recently, students had the opportunity to train at Connecticut Hospice in Branford and Whitney Center in Hamden. The blended format includes an online component, making the C.N.A. certificate program accessible even to students who have experienced barriers preventing them from considering the training in the past. The shift to a blended format became necessary at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. For students, the change is welcome, allowing them to complete the first portion entirely online. Students move into a classroom equipped with mannequins to practice on and get hands-on experience, then to their clinical site. Students complete the program ready to fill job openings at a time when medical facilities have a tremendous need.

Gateway’s Community Health Worker Certificate can be completed in 21-weeks, which includes a six-week internship. Students learn non-clinical health assessment, advising, service coordination planning, and client-centered counseling. Positions in the field are particularly well-suited to bi-lingual speakers.

Whether a recent high school graduate or someone who wants to make a mid-career shift to healthcare, Gateway works with students who might not otherwise be able to afford training. The SNAP Education & Training (SNAP E&T) program is open to students receiving SNAP benefits and offers free training to those deemed eligible. An added benefit of the program is the case management and support services provided.

Many students facing unemployment and underemployment can also qualify for training dollars available through the American Job Center (AJC). The office of Workforce Development & Continuing Education regularly refers students expressing interest in healthcare programs and unaware of the training opportunities open to them.

Outside the SNAP E&T program and the partnership with AJC, Gateway looks for alternative paths to help students. To that end, Erika Lynch, director of Workforce Development & Continuing Education, is managing the CT Statewide Healthcare Industry Pathway (CT SHIP), a grant that benefits several of the healthcare programs. The grant project period runs through January 31, 2025 and is expected to train students in over nine healthcare programs.

For information about healthcare certificates offered through the Department of Workforce Development & Continuing Education, please call (203) 285-2300 or email gw-thegreatcenter@gatewayct.edu.

Eating Healthy Crucial For Children

New Britain Roots teaches importance of starting young

Apples, broccoli, and cauliflower are just as important as the A, B, Cs when it comes to growing children. At New Britain Roots, students learn the benefits of not only a healthy diet with locally sourced food, but the power of growing your own garden.

New Britain Roots has their – well – roots down in many areas that impact the local community. Some include farmers markets that bring together local vendors, they create food maps on resources around the city, but most importantly, they have a hand in educating children about the importance of good food.

With the elementary and middle schools and the New Britain Parks and Recreation, they offer “garden-based education […] allowing youth to experience food in new ways and discover the impacts of a healthy lifestyle.” Children in these clubs spend time in gardens and greenhouses where they learn sustainable practices and the time-honored methods of growing your own food.

For at-risk students they offer after school programs where they can take the food that is grown through the sustainable agriculture and learn how to process it into something tasty and nutritional.

Through these and the other programs that are offered, students can learn the value of food through examining exactly what it is that they eat. Something that has become lost over time as society has relied more and more on processed foods.

Noted journalist Michael Pollan who writes frequently about the importance of food offers the rule “If it’s a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don’t.”

“Pollan,” on his website, “points out that populations that eat like modern-day Americans — lots of highly processed foods and meat, lots of added fat and sugar, lots of refined grains — suffer high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. But populations that eat more traditional diets don’t. Our great-grandmas knew what they were doing.”

This is extremely important information as children have recently seen an uptick in the rates of obesity. Largely due to the pandemic, this has drawn attention from state and national health experts who express caution about the negative effects on health issues and mental issues like self-esteem.

Learning the value of good food is clearly just as important as calculus or chemistry – and to be fair, you might not need to use advanced equations, but you do have to eat every day. With New Britain Roots, students can get outside and get their hands dirty – and truly reap the fruits of their labor.

Black Future Month

Bloomfield Library discusses Afrofuturism and other topics

With roots going back to the 1920s, Black History Month is historical itself. Officially recognized during the United States Bicentennial in 1976, it has been a jumping off point for many to celebrate the successes and achievements of Black Americans. Today, Bloomfield Public Library is using the month as a jumping off point to ask about the future.

On February 1, the library kicked off the month with a program called “Black to the Future: Afrofuturism as a Creative Force” with the guiding principle: “How do we acknowledge our history while paving the way for an informed and hopeful vision for the future, which may be difficult?”

A Mark Dery essay also titled “Black to the Future,” sought to look at the ways Black Americans envision the future through literature, movies, and music by individuals such as Octavia Butler, the hip-hop group Outkast, and movies like Black Panther.

While mainly existing in the realm of science fiction under the name of Afrofuturism, many of these artists use their creative powers to envision not a dystopian future, but a better one.

Under the banner of Black Future Month, Bloomfield also held programs ranging from “Lessons from Apartheid: How Americans Can Join Across Racial Differences” to “Social Justice Book Club: Parable of the Sower (graphic novel) by Octavia Butler” in order to discuss the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality in this country.

The concept of Black Future Month is expanding in recent years as many of the documents that were once futuristic are coming to pass. For instance, Parable of the Sower was set in the futuristic year of 2024.

Even recently, artists like Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) have called upon February to invest in the work, especially creative work of Black Americans.

This is a noted departure from Black History Month’s origins. Recognizing history and building upon it for a better future is a strong message, one that echoes the sentiments of the Black Lives Matters protests of 2020.

In Bloomfield, the library is acknowledging both the past and the future. Reading important documents and learning from the past is as crucial as ever, for all Americans. Talking about science fiction and superhero movies are important parts of our shared American culture. To honor the work of the Afrofuturists that the Bloomfield Public Library are highlighting, we should all be working towards making that better future less science fiction and more a reality.

Me Gusta Aprender!

Bridgeport program designed to help bilingual learners succeed

One thing that jumped out when looking at the 2020 Census was how diverse Connecticut was getting, which was reflected in many of the headlines from news outlets around the state. One of the fastest growing segments was that of the Hispanic / Latino community, many of whom are bilingual. In Bridgeport, they recognized the need for additional tools to help teach children in these bilingual homes.

The program, Footsteps2Brilliance, aims to level the playing field in early childhood reading. It is a mobile platform that can be accessed either online or offline on a multitude of devices like phones, tablets, or computers. Children who are just learning to read are able to immerse themselves in the writing through reading the material, playing a game that will help them understand and, most crucially, allow them to develop language skills in both English and Spanish.

One example shows students who can read if they like a book called La Arana Pequenita, and toggling it to English, they can engage with the Itsy-Bitsy Spider.

According to figures cited in a CT Post article, upwards of 20% of students in Bridgeport are English learners. While in Middletown that rate is closer to four percent, and despite having lower rates of English learning students, literacy skills increased by 175%.

That is due in part to the way parent engagement is built into the app. Footsteps says that by including engaging materials for caregivers and responsive information, that time spent learning with caregivers can be increased by up to 300%. One example is something they call “Family Friday” that emphasizes both to the child and caregivers that reading can be a fun and collaborative activity. That extra time translates to increased learning.

The CT Post article also highlights why getting children to learn before third grade is critical. An American Educational Research Association study had shown that “a student who can’t read on grade level by third grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time.”

Other factors such as poverty increase the chances that a student will not graduate high school on time.

While Connecticut’s graduation rate has improved over the last twenty years, with nearly 90% of students graduating high school, there’s always room for improvement and growth.

This is especially true now that the Census data has shown that Connecticut has a growing population of students who are likely to be bilingual.

Instead of leaving them in the lurch to learn one language at home and another language in school, Bridgeport, through the Footsteps2Brilliance app is promoting literacy not just in one language but in two. Giving children the right start on the path to a fully-fledged education in our state.

Blue Ribbon School

Groton’s Mary Morrisson goes out with highest honors

Schooling has been difficult lately – which is to say more difficult than it usually is. Keeping kids engaged and learning is no easy task, but one that was all the more difficult through COVID. That’s what makes this year’s National Blue Ribbon schools much more special, especially for the Mary Morrisson Elementary School in Groton.

The school, which actually closed at the end of 2020, received the Blue Ribbon Designation for “Tapping into the power of collaboration and approaching teaching and learning with a growth mindset are the key essentials that they used to close achievement gaps and ensure our commitment to continuous improvement.”

Closing gaps in education has been a key facet of concentration for teachers and administrators. We talked a lot about the digital divide, but that is just one part of the achievement gap which measures consistent disparities between students based on race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic factors.

At our current rate, this gap will be closed by 2266 according to figures cited in a CTMirror article.

Those at Mary Morrisson aimed to meet children where they are rather than asking them to meet expectations that might be difficult for them. By taking small steps to start, students can continue to make leaps and bounds later in life.

In their submission they say “We work as a team to provide the necessary support and scaffolding to make sure all students learn. You could look in any classroom and truly not know which students have IEPs or which students receive reading or math support. We have blended the Tiers so that all students, regardless of ability, are supported and achieve.”

This year, the award was handed out by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, a person familiar with Connecticut public schools. Three other schools in Connecticut received a Blue Ribbon this year: Andrew Avenue Elementary School in Naugatuck, Northwestern Regional High School in Winsted, and Frisbie Elementary School in Wolcott.

The Department of Education gives this description about the program: “An important part of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Blue Ribbon Schools Program recognizes outstanding public and non-public schools. In identifying several hundred outstanding schools annually, the program celebrates school excellence, turn around stories, and closing subgroup achievement gaps. The Award is both a high aspiration and a potent resource of practitioner knowledge.”

While the Mary Morrisson Elementary School has closed, most of the staff have moved to the Thames River Magnet School to continue this important work.

Asking The Right Questions

ER9 BOE DEI Survey to create a baseline to work off of

In many other areas of our daily life diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, often initialized as DEI, have been front and center. But in our schools, the day-to-day difficulties of learning during a pandemic were on the forefront. The Easton-Redding-Region 9 Boards of Education sought to change that by asking how students and staff felt in a series of surveys on the topic.

The survey was created by the ER9 Joint Boards of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, which itself is a new addition to the Boards of Education. Adopted in July of 2020, they were charged with advising in “respect to the operation and financing of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiatives” in areas relating to hiring, discipline, enrollment, programming, curriculum and more.

They are made up of two members from each board, the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction, as well as non-voting members from the student population, two each from the community, and a certified staff member.

Working on the survey, they sought to improve the DEI work at the Helen Keller Middle School, John Read Middle School, and Joel Barlow Middle School.

But even before the work can be done, the DEI Task Force said that this survey was necessary to understand where the Boards of Education stood.

Redding Board of Education Chairperson Christopher Parkin was quoted in an Easton Courier article on the importance of the survey:

“How can we be serious in our efforts to ensure that we reach every student or respect one another … unless we can establish a basic baseline? Who is being left out of our caring community? Who doesn’t feel supported? Who is scared to ask for help? These are not radical questions.”

There are four surveys being sent out, one to high school students, one to middle school students, as well as parent/guardian and staff surveys. Parents must opt-in to receive the survey for their children to fill out.

The focus here is on the experiences of the children. Example questions ask if students feel safe, respected, and included at school, and whether they’ve experienced bullying. Parents/Guardians and Staff are asked if they’ve seen or heard of children experiencing these issues.

Back in March, Superintendent Dr. Rydell Harrison wrote in an Op-Ed to the Courier, “Focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion is not a political act, and it does not have to be controversial. Educational equity is ensuring that each child receives what they need to develop to their full academic and social potential and taking the necessary steps to identifying and eliminating barriers that would hinder their progress.”

With this survey, the ER9 DEI task force is setting that “baseline” of just where they are in regard to their student’s well-being, what areas might need improvement, and where they are succeeding. It might be self-evident, but you can’t know if you don’t ask.

A Summer Reset

ARP funds help bridge the gap in New Haven

With the American Rescue Plan funds came a great responsibility. Adhering to the strict guidelines and having it be useful to your community narrowed down the qualified uses of these funds, but New Haven has come up with a solution that really makes sense: A Summer Reset for children.

It’s clear that distance learning saved the 2020-2021 school year to some extent, but the figures on school attendance, gaps in learning, and the loss of quality of experience has left something to be desired.

In the State as a whole, absenteeism increased from 12% to 20% over the past year, and factors like the digital divide meant that some school children did not have the quality of education that they otherwise could have. Let alone the fact that school is often where you see your friends and mentors – socializing is an important part of growing up.

And while many recognized the importance of getting back to in-person schooling, thrusting children back into this situation isn’t necessarily the best idea either.

For New Haven’s part, that is where the Summer Reset comes in. It is a suite of programs intended to enhance summer activities for children with a goal of bridging the gap from remote learning to in-person learning.

The Summer Reset was a four-pronged approach across Youth Engagement, Clean and Safe Program, Arts and Culture, and Safe Summer. Each of these headings had key areas for development or investment, with $6.3 million allocated for the entire package.

The city planned to use some of those funds to extend summer camps for an additional two weeks, increasing classes for outdoor adventures, youth summer concerts and more.

Of course, some of the funds are going to improvements to parks where they are most needed. Including resurfacing and repairing playgrounds, adding murals and removing graffiti.

Quoted in a New Haven Independent article, Mayor Justin Elicker said “It’s critical that our young people have opportunities for their social and emotional development. That interaction with their peers can help develop their social skills, but most importantly, help them have fun this summer.”

While the American Rescue Plan funds are temporary, some of the thinking behind these plans might remain. There is reason to believe that if children benefit from longer camps, outdoor classes, and entertainment this year, that might also be true every year.

For now, it is a worthwhile project to think about just what can help our children bridge the gap that was created by COVID.