In August, 2020 the Spencer Foundation awarded OCEAN and project leads Dr. June Ahn, Dean Richard Arum, and Samueli Academy Executive Director Anthony Saba to work with local schools and community organizations.

The grant supports the implementation of systems to support housing insecure and foster youth across Orange County. Fall quarter, Graduate Student Researchers Chris Wegemer, Lora Cawelti, and Verenisse Ponce-Soria and Post-doctoral Scholar Erica Van Steenis, recruited educators and practitioners from schools and organizations across Orange County to form a Network Improvement Community (NIC). We held meetings to establish team structures and norms, brainstormed ideas to connect with partners, and interviewed practitioners and educators to better understand the issues they face.

After interviews were conducted, the team took partners’ responses and organized our first convening, which included 10 core partners from 7 different schools and organizations. The 2-hour session began with an overview and timeline of the project and continued to an activity where partners reflected on how equity manifests in their work with housing insecure and foster-youth.

The activity set the stage for the relationship-building exercises that followed. Partners connected with each other via Zoom break-out rooms and reflected on the pressing issues they face in their work. We then collectively discussed the scope of issues we could work on as a team.

With so much energy and enthusiasm from partners, the 2-hour session flew by. The team left the session feeling energized and excited to continue refining the research focus. After months of uncertainty and living in ambiguity, this project, like the world around us, is giving us energy and hope for the future.

~Written by Graduate Student Researcher Verenisse Ponce-Soria

Supported by the National Science Foundation, OCEAN partners with Santa Ana Early Learning Initiative (SAELI) and the Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) to co-design out-of-classroom playful learning environments that promote children’s STEM learning.

As part of this NSF supported project, called “Stimulating STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) in the City: Co-Designing with Latinx Families to Promote Informal STEM Learning, OCEAN and SAELI are designing playful installations in everyday community spaces (i.e., grocery stores, bus stops) to promote family engagement and STEM learning in children from 0 to 9 years old.

An extension of this work, “Fractions in the Schoolyard”, will focus on fraction learning in playful, schoolyard environments at Romero-Cruz Academy and Esqueda Elementary School in Santa Ana, CA. Both projects engage in monthly virtual co-design sessions with community members, including parents, local agencies, and teachers with mathematics and physical education backgrounds. 

With SAELI, we have conducted three co-design sessions with Spanish-speaking parents to learn about their community’s values and design playful STEM activities that build on those values to facilitate family interactions and early STEM learning. Meanwhile, “Fractions in the Schoolyard” builds upon previous work completed at El Sol Academy in Santa Ana, where OCEAN and the El Sol community co-designed “Fraction Ball”, a suite of fraction-based games for their reimagined basketball court. Next month, we will begin co-design sessions with teachers at Romero-Cruz and Esqueda schools to better align Fraction Ball games with teachers’ fraction lessons and begin the process of scaling up to other schools in SAUSD. 

We look forward to growing in our partnerships and bringing playful STEM learning to life in Orange County this winter and upcoming spring!

In partnership with OCEAN, High School Inc. (HSI) seeks to further support Career Academies at Valley High School in an attempt to contribute to the college and career readiness of Valley High School students.

Career Academies are part of the California Partnership Academies (CPA) model, which incorporate integrated academic and career technical education, business partnerships, mentoring, and internships.

Together, HSI and OCEAN built a driver diagram of learning outcomes, administered student surveys on beliefs toward higher education/career readiness, and conducted interviews with academy mentors and teachers to further understand the mentorship program. In initial research activities, the partnership found that students who had a business mentor and/or participated in core workforce development initiatives such as internships and competitions found the HSI Academies program to be more helpful in assisting them in achieving both their career and college goals than students who did not have those same experiences. Building on these findings, we are in the process of developing a plan to expand these core college and career experiences so that more students can participate and benefit.

Part of this process will include developing logic models for key program initiatives collectively with stakeholders including teachers, mentors, and alumni, beginning with the mentorship program. The purpose is to be able to provide a uniform framework, maximize the benefit for students, and expand the opportunities to more students across all six college and career academies.

To Learn more about High School Inc. Academies Foundation visit their website.