A group of kindergartners make their way to a large rug by the windows of a classroom at Allendale Columbia School.
In a couple of weeks, many of them will be entering a new grade level at the Rochester City School District, where about half of students enrolled live in poverty.
But for now, while it’s still summer, they are learning how to read and write at this program, which began nine years ago as a partnership between the private school and the city district’s School 17.
Some help pass around thin books with big letters. The book “Garden Day” is part of an overall theme that Tiana Junious, director of academics and curriculum, put together.
“Our theme this year is getting back to our roots. And I tried to tie in the curriculum based off of that,” Junious said.
For younger classes like this one, they focus on actual plant roots. For older classes, they focus on family roots and African-American heritage.
“If you look at our books, our students can easily pick out people or characters who kind of represent them or look like them,” she said. “I feel like that is important because you have to be able to see yourself in what you're doing, or you can't relate.”
Near the cafeteria, second-grader Melvin Santiago speaks to that.
“I have this book that's called Leo Messi,” Melvin said. “He's like a superstar, all-star player from soccer. And my dad and mom thinks I might be them because I'm good at soccer, too.”
During the school year, Junious said students like Melvin might not get an opportunity to see themselves reflected in the curriculum. That would be a missed opportunity because as education specialist Dan DeMarle said, representation is an important factor in students’ education.
“When kids can see themselves reflected in the actual material and have their stories inflected is really powerful,” DeMarle said.
He said the power of inspiration, of influence, and of feeling valued can lead students on a path toward loftier goals than if they hadn’t had that exposure -- which is part of what this summer program is about. It’s meant to help students experiencing childhood poverty achieve academic success.
Recent studies by Stanford University scholar Sean Reardon and others show that students in schools with high poverty rates tend to have greater achievement gaps. The correlation coincides with racial segregation, and Black and Hispanic students tend to be most affected.
According to a 2020 study by education policy advocacy organization, EdBuild, one the worst cases of school segregation in the country is between Rochester and suburban districts.
One of the teachers at the summer program, Karen Lewis, also teaches kindergarten at School 10 in the city. Her approach to teaching starts with the basics, she said.
“Before I start to teach, I gotta see what the need is,” Lewis said. “If they're hungry, then I need to make sure that they're eating. If they're having a sad day, I need to have them talk with me so that they can get to a better place so that they can learn. If you ... just start teaching, it's not effective, because they have needs and you're not meeting them.”
Addressing those needs in schools with higher rates of childhood poverty can overload teachers and the education system, DeMarle said.
“If you have one kid who's homeless and doesn't have enough food, and you’re a class of 20 kids, it's easier to address those needs,” DeMarle said. “But if you have a class of 12 out of 20, then most of the time you're dealing with those issues. So it's the concentration of poverty, not poverty itself, that makes it hard for kids to learn.
Rochester’s long history of segregation is one of the reasons there is a significant concentration of poverty in the city of Rochester, he said.
There are about 180 students enrolled in this year’s Summer Leap program at Allendale. Based on data from the state education department, that’s less than 1% of the total enrollment in the City School District.
But while the impact may be limited, DeMarle said it’s still meaningful.
“Sometimes addressing a group of kids or an individual kid and helping them, you change that kid's life. And that by itself is great,” DeMarle said. “It would never be enough. But if you could ... help those kids see themselves in a different way, improve their reading a little bit, then it was worth it.”
