2 Archives - KIPP Chicago Public Schools

Integrating Social and Emotional Learning

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:11:53 +0000

Excellence teachers at KIPP Ascend Primary (KAP) lead students in a meditation and breathing exercise routine before every single class to start their students off in a positive way. In this video, Dan Gibson, dance teacher at KAP, leads his students in a breathing exercise that allows them to move through any feelings they’ve brought to class, ending with meditation on positive thoughts.

Audrey Marshall, teacher and SEL Chair at KIPP Academy Chicago Primary (KACP) supports the team in providing social/emotional support to students. She provides fellow staff members with techniques, strategies, and environmental tools for promoting social emotional growth and learning. Audrey says:

“I see the social-emotional advisory role as one where knowledge pertaining to the emotional wellness of KIPPsters is driven by data and up-to-date literature, and is disseminated regularly and with useful strategies and techniques that can be implemented within the classroom setting. In addition to generating the monthly newsletter, Social-Emotional Corner, I aim to provide any additional support necessary to directing families toward useful resources for supporting their child. I see this role as a way to also build partnerships between local professionals in various related fields like that of child psychology, social work, family planning, and community health.”

KACP students are introduced to a Mood Chart to better identify how they are feeling. Checking in with students about how they are feeling has many benefits. First, it teaches children how to identify their moods and communicate their needs to adults. Second, when a teacher asks a student how they are feeling, it builds trust and strengthens the relationship. Finally, noticing students’ moods helps teachers identify patterns so they are able to help them navigate through difficult emotional states.

Resources

We are encouraging our teachers to use the Mind Yeti and Headspace apps and programs in their classrooms to guide mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness has been defined as “the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” Practicing mindfulness has benefits for children and adults as it has been found to support attention development, positive relationships and social connection, and improved emotional awareness.

Pure Edge offers strategies for educators and learners to support social, emotional, and academic development through mindful movement and rest. They also provide a free online curriculum that can be found here. Pure Edge has been a wonderful partner for our teachers on Regional Collaboration Days.

Updates

The importance of SEL teacher training is critical and we’ve identified a potential partner for a region- wide implementation of SEL curriculum in the year 2021.

We also will add additional social workers at every K-8 campus in the 20-21 school year to ensure that students’ SEL needs are met.

Additionally, a Wellness Director will be added at every K-8 campus within 3 years to offer support, strategies, and communication techniques for continued SEL training.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Increasing family and community partnerships

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:11:17 +0000

Rails-to-trails

Mural Park will be a primary destination along Chicago’s new El Paseo, a 4-mile bicycle and walking “rails-to-trails” corridor connecting University Village with Pilsen and Little Village. A large public plaza featuring local art installations, community gathering amenities, and year round gardens will connect the two 100-year old buildings of Mural Park.

As local artists are filling the space with artwork, 8th grade students from KIPP Ascend Middle School (the class of 2024) are showcasing their creativity on white bins that will be placed throughout the Mural Park space. Pasting their photos on the cans first, students used paint markers to add drawn elements, turning themselves into activists. Activism is a big part of our Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice and the students did a beautiful job illustrating the many ways we can all be activists.

Coat Drive

In late November, the law firm Barack Farrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg visited KIPP Ascend Primary to get our 560 students there ready for winter with new coats! This is the 8th year that the firm has engaged with our students, and we continue to be grateful for their generosity.

Updates

Our Director of the Whole Child Fund, Jennifer Hodges, has been working with Rush University Medical Center to bring a health clinic to all of our west side schools. We currently have a clinic at KIPP One Academy and we’re looking forward to establishing clinics at all of our schools.

In partnership with the Carole Robertson Center for Learning (CRCL), two Pre-K classrooms are opening at KIPP Ascend Primary this winter. We know that Pre-K provides the foundation for learning, socially, emotionally, and academically. With the structured setting of Pre-K, children are better prepared for the greater academic rigor they encounter in Kindergarten. We are excited for this partnership with CRCL!

Embracing an inclusive and challenging curriculum

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:10:59 +0000

Amplify Science, our science curriculum for all grades, blends hands-on investigations, literacy-rich activities, and interactive digital tools to empower students to think, read, write, and argue like real scientists and engineers. Here are a few of the current Amplify projects happening in KIPP Chicago Middle Schools.

Each Amplify middle school unit has two engineering internships. For the first engineering internship in 7th grade, students used a virtual design tool to create a tsunami warning system for the country of Sri Lanka. Students use their knowledge on plate motion to create a system that would have a low cost, 0-1 false alarms, and give the people of Sri Lanka enough evacuation time if and when a tsunami approaches.

At the end of every unit, students participate in science seminar where they create and present their arguments to a scientific phenomenon. In the Science Seminar sequence, students apply their knowledge of plate motion to make an argument about whether divergent or convergent movement best explains the pattern of geologic activity in an area in Mexico known in geology as the Jalisco Block. Students learn that one of Dr. Moraga’s colleagues in Guadalajara needs their help communicating to local residents about plate motion in the area. Students then review evidence about plate motion in the region. The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the context of the Science Seminar and to acquaint them with the evidence that they will use to support one of two claims.

Resources

We recently learned about the great work that Facing History is doing developing educational materials on prejudice and injustice in America and Europe. These materials allow for historical analysis as well as the study of human behavior and increasing students’ ability to relate history to their lives and better understand their role in a democracy. As our social studies curriculum evolves, we are continuing to pursue critical history resources.

The Conscious Kid is an education, research and policy organization dedicated to reducing bias and promoting positive identity development in youth. They partner with organizations, children’s museums, schools, and families across the country to promote access to children’s books centering underrepresented and oppressed groups. Our Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice borrows a set of related books from The Conscious Kid with each new art exhibition.

We are grateful for Teaching Tolerance, whose mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators, teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners, who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Their program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias. The anti-bias approach encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. Our Social Justice Standards show how anti-bias education works through the four domains of identity, diversity, justice and action.

For Indigenous People’s Day, our teachers were given resources for teaching history through a critical lens from the Zinn Education Project: Teaching People’s History which offers a variety of curricula materials. This one in particular, Discovering Columbus: Re-reading the Past, was used across the region when teaching students about the often watered-down version of our history.

Updates

We are thrilled to be introducing a new computer science unit to our 7th and 8th grade science classes in partnership with Project Lead the Way. With a $20k grant awarded through Project Lead the Way, 8th graders will participate in a program called App Creators and 7th graders will work with the Innovators and Makers unit.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Sharing resources from our CMASJ

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:11:36 +0000

Food for Thought is a multimedia exhibition created by artists ages six to thirteen years old. The artworks are explorations of the various roles that food plays in our lives- from sustenance and necessity to celebration, memories, and tradition. While we celebrate many components of food, these works also investigate and illustrate the questions we can ask ourselves about food access, food choice, and food waste.

The works in Food for Thought are intended to pose questions, to the artists and viewers, in an open-ended way. The exhibition calls for a critical examination into the complexity of how food is entangled within larger systems of power and how to make positive, lasting, and equitable changes to those systems.

We make art to ask questions, examine, and explore. As you view the artwork in Food for Thought, consider the following: What is my relationship with food? What memories do I have that are tied to meals? Where does my food come from? What happens to food after we’re done with it? What role can food play in building community? Who has access to a variety of foods? Who doesn’t? What are activists doing to ensure more people have access to food? How can we all be food activists?

Updates

The 3rd and 4th art show openings will be March 13 and June 14. This year, we are thrilled to be organizing twice the number of art shows as last year, ensuring our students are receiving meaningful visual arts learning centered around social justice.

The KIPP Chicago website will soon include all of the content from our Children’s Museum of Art and Social Justice, including every lesson plan from all of our exhibitions so that we are able to share our work with a larger community who may be interested in bringing social justice based art lessons to children.

Our Passion Projects are underway at each school and students are engaging in a diverse number of projects from after school programming and orchestra classes to mindfulness work and sports. We will be sharing photos and videos in upcoming editions of our Whole Child Review to show you the amazing learning that is happening.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Cultivating identity development practices

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:13:55 +0000

As we have prioritized the development of spaces for students that cultivate identity affirmation, our teachers have been doing a phenomenal job building classroom environments that are warm and welcoming, and thoughtfully curated. Inside KIPP Chicago classrooms, you will find images of artists, musicians, scholars, historians, inventors, politicians, and activists who are people of color. As we continue to document successful classrooms, we will share best practices around creating identity affirming classroom cultures at our next regional Collaboration Day. Here are a few examples of identity affirming spaces:

KIPP Academy Chicago Primary (KACP)

At KACP, teachers created labels for Literacy Groups that showcase people of color. In Ms. Nunez and Ms. Goshert’s classroom, Literacy Groups are named after inventions by African Americans, such as the roller coaster, peanut butter, helicopters, and potato chips. In another classroom, Literacy Groups are named for black historical figures.

KIPP One Academy (KOA)

At KOA, teachers ensure their classrooms display images of people who are representative of the school population. You will find Latinx and African American imagery in the classrooms and in the halls.

KIPP Academy Chicago (KAC)

At KAC, African American artists, musicians, innovators, creatives, poets, and scientists are featured in all classrooms. You will find imagery from contemporary Chicago artist, Hebru Brantley proudly displayed. Alongside these images, you will find artwork created by students also on display.

KIPP Ascend Primary (KAP)

At (KAP), students in Ms. Thomm’s 3rd and 4th grade art elective classes learned about Cyrus Kabiru, a Kenyan artist who creates Afrofuturist glasses out of trash and found objects. Then they used a variety of materials to draw their own pair of Afrofuturist glasses on top of their photos. Their final portraits were framed and hang in the hallways of KAP. We are excited to see Afrofuturist artwork continue after our CMASJ art show, Springtime in Neptune last year. Also in Ms. Thomm’s art classroom you will find imagery from contemporary Black artists, such as Kehinde Wiley, who painted Obama’s presidential portrait.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Addressing Food Justice

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:14:12 +0000

Updates

As we seek to establish a food pantry at every campus, we are launching our pilot pantry at KIPP Bloom College Prep (KBCP). Miguel Rodriguez, Assistant Principal at KBCP, organized a comedy night fundraiser on December 5, donating all proceeds to the food pantry construction.

As part of Food for Thought, the current art exhibition at our CMASJ, we will be collecting canned food to begin our food pantry campaign. If you are able, please drop off or send shelf stable food to 2007 S Halsted, Chicago, IL, 60647 to be donated to our schools’ food pantries.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Holiday Performances

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:14:53 +0000

Check out the winter performances from KIPP Ascend Primary’s 3rd and 4th grade step team.

And here’s another of 1st graders from the Marquette homeroom!

This KIPP Bloom Primary kindergarten and 1st grade performance brings us so much holiday joy!

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Alumni Feature: Ramya Herman

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:19:01 +0000

We are incredibly proud of our alumni and will be featuring their stories in each Whole Child Review. Ramya Herman is a KIPP Academy Chicago (KAC) alum who is currently at Lake Forest Academy, a co-ed college prep school. As she pursues her goal of attending Stanford for her undergraduate degree, she has already published a book of poems, at the age of 16, through Barnes and Noble, Headspace of a Headcase. The book focuses on social justice issues, self love, love of others, and growth. Ramya says, “my intention was to create emotion and to provide literature that would allow people to form connections. A lot of people have told me their different interpretations of my poems and how they saw it manifesting in their lives, and for me that’s one of the most rewarding results of the book.” Ramya aspires to become a Supreme Court justice, but her ultimate passion and purpose is creating change in the world both through her actions, words, and art.

Arthur and Claire Muchin, longtime KIPP supporters who also taught a class at KAC and KIPP Ascend Middle School called The Art of Negotiation, have developed a special relationship with Ramya, visiting her on campus, and staying connected. They say about her, “when bright exceptional students intersect with outstanding teachers, great things happen. We met Ramya Herman six years ago when she was a member of our Art of Negotiation class at KIPP Academy. We were so impressed with her leadership skills, creativity, and enthusiasm. We were delighted when she reached out to us last May and shared her pride as she reached her goal of becoming a published poet by age 16. She has been as successful at Lake Forest Academy (where she earned a full scholarship) as she was at KIPP. We look forward to seeing what her future holds and we know the world will be a better place because of her.”

When did you become interested in writing poetry?

I genuinely can’t say I remember a time when I wasn’t writing poetry, but of course that would have had to be the case at some point, so I guess I’ll go with third grade. I was introduced to Maya Angelou’s poetry by my third grade teacher who was honestly an amazing woman. I don’t have her contact information but I would thank her if I could- that was the year when I first started really writing stories and planning to write a book, and she was always excited about my ideas and encouraged them. So both my love of poetry and my determination to produce a book both appeared that year. I had previously enjoyed writing (I’m pretty sure from the moment I was able to), but poetry was different. It was this structural freedom that made words feel like art.

“Women are strong, and my mom is a special kind of strong. If she wanted to make the world rotate differently she could…”

When did you become interested in writing poetry?

Who Inspires you?

My mom inspires me. I know that’s what everyone says, but I think there’s a reason for that. Women are strong, and my mom is a special kind of strong. If she wanted to make the world rotate differently she could, but those aren’t her goals so she doesn’t. She has a very kind heart, and while I’m like her in a lot of ways, I also aspire to be her in other ways. She’s one of those people who doesn’t let the world beat up on her when it tries to, and sometimes when it feels like I’m getting that same treatment from the world it’s nice to know that I come from someone who not only lives in a very empowered and elegant way but wants me to do the same but better than her. She’s my biggest supporter and yes, a lot of what makes up a person’s success is internal, but she’s constantly molding me into the person who is able to create a form of unmatched success for herself. A lot of the opportunities I have are really because she put me in the place and time to get them and because she gave me the tools to properly handle those opportunities. She’s been imperative to my growth, my life, and therefore imperative to my writing.

What are your favorite topics or themes to write about?

My favorite topics are social justice issues and self growth. Social justice is a big part of the world–despite the term “minority”, there are many people who have to experience the day to day tribulations of being a marginalized group, and even if they aren’t necessarily experiencing it every day they see how the different ways that they are identified affect them. The goal of my writing is to make people feel heard, to make people want to listen, and to inspire change–it’s my way of following the cliched quote of being the change I want to
see in the world. The reason that I enjoy writing about self growth is because I’m constantly developing into the person I want to be and hopefully will be years from now, and this is an important time in my life that will impact me later on. Writing is my outlet and while an author writes for an audience, a writer writes for themselves. There are two different kinds of love and emotion and passion put into those two different kinds of writing, and once I had written to interpret the world, I then wrote to interpret myself because at the end of the day that’s home base. It centers me and makes my writing turn into more than words- they’re emotions, experiences, and overall understanding of myself.

What are some of your next goals?

My next goals in terms of my business are to revise my manuscript for my new book and things of that nature so that once the first one is up and running I can start focusing on getting the second one out. I’m also working on building my website and the sweatshirt like that accompanies the book. In terms of life my next goal is always to do better. I want to do better academically, socially, emotionally, and in my business endeavors. I’m hoping to improve my grades and I’ve applied to pre-law programs for the summer so that I can better prepare and have a more defined idea of what things will look like for me after next year.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

INCS Principal of the Year

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:15:15 +0000

KIPP One Academy’s Ken Lee was named the 2019 Charter School Principal of the Year by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. A number of other excellent principals from across the state were in the running for this award, but Ken stood out because of his ability to set a strong instructional vision and turn that vision into a reality.

Ken’s influence extends beyond the school he leads and to KIPP Chicago’s other campuses. He’s been instrumental in the design, implementation, and refinement of our internal assessment strategy, which has been one of our most important levers for providing opportunities for collaboration across KIPP Chicago – Amy Pouba, Superintendent

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

Jarell Lee on Minnesota Public Radio

Sundaram Design — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 18:18:33 +0000

Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard economist, and Tatsha Robertson, an award-winning journalist, teamed up to write a book called, The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children, on how parenting can help shape happy, high-achieving children.

On October 21st, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) News host Angela Davis spoke with them about their book. During the hour, they were joined by Jarell Lee (at minute 26), Principal of KIPP Academy Chicago Primary, whose story is featured in The Formula.

Jarell has an incredible story of growing up in Cleveland, often homeless as a young child. Living in shelters didn’t deter his mother from raising him to focus on school, value hard work, read, and keep up with homework. He talks about memories of his mother presenting him flash-cards to learn new words or letting him know there would be no playing or watching TV until he read and finished his homework.

When asked how his childhood has informed his career choices, Jarell says, “I chose to be a principal because I had the experience of growing up in poverty… As a principal, I say this to every family I talk to and every teacher who walks into this building, as a principal, I believe it is my calling to help create a school and to lead a school for little black and brown kids who come from the same neighborhood as me so that they can be able to reach their full potential and to reach their dreams and to have access to all the things they need.”

Ferguson, one of the authors of “The Formula” credits Jarell’s mother for her relentless pursuit to figure it out as she went along, from visiting the Head Start center to see how the teachers structured learning or talking with Jarell’s teachers all throughout his schooling to make sure he was tested to get into gifted classes. She found allies to help her do the things she wasn’t able to, like finding a male mentor for Jarell, their church pastor. His mother remained curious about parenting, even before he was born, reading and asking questions to figure out the best way to raise him to reach his full potential.

Return to the cover page.
Click here for the PDF.

2 Archives - KIPP Chicago Public Schools

Integrating Social and Emotional Learning

Resources

Updates

Other articles in this issue:

Increasing family and community partnerships

Rails-to-trails

Coat Drive

Updates

Other articles in this issue:

Embracing an inclusive and challenging curriculum

Resources

Updates

Other articles in this issue:

Sharing resources from our CMASJ

Updates

Other articles in this issue:

Cultivating identity development practices

KIPP Academy Chicago Primary (KACP)

KIPP One Academy (KOA)

KIPP Academy Chicago (KAC)

KIPP Ascend Primary (KAP)

Other articles in this issue:

Addressing Food Justice

Updates

Other articles in this issue:

Holiday Performances

Other articles in this issue:

Alumni Feature: Ramya Herman

Other articles in this issue:

INCS Principal of the Year

Other articles in this issue:

Jarell Lee on Minnesota Public Radio

Other articles in this issue: