Interview: Flipside's Virtual Programming

I met with Kari Gonzalez, Afterschool Site Coordinator at Flipside, an after school program at six Saint Paul middle schools, to discuss their shift to virtual enrichment and academic support during the COVID-19 pandemic.

-Rose Maney, Youth Virtual Tutoring Initiative Literacy Leader

Tell us a little bit about Flipside and what a normal year looks like for you.

Flipside is an after school program that combines enrichment and academic support. We’re currently at six middle schools in the Saint Paul Public Schools district. In a typical school year, we partner with the teachers, community partners and individuals from the community. A variety of folks come together after school and offer a variety of classes for the students to attend. Along with the classes, we also offer the students a snack after school and then transportation home from the program.

What determines who the program is open to?

The program is funded by the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant. The federal grants go to the state, and then the state awards that to different school districts and organizations. It's a free program that any middle school student can participate in if they live in Saint Paul.

How has your program format shifted with COVID?

Saint Paul, as a district, went to “distance learning” in March 2020, and then continued in the distance model from the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, and the middle schools will be transitioning back the week of April 12. But so far, we have been in a completely virtual world.

We were able to shift quite a few of our classes to an online model. We were still able to offer students virtual classes, with a lot of the same community partners, some of the same school day teachers, and then individuals from the community were able to use the system (the platform that the district is using to offer their virtual classes). And we were able to continue the same schedule, at the end of the student’s virtual school day. Of course, the snack went out the window and transportation wasn't a need in this model.

Are there any additional resources that students use during virtual learning?

Another component that we did add to our programming was a family kit. We did that in partnership with the Saint Paul Public Library. They're a partner on our grants, so we've always worked closely with them. We put together a variety of kits, and we have been sending them out on a monthly basis. For example, the March kit was a baking kit that we sent out, so it included a cookbook and then some of the staples needed for baking such as flour and sugar. And then April is a science kit.

We've also worked with the Saint Paul Department of Transportation. They were continuing to deliver meals to families, so we were able to piggyback on their efforts to deliver these kits to families for the most part, and then there were of course some families that we as program staff had to make individual home deliveries.

With the cooking kits, is there any online interactive cooking class you do? Or is it more of an at-home activity on their own?

With a family-centered kit like cooking, it's at home, on their own.

What platform do you use to keep track of students and communicate with parents?

We utilize a platform called Schoology. It's social networking that’s school-based and student-friendly. It's a platform that the district uses and has been using in the virtual model, where each teacher has their class set up in Schoology, so students had that virtual class to go to, to get assignments and information about the subjects.

As Flipside, we have our own Schoology group. And then we would ask students to submit pictures or stories, somehow get engaged with us, so that we knew they were using the kits and how they were using the kits to try to add that connective piece to it.

And I think that's been really important, because definitely what we have seen in our own district and our own communities is that that social connection piece is something that middle school students in particular definitely thrive on. So we've been very aware and intentional in trying to create those opportunities to continue to have that connection.

Schoology has been a good platform for that, where we're able to communicate with our students, they're able to communicate with us and with one another, as well as the instructors who are leading the individual classes, who can post on Schoology and send announcements and share information.

Do you think you're going to continue using Schoology as a platform after the pandemic is over?

I think most definitely. One of the things that was different this year with the virtual aspect is that typically, I'm the coordinator at a particular middle school, and so I coordinate the classes and the connections with community partners for that middle school. And other coordinators do the same at their schools. In the virtual world, we were able to collaborate and offer a single class that would normally be for one school to the broader district community.

Some really powerful things came out of it. One of our schools is an American Indian magnet on the east side of Saint Paul, and they have a lot of cultural programming that's focused around Native American art, language, and culture. And, because this was a virtual space, we were able to offer those opportunities to a broader base of students.

Schoology has helped with that as well, because we're able to collaborate and communicate amongst everybody, not just our individual schools. We'll need to figure out how we can continue to use that collaboration, because it's really just deeper programming across the board. And opportunities are able to be accessed by all students, not just students at a particular school.

How did you find out about Schoology in the first place?

It's a platform that the district uses, so it was available and accessible to us. At an elementary school level, a lot of schools or districts are using a platform called Seesaw. And that’s similar but very different from Schoology. Schoology transfers better to the middle school schedule, with various classes with different teachers, rather than one class with one teacher in different subjects.

Is there anything else you discovered while doing virtual learning that you think you're going to carry over into your program after COVID is over?

That's a good question. Our current classes and program will wrap up here in the next couple of weeks. And some classes will continue until mid-May 2021. But we're going to be starting the conversations around what next year could look like and I think probably start planning for a variety of school structures. 

I'm hoping that we're all able to be in person next year.  

Another example of something that we're going to do over spring break is, typically we would offer students field trips on non-school days, and during the week of spring break, we would try to run three different field trips. And since we can't do that, we're trying to do different competitive activities. Monday it is “how many items can you stack?” And it can be anything that students have in their household. And then having kids post pictures or videos of what they're stacking. And that's our way to try to keep kids engaged over spring break, and then we'll coordinate sending out prizes to students who posted.

I think those kinds of activities are like icing on the cake! If we're able to do in-person programming, and then have a lot of these activities that we figured out, it would just make things a lot richer for next year. And we can get the entire Saint Paul community involved. We would definitely try to continue.

Do you think that you're going to do virtual learning or maybe like a blended model, after things have calmed down and gone back to being in person in the schools?

I think that's definitely a possibility, especially when we've seen the awesomeness that comes out of being able to share partners that would be specific to one school. But in the virtual world, we were able to share that opportunity, or open up that opportunity to a lot more students. One of the challenges we'll have to figure out is right after the school day, that "after 3 p.m. time," can be a slippery slope, especially for the middle school students. We do find a lot of students participating in our program, one, because they want to, and two, it's a safety net for them after school. They come see us rather than going home to an empty house and just seeing screens all afternoon.

So, I imagine that the need for in-person programming may outweigh the need for virtual programming. But that's been such an awesome asset this year that we'll try to figure out how to continue some virtual component to our programming.

Outside of Schoology, do you use Google Meet or Zoom at all?

Google Meet is what the district has okayed, so that's the platform that we use for all of our virtual classes. Zoom is one that the district doesn't approve of, and so the students don't have access to it.  

The Saint Paul district is a one-to-one device district. All students have an iPad, without which this wouldn't be possible. If we were in a district where that wasn't the case, there would be students who don't have the technology in their hands. So that's super helpful. I don't know how we would do it otherwise.

What kind of tracking do you use for student progress?

Our program uses a database called Easy Reports to track attendance and the ins and outs of the program.

In terms of tracking their progress, have you seen any change in terms of when they were in person versus now that they're online, or has the way you tracked it changed, as well?

We're still tracking. As far as attendance and everything goes, we probably only see 25% of the number of students that we normally have in a given year. And we've gotten a lot of feedback from families and students that life is extremely stressful and overwhelming right now. And especially with students being virtual for their school days, some kids and families are just burnt out at the end of the day and need to close the screen and just don't have the capacity to continue looking at a screen.

Technology is still an issue where families may not have access to the internet in their homes, or where middle school students are taking care of younger siblings. I think that all the barriers that happen in life have really been accentuated, obviously, with the pandemic, and that's impacted our participation level for sure.

That's pretty common with a lot of organizations. I don't think I've spoken to anybody who has more people than they did previously, if they were an in-person program.

We have shifted our models somewhat too. Our goal is set by research that shows that if students attend at least 30 days of a quality out of school time program, that they're going to have positive benefits from that program in a variety of areas. And so our goal has always been to get to that 30-day mark with students. And that's what we call “retained students;” we hit our retention mark.

But we realized this year that while that’s a goal we still strive for, it isn't as realistic as it has been in the past with virtual learning and a pandemic. And we've heard from families, too, that they want to be able to participate when they want to and when it works for them. And so we've done more of these one-time opportunities. That's the intent behind the family kits, just getting supplies and activities out for families, so they can take advantage of it when it works for them. The activities that we're doing in the next couple of weeks over spring break are more one-time events so that students can decide what timing works for them. That is a change, because typically we don't offer one-time opportunities; they're more ongoing and consistent.

So in terms of your virtual education, how much of that is structured tutoring versus enrichment versus homework help?

Typically, in a standard year, we really try to balance it 50/50 between enrichment opportunities and more academic-focused opportunities. This year, I would say that we're probably at like an 80/20 balance with enrichment opportunities versus academic opportunities. And in the past, we've always tried to offer a time that's called “study skills.” And that's more of an open space for homework, so if students have work, there's folks there that can support them and help them with the work that they bring in. And that class has always been very popular. And you know, we've had to limit ourselves and figure out which students might need it the most so that the class isn't too full. This year, I've had a solid two kids that showed up for our study skills time. And, interestingly enough, the students that are showing up for it don’t necessarily have homework that they're looking for help on, they're really just looking for that interaction with a caring adult. And so a lot of times they're not even working on academic work. This year has really kind of boiled down to that social connection.

And that's shifted the focus more to “enrichment” this year. Next year, we'll have to work with our buildings and see what the need is, because I can only imagine it's the academic support that is going to be a greater need, to try to support students and get them caught up if they need to be. We're just going to have to see where everything's fallen.

Next year is definitely going to be challenging for a lot of students. What kind of materials do you use when you're doing enrichment? Let's say a student wants to read a book with a volunteer virtually—do you use an online book? Or do you make sure they both have the same book in person?

One of our strengths is our partnership with the library; that's been a great asset. We have run a couple of book clubs, and we've collaborated with them on their Read Brave programs that they do every year. And so with that, we were able to have the author of the Astrid and Apollo book series, who's a local author, come and visit the classes and all the students have the physical books in hand. We have had some other book clubs that our librarians or school librarians have been able to help us connect with online books, so students can all access the same book online.

I think Read Brave is particular to Saint Paul, although Minneapolis may use a similar program. I'm really just more familiar with the Saint Paul library system. They've really been a literacy support when it comes to programming.

What other kind of enrichment have you been able to do virtually, beyond traditional literacy support?

Other examples of enrichment classes: we've partnered with Urban Boatbuilders. This was their first time doing virtual woodworking projects. Here they have a physical shop in Saint Paul. In the fall, we did a folding camp chair class. They assemble the kits for the students with all the materials that they would need from beginning to end to make camp chairs. We got those out to 10 students, and then they had an instructor who would meet with them virtually twice a week for an hour and a half. And they made folding camp chairs. This past winter/spring, we were able to offer that class again, along with a folding desk class.

One of our coordinators was able to strike up a partnership with Hope Breakfast Bar. They put together food ingredients, and then our coordinator had to deliver all those on a weekly basis because there were perishables, but that person from Hope Breakfast and I would meet online with the students and they would assemble their dish for the day using the ingredients that they put together.

We've worked with the Thirsty Whale Bakery, which is actually in Minneapolis. They put together baking tips and instructions and instructional videos, and students are able to make their own cookies and cake pops. So it's really been a really cool year, figuring out how to continue to do things in this virtual world and still get a product into the kid's hands, that they're still feeling it and doing it. It's actually been kind of exciting in a weird way—they have had a lot of opportunities that they wouldn't have had otherwise.

What are the names of some of the places you partner with?

Freedom School is part of the district's public schools right now and they're kind of their own organization as well.

Minnesota Computers for Schools has an instructor that has been doing a lot of coding and game design. Mikayla Oz Magic. She's actually from Iowa, but she has an online magic class that she put together. We have an instructor that shows the videos and goes through the tricks with the students.

Quite frankly, we have so many talented individuals who are doing classes too. We have some of the classes that we've had before. We have acrylic painting. Another big partner has been Interfaith, doing some of our indigenous-focused programming; we have a decoder language class and Ojibwe plants class.

We have a gentleman doing a circus and juggling class, metal jewelry making, outdoor survival, anime, film appreciation. We definitely have some really rockin’ partners. But we also just have some incredible individuals too. Dungeons and Dragons is a huge class, just a huge interest for the students! We've worked with the Urban Debate League, so we have debate clubs.

They're really getting a good level of enrichment, even though they're at home.

Yeah. And one of the things that we always try to do is to slide in the academics through the enrichment. The folding camp chair and desk class, they're hanging out, they're laughing, they're having fun, and at the same time, they're learning about angles and strategy. We qualify those as academic too.

Do you still use a strict, set curriculum?

Now that there's COVID, in terms of tutoring, we don't. And in the past, our tutoring has been dependent on the individuals that we've been able to recruit to lead that. Typically at my school, every year there's two AmeriCorps Promise Fellows who work during the school day and partner with Flipside after school to help fulfill their required hours. Curriculum or literacy strategies go along with that. It is kind of a catch-all for anything and everything that the students bring in.

Farnsworth is an aerospace-focused middle school, so there is a NASA class that they're offering. That was a class that the instructor needed to be trained in, with a set curriculum in that class. So we do sometimes have partners that come and say, this is the program that we want to offer the students and then we take a look at it and say, this specifically is a great fit, let's do that. Otherwise, it's individuals coming up with their own curriculum or their own plan for the class.

Do you still work with AmeriCorps?

Yeah, we do. One of our AmeriCorps members has been leading the anime drawing class. Then another AmeriCorps member has been leading the study skills class that I was talking about earlier with just the two students attending.

Do you have a way of assessing the progress of individual kids without you having to keep track of their attendance?

One of the ways that we do that on an annual basis is we look at MCA test scores. We ourselves don't have academic assessments that we do within the program, but we do look at school data and use that as markers. That's not a direct correlation by any means, but we go off the research that's out there that if students are connected during out of school time, they're more likely to be connected during the school day. So, we know there's an impact. We just can't say it's our direct impact. But we know that there's definitely a huge correlation between a student feeling connected and supported by their community and doing well in school.