Moving Education Forward in a COVID-19 World

The “summer slump” is a real thing.  Ask any teacher returning to school after summer break and they can tell you they expect to see at least a 20% learning loss from students.  At-risk students fare even worse since they often don’t have the same opportunities to continue their learning over the summer as their better-advantaged peers.

With COVID-19 disrupting learning even further, one Evansville organization decided to do something about it.

Dream Center Evansville, a faith-based nonprofit providing practical services to disadvantaged children and their families, recently hosted a socially distanced 10-week Oaks Summer Academy.  Not only did the Academy provide families with an academic readiness program for their children, it also gave them a safe place to leave them while at work.

Seed to Oaks launched the Oaks Summer Academy in 2018.  Since then, it has been implemented by many churches as a way to support teachers and students and meet educational needs in the community.  The Academy benefited Dream Center Evansville’s mission by providing:

  1. A proven, prepared curriculum designed to target essential math and reading skills
  2. Pre and post assessments allowing student progress to be measured
  3. The flexibility to extend the original 2-week format to a 10-week format that better met their families’ needs
  4. An Oaks Learning Educational Specialist for ongoing consultation
  5. Marked improvements: 92% of students improved reading scores while 71% of students improved math scores.

For teachers who are passionate about their students’ success, this is a big victory!  Every teacher knows the heartbreak of watching a student fail to thrive and the frustration of not having the time or resources to help meet every student’s individual needs.  When organizations like Dream Center Evansville and Oaks Learning partner together to help fill educational gaps, both teachers and students win.

Teachers are an indispensable part of the solution to educational challenges.  If you’re a teacher looking for a way to support your students outside the classroom or if you want to use your professional expertise to help discover and implement educational solutions, contact Oaks Learning Specialist Julie Cordray for a free consultation.

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