Four incredible community-based organizations, each with different missions, have teamed up to provide a variety of enrichment and social-emotional learning opportunities to youth across central, south, and west Seattle under the name of The Bright Futures Creative Collective.
SOWA is excited to welcome Melannie Denise Cunningham to this year’s Bridge Conference, Forging Brighter Futures. Melannie is a Tacoma-based thought leader and practitioner who has excelled as an educator, social justice activist, scholar, entrepreneur, and humanitarian. Her leadership spans diverse industries, profoundly impacting college administration, youth development, government service, broadcast media, and more. Reflecting first, so that we can move toward connection and reimagining. Melannie will kick off Bridge Conference 2023 by grounding our experience in the initial theme of reflection. By inviting us to reflect on our biases and individual journeys, we can then embrace the learning and … [ ]
Overview For three decades, School’s Out Washington (SOWA) has served a critical role to advance equitable expanded learning ecosystems in Washington state. We work to ensure high-quality afterschool and summer programs are available so all of Washington’s youth—and especially low-income youth and youth of color—can have the opportunities they deserve to thrive. SOWA is dedicated to building responsive community systems to support quality afterschool, youth development and summer programs for Washington’s children and youth ages 5 through young adulthood. Position Summary SOWA administers the Refugee School Impact Program, which is funded through multiple contracts with Washington State. SOWA funds and … [ ]
School’s Out Washington is currently seeking professionals to serve as contracted Program Quality Assessment (PQA) External Assessors utilizing the Social Emotional Learning PQA. Each External Assessor will be contracted as Independent Contractors for School’s Out Washington. External Assessors will gain valuable professional development opportunities and will be trained to conduct on-site observations using the Social Emotional Learning Program Quality Assessment (SEL PQA) tool in a variety of afterschool expanded learning opportunity programs in Washington State. As part of the onboarding process, new assessors will receive multiple trainings that focus on youth programming and on building relationships between young people and … [ ]
Last week was National Summer Learning week and I had a great time visiting sites in the Pierce County community where some very cool and innovative summer learning programs are happening right now. I am a firm believer that the intersecting systems that support youth outside of the traditional school day (and during the summer months) are critical to fostering passion and purpose on a young person’s journey to becoming who they are destined to be. This ecosystem of out-of-school time spaces is uniquely positioned to address things that schools miss or simply cannot take on. Here’s a quick … [ ]
The Mastery Based Learning Collaborative is a community of schools across Washington State that choose to focus on mastery-based learning (also called competency-based) and culturally responsive-sustaining practices, with educational equity as their guiding value. In its first year, SOWA provided advice, training, site visits, and resources to support schools in the Collaborative to foster relationships and partnerships with community-based organizations, youth and families as they work to implement mastery-based learning (MBL) in a culturally responsive-sustaining manner. The State Board of Education is now preparing to launch the second cohort of the Mastery-based Learning Collaborative (MBLC)! Participating schools receive funding and … [ ]