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The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.

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Program Description

Overview All-Around-the-Neighborhood (AATN) is a series of a week-long summer camps piloted by the Neighborhood Learning Community (NLC), a network of people and organizations working together to strengthen learning in the West Side neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota. AATN is primarily focused on intergenerational learning, with the goal of helping to create a culture of learning within the West Side neighborhood. In such a neighborhood, broad numbers of diverse community members are meant to see themselves as lifelong learners and teachers. The hypothesis is that children who grow up immersed in such a culture are more likely to value learning and achieve high levels of academic and community success. AATN was designed and implemented as a strategy to strengthen informal learning for children and to build the neighborhood’s capacity to support such learning.
Start Date 2004
Scope local
Type summer/vacation (in 2005, AATN will be expanded to a year-round after school and summer program)
Location urban
Setting public school, private school, community-based organization, religious institution, recreation center, other
Participants preschool through middle school students (ages 4–13)
Number of Sites/Grantees six sites
Number Served 156 in 2004
Components AATN is designed to allow youth and adults to explore the neighborhood as a “living classroom.” The program emphasizes active learning through age- and culture-appropriate activities. Children participate in week-long camps with nine different themes, one for each week of the program: health and sports, visual arts 1 and 2, cooking and nutrition, cultural collage, ancient sciences, environmental stewardship, community leadership, and theater and performing arts. The themes highlight contributions from the cultures of people who live in the West Side neighborhood. AATN organizers encourage families to enroll children for the entire 9 weeks, but parents can opt for limited involvement and select specific camps.

Participants are divided into three groups. Each group attends a camp with a specific learning theme for 1 week and then changes camp locations and themes the next week. This mobile feature was designed to encourage children, staff, and families to learn more about the places where they live and work. Children are placed in mixed-aged groupings with an emphasis on intergenerational relationships to enhance their opportunities to develop socialization and self-awareness skills.

Camp curricula are designed around a set of learning goals and are based on the talents and knowledge areas of the community members who serve as community teachers. In each camp, learning activities build on each other throughout the week, and, although the themes change with each camp, children are able to work on similar social skills throughout all the camps.

AATN staff, who serve as group leaders, stay with the same group of children for all 9 weeks of camp, while community teachers teach their specific learning themes to different groups of children. Group leaders develop relationships with the children and parents in their cohort, assist with overall logistics, and support the community teachers.
Funding Level $20,000 in 2004
Funding Sources the McKnight Foundation


Evaluation

Overview The evaluation examined AATN’s youth development-related outcomes as well as the attitudes of community members who participated in the program. The evaluators were particularly interested in developing a set of practices and expectations about where and how learning happens, who teaches, and who learns.
Evaluators Nan Kari, Center for Democracy and Citizenship, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota

Erik Skold, Jane Addams School of Democracy

Kari Denissen, Neighborhood Learning Community
Evaluations Profiled Preliminary Evaluation Findings: All-Around-the-Neighborhood Summer Camps
Evaluations Planned Future evaluation will focus on documenting evidence of children’s learning.
Report Availability Kari, N. (with Skold, E., & Denissen, K.). (2004). Preliminary evaluation findings: All-Around-the-Neighborhood summer camps. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Center for Democracy and Citizenship.

Contacts

Evaluation Nan Kari
Co-Director, Center for Democracy and Citizenship
Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
301 19th Ave. So.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Tel: 612-625-3003
Fax: 612-625-3513
Email: nskelton@hhh.umn.edu
Program Erik Skold
Coordinator, All-Around-the-Neighborhood
Baker Community Center
209 W. Page Street
St. Paul, MN 55107
Tel: 651-209-3519
Email: erikskold@hotmail.com
Profile Updated August 2, 2005

Evaluation: Preliminary Evaluation Findings: All-Around-the-Neighborhood Summer Camps



Evaluation Description

Evaluation Purpose To learn from AATN’s implementation and to understand the benefits of the program for participants.
Evaluation Design Non-Experimental: Children who registered for the full 9 weeks of the program were targeted for the evaluation. Pretest (Week 2) and posttest (Week 9) survey data were collected for a group of 19 children who had consistent attendance over the 9 weeks. Pretest/posttest survey data were also collected from 19 adults (staff, community teachers, or parents who worked or volunteered with AATN, depending on who worked most closely with each individual child) at the conclusion of the program. Interview data were collected from a group of six parents, community teachers, and youth development staff, and additional data were gathered from a focus group evaluation session (N = 52 youth) held during the last week of the program.
Data Collection Methods Interviews/Focus Groups: Information gathered in interviews and the group evaluation session included effectiveness of the camp structures, how parents/community members saw themselves as educators, parent roles/strategies to influence formal education, ways to link formal and informal learning, perceptions of children’s learning in the neighborhood, and youth and parent perceptions of AATN.

Surveys/Questionnaires: Children’s and adults’ pretest and posttest surveys measured their perceptions of seven dimensions of the children’s development: responsibility and initiative (e.g., child suggests activities or games to do), teamwork and leadership (e.g., child works in a team with other kids), self-expression (e.g., child expresses his or her ideas and opinions), empathy (e.g., child understands another person’s point of view as different from his or her own), community commitment (e.g., child shows concern for helping others in his or her neighborhood or school), cultural and linguistic confidence (e.g., child is comfortable interacting with children from other cultural or language backgrounds than his or her own), and future awareness (e.g., child talks about what s/he would like to do or be in the future).
Data Collection Timeframe Data were collected between June and August 2004.


Findings:
Formative/Process Findings

Parent/Community Involvement AATN leaders indicated in interviews that interacting on the playground was a good way to build relationships with children and their parents. When parents came to pick up their children, they often stayed to talk and sometimes joined with other adults in play with children.

Interviews with staff revealed that flexibility in engaging parents’ support and participation was important for developing a strong partnership with parents. For example, one group leader said, “My expectation from the start was that parents would have day-to-day updates on their children. [They would] know what the kids were doing. They would have input and the kids would have input. The teachers would be flexible enough to make changes. Because of the structure of the camp, we were able to do that.”

Resources provided by community groups included space for the camps, supplies and materials, and staff and volunteers. For instance, one organization ran a community food program and had mechanisms for food distribution, which helped AATN staff figure out how to organize and deliver snacks to camps at three different sites each day. Another organization, Girl Scouts, had long experience creating learning programs for children and teens, which helped inform the development of camp curricula. Interviews revealed that the contributions of the community groups allowed all groups to share in and claim the results, motivating continued participation.

According to interviews, when the AATN planners originally conceived the design of the program, an early conflict emerged between AATN staff and leaders, who wanted families to enroll children for the full 9 weeks to ensure opportunity for sustained interaction and relationship building, and parents, who understood this but felt there were more practical issues that would take priority for many families. Some wanted their children to “drop in” or to participate in only selected camps throughout the summer to accommodate family day care needs and vacation plans. The planning group compromised by setting aside a quarter of the slots for children who wanted to participate from 1 to 6 weeks.
Program Context/Infrastructure Interviewees felt that West Side organizations were willing to work together on AATN for several reasons. First, it was co-created, rather than developed or owned by any one group. Second, it built on a highly visible and successful collaborative effort to launch a transportation initiative the summer before. Finally, people were able to think about their work not only in terms of their organization’s mission, but also in a larger neighborhood context.

Interviews revealed that there were difficulties in the planning process in determining the role of the various collaborating organizations. For example, according to one planner, “It was difficult at first to figure out how my organization could work it out as a partner organization. All of our programs are fee for service, and until recently we have not worked with grants.…To complicate matters, AATN began only as an idea, somewhat abstract at that. In the beginning, no one really knew if it could be pulled off or not. Despite the risk, however, we found a way to work things out so we could participate as a partner.”

Interviews revealed that there were a number of benefits from having a group of organizations collaborate on the project, including a sense of shared ownership and accomplishment at the conclusion of the program. For example, one planner explained, “We looked at the larger purpose and used our resources to accomplish this rather than each organization taking ‘our’ pot of money. We looked at [the grant] and used it in a different way….We're not so bogged down in the political part.”

Staff reported recognizing over the course of the summer that there were several groups of siblings who arrived at the program together, even though some of the siblings were too young to meet the age criteria. In some of these instances, the oldest child was responsible for their younger brothers and sisters while their parents worked. To accommodate these families, AATN organizers expanded the age range to include everyone, even though it required some rethinking of the curricula.
Satisfaction The final group evaluation session with children revealed that children had several recommendations for themes that should be included in the next series of summer camps, such as fashion, movies, farming, history, video games, and animals.
Staffing/Training Interviews revealed that community adults learned to navigate the neighborhood, build relationships across generations, work through differences, and interact with people of different cultures. For example, according to one community teacher, “I learned about adapting the material. I had to figure out how to pass on the information to kids at different ages. I was used to working with older kids, but I realized when I was teaching photography that there were little kids who didn’t understand. If we didn’t think [younger kids] could do the visual arts, then we had something else set up. We introduced a topic, and said the kindergartners and first graders would do it this way…and older kids another way. Everyone would still be doing the same topic, just differently.”


Summative/Outcome Findings

Academic Parents and other adults reported that children learned about and enthusiastically discussed many topics throughout the summer, such as how convection ovens work, how to make a sundial, how brains were removed from mummies, and how solar photography works.

At the final evaluation session, children described their learning in terms of “doing,” “making,” “building,” and “playing.” They liked things that moved along, and they stayed engaged when teachers adapted projects to allow them to pursue their interests.
Community Development Interviews revealed that AATN created an opportunity for organization staff and community teachers to learn and develop leadership skills. For example, according to one project coordinator, “Community teachers learned about how organizations worked. Organization staff learned how to work with neighborhood leaders. I thought this was a strong point.”
Youth Development The average change across the seven child development dimension scales between pretest and posttest means was 8.6% as reported by children and 5.6% as reported by adults.

On average, children experienced the following levels of improvement on the child development self-assessment: future awareness (15%), teamwork and leadership (12%), community commitment (11%), self-expression (10%), responsibility and initiative (6%), and cultural and linguistic confidence (6%). No improvement was found on the empathy dimension.

On average, adults perceived the following levels of improvement on the child development assessment in the children participating in the program that they knew: community commitment (15%), future awareness (12%), self-expression (8%), and cultural and linguistic confidence (8%). Adults reported no improvements on the dimensions of responsibility and initiative or teamwork and leadership, and perceived an average decline for children on the empathy dimension (-4%).

At posttest, 100% of children answered positively when asked, “Do you feel there are one or two adults here that really care about you?” compared to 84% at pretest.

Interviews revealed that learning happened through everyday encounters when participants viewed the neighborhood as a classroom. For example, according to one community teacher, “We spent about 30 minutes everyday walking through the neighborhood, taking photos [about what kids liked and didn’t like in a neighborhood]. The kids talked to people they met. We came across an older man patching the sidewalk. He explained to them why he was patching and how he prepared the concrete….I think simple things…concrete experiences helped the group process things from their own vantage point.”

According to the interviews, opportunities for experimenting and making “happy mistakes,” as one community teacher said, encouraged risk taking for children and adults. These attitudes modeled by adults allowed children to see that adults do not know everything and that adults also learn as they go. Adults reported that since children were not accountable for learning content in the same way they were in school settings, this helped free them from worries of failure, and invited them to pursue ideas and learning in a cooperative, safe manner.

Interviews revealed that older youth benefited from the focus on intergenerational and mixed-age learning. For example, according to one community teacher, “The older kids were also learning about neighborhood issues and the community. They were learning how to work with younger kids and how to keep them involved.”

Parents reported that their children made new friends in the program. For example, one mother said, “AATN is especially good for neighborhood children who don’t go to West Side schools.”

 

© 2016 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College
Published by Harvard Family Research Project