The Friday "Personalized Learning Time" is an opportunity for all faculty and students to demonstrate Summit's commitment to these non-negotiables.  Students are empowered by having time to set personal goals, and work on what they individually need to learn.  The super playlists, peer collaboration, peer tutoring, and 1-on-1 mentor check-ins, strategically use our instructional minutes to deliver high-quality, individualized learning and coaching on the skills that current research identifies as what sets successful college students apart from those who struggle.  A successful student works on developing the self-awareness to set proper goals, identifies areas of need, selects the proper resources or strategies to independently learn, and uses their time wisely to balance responsibilities and the need to recharge.  Students will struggle as they learn to take responsibility for using this time to learn the habits of time-management, goal-setting, and independent study skills.  Yet we believe having the opportunity to "struggle safely," with mentor/teacher coaching and peer collaboration, provides the learning needed to develop the "grit" and "perseverance" that pushes us to get up and try again.  We are amazed at how much our students are learning every Friday, and how so many of them have embraced this opportunity to demonstrate college responsibility.  In fact, a large group of our students in multiple grades got together last Friday, when school was cancelled as a result of the fire, to have Friday "PLT" at a library, a cafe, and at a student's home.  As always, students will learn at varying speeds and some will struggle more than others.  Our mentors will always use their 1-on-1 check-ins to provide the proper personalized coaching to help every single student succeed.  As a parent, we encourage you to use the "Personalized Learning Plan" found at the following link to keep track of your student's Friday progress: http://app.mysummitps.org/auth/login.
This can also be found at our new website: http://summitprep.summitps.org/.     

3.  Ask clarifying questions!

Often times, teachers and parents will ask yes/no questions to try and understand how a student is doing.  Through the extensive amounts of research performed by pioneers like Angela Duckworth, Carol Dweck, and many others, we have learned new ways to approach conversations with our students to encourage the proper mindset and critical thinking needed to accurately reflect on a their learning.  Often times our questions may not ask for the information we're looking for.  For example: 

Did you do your homework?  No.  

Why not?  Because I don't get it.  

Did you try?  Yes.  

Did you ask your teacher?  Yes.  

While the questions are being answered honestly, the root cause of this student's struggle has not been identified, and steps to proactively move forward may not come to light.  Consider a different approach to this conversation:

What are you working on in English class tonight?  My persuasive speech.

What resources or strategies are you using to be successful?  I'm looking at the examples my teacher gave, the playlist on rhetorical devices, etc.

What are you strengths on this project?  I think I have a good thesis.

How do you know it's a good thesis?  Because it states my argument and the evidence I need to justify the argument.

What are you still struggling with?  I'm not understanding how to use emotional appeal.

What's your plan to understand emotional appeal better?  I think I have to go back and review what it means and look at the examples.  

  

As educators, we are always asking our students to reflect and talk through strategies that can lead to success.  We encourage all of our families to find ways to ask probing questions around the strategies our students are using to support their learning.  This has been a long-standing practice for Summit Prep, and this mirrors the way in which we conduct our 1-to-1 check-ins with our mentees each Friday. We hope that all of our parents will feel empowered to have the same conversations at home and collaborate with us to truly meeting our college and career ready mission.

Evenings with the Director

We are excited to share that we will be holding "Evenings with the Director" for families who have been unable to attend our "Mornings with the Director".  These meetings have been a wonderful way for our parents to engage in our learning model and understand how we use every minute of every day to meet our mission to prepare our students for success in college, career, and life.   Please visit the calendar on our new website for dates and times here: http://summitprep.summitps.org/calender.

Thank you so much for being such compassionate supporters of our mission and for collaborating with us to help all of our students succeed!

With much gratitude,

Penelope, Patti, and John

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