Valerie Gay remembers vividly everything about that December night years ago: where she sat at the Academy of Music, what she wore, how cold it was. And most of all, what happened inside of her when soprano Jessye Norman launched into her first aria during Opera Philadelphia’s performance of Dido and Aeneas.

“I never knew how opera could prick my heart until I heard her sing,” Gay recalls, adding how moved she was to see a woman with skin as black as hers standing center stage. “If it weren’t for that night, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

By “here,” Gay is referring to the post of chief cultural officer for the City of Philadelphia where she manages the city’s arts programs, the latest peak in a distinguished career as a vocal artist and museum official that began with her experience in choir at Girls High.

Gay’s early experience, her in-person encounter with the arts, is typical, not rare. Most people recall a moment from their school days that had nothing to do with tests, test tubes or textbooks, but which they treasure to this day. It might have been the time their robotics team took that trophy. Or their volleyball team went to states. Or when they:

• • Had that first speaking part in a school play.
  • Gazed at their artwork up on a wall with a ribbon hanging from it.
  • Led the way as a group of quarrelsome teens transformed into a top-notch park cleanup team.

These are the experiences that spark joy, that show them what could be and how they could be part of it, that light their path to confidence, commitment and lifelong passions.

Collectively, we call such opportunities, and the unforgettable moments, lessons and inspiration they produce, by this name: enrichment.

These activities are not frills. They are as fundamental to students’ growth — and their future capacity as workers and citizens — as learning computer code, the periodic table, or the causes of the Civil War. Research shows that enrichment programs actually make some students more eager to come to school each day.

And yet, as the recent, distressing headlines have shown, funding for these programs is always fragile and at risk of being the first to feel the ax.

Good school systems need to fight against this trend and be as strategic, evidence-based, rigorous, collaborative and generous about providing enrichment as they are about core academics. The available paths to enrichment need to be as varied as the backgrounds, needs and passions of their students.

The Philadelphia school system has been providing many such experiences for years, both through internal programs and initiatives run by community partners. While some of those programs are outstanding, the efforts have also sometimes been scattershot, unconnected, or duplicative.

But momentum is now building for Philadelphia to provide a more coordinated, high-quality, and equitable enrichment environment that enhances students’ academic, social, and emotional well-being. To that end, Philadelphia’s Board of Education identified providing well-rounded, enriching experiences for Philadelphia students as a key strategic goal. Aligned to this goal, Accelerate Philly, the District’s strategic plan, lays out a plan to develop a partnerships approach that would consolidate information on the District’s more than 140 enrichment partners.

To help realize this vision, our team — composed of District leaders, community partners and students — has dedicated the past year to craft a strategy that will focus and amplify the impact of enrichment efforts across Philadelphia. As part of this effort, our team set out to explore how to:

• • Create a common, vivid language for talking about enrichment.
  • Define success.
  • Guide partners and vendors on how to align their efforts with the District’s enrichment strategy.
  • Increase our internal collaboration.

What we learned — from listening to students, teachers, partners and research — applies not just to the Philadelphia schools, but to any school system around the region that properly values enrichment.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

Enrichment benefits students, schools and the community

Research demonstrates that well-done enrichment experiences help nurture foundational skills in young people, such as flexibility, attention, persistence, and memory. All these in turn bolster their academic achievement.

But the benefits of enrichment extend beyond academics.

Today’s young people face growing social and emotional health challenges, heightened by the pandemic and the pervasive influence of social media. These influences have led to intensified feelings of isolation, anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

Recent research reveals that positive experiences and support during adolescence can combat these challenges and improve health and social outcomes into adulthood. The students we talked to told us that enrichment activities helped them “have more positive thoughts,” “find their people,” and “discover their passion,” which we describe as three distinct but related pathways of outcomes — joy, community and fulfillment.

The benefits of enrichment also extend beyond students.

When enrichment motivates students to come to school and to feel welcomed by and connected to a school community, that radically improves school climate. And when community partners help run activities, that increases their understanding of the challenges schools face, as well as their stake in the schools’ success.

School-partner collaboration is easier said than done

Partners that provide enrichment programming to students in the District told us they often find school policies and bureaucracy hard to navigate. From the other side of the conversation, school leaders told us that working with partners requires time and capacity that is often in short supply. Other times, funding can funnel resources into areas with fewer barriers in a way that unintentionally increases rather than addresses inequities in resources among neighborhood schools.

But perhaps most importantly, we learned that collaboration doesn’t just happen; it needs to be based on a shared vocabulary and understanding, clear standards, and constant, honest communication.

Successful enrichment programs foster safe, supportive, interactive and engaging environments

Through both looking at research and listening to students, District and school-based leaders, and community partners, we identified several hallmarks of successful enrichment programs.

• • Clear goals and expectations for students.
  • Open to student voice and eager to align with student interests, while also seeking connections to what’s happening in classrooms.
  • Accessible, inclusive and strive to build community among participants.
  • Interactive, providing space for small-group and one-on-one experiences.
  • Designed to help students gain skills, then provide capstone events where students can showcase those skills, earning praise and building confidence.

Finally, and we know this will come as a huge shock, they should be … fun.

We know our school system still has work to do before these hallmarks are present in every enrichment experience.

To that end, we’re committed to gathering deeper evidence on the impact of enrichment and refining models for collaboration. The next phase of the strategy will focus on developing robust tools for measuring the academic and social-emotional outcomes of enrichment and prioritizing equitable access to programming in underserved areas.

This effort will require the collective backing of multiple stakeholders:

• • District and school leadership need to champion the adoption of new practices and measurement tools to enhance and evaluate enrichment efforts.
  • Enrichment partners need to collaborate with the District on tracking program outcomes and co-designing programs that reflect students’ interests and needs.
  • Philanthropy needs to coordinate funding strategies across foundations to scale impactful efforts and build stronger collaborations between schools and community partners.
  • Community members need to advocate for the importance of enrichment programming in their neighborhoods and support initiatives that broaden access to these vital opportunities.

We’ve seen the good that flows for students, educators and community when we do enrichment well: the sense of community, joy and fulfillment inside a school’s classrooms and hallways; the imparting of skills that will serve students well throughout life; students “finding their people” and glimpsing possible paths that might otherwise be unknown to them.

Just as Valerie Gay did.

On the Monday after the Friday when Jessye Norman filled her soul, she marched into the office of William Murphy, the legendary vocal music teacher at Girls High.

“Do you think I could do that for a living?” she asked him, amazed at the words on her lips.

“You’re serious? Ok, good, here’s how we need to get to work,” Murphy said. Gay’s experience in choir ultimately guided her to a scholarship at a prestigious conservatory.

And the entire Philadelphia region has been enriched by what followed.

Gay, for one, wants Philadelphians to dig deep to keep enrichment programs thriving.

“I’m a huge advocate of exposing kids to as much as possible,” she says. “They can never know what it is they want or could be until they have the concrete experience of it. We need to prepare them to be citizens of the world.”

Claire Robertson-Kraft is founder and executive director of ImpactED, a center for social impact based in the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies. Severin Tucker is the Director of Policy and Data Strategy in the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the School District of Philadelphia, where he has worked for 12 years.

The Citizen welcomes guest commentary from community members who represent that it is their own work and their own opinion based on true facts that they know firsthand.

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