Education Northwest and MCSC Host Education Symposium

Written by Nicky Martin, Education Northwest

For 45 years, Education Northwest has been working with schools, districts, and communities across the country on comprehensive, research-based solutions to the challenges they face. Staff at Education Northwest are dedicated to and passionate about learning. Through our work, we strive to create vibrant learning environments where all youth and adults can succeed. We work with teachers, administrators, policymakers, and communities to identify needs, evaluate programs, and develop new solutions. The breadth of our work—ranging from training teachers, to developing curriculum, to restructuring schools, to evaluating programs—allows us to take a comprehensive look at education and to bring wide-ranging expertise and creativity to our clients’ challenges.

Since 1998, Education Northwest has worked specifically to support national service programs and community- and school-based mentoring programs. In partnership with Bank Street College of Education, we administered the LEARNS project for more than a decade – providing training and technical assistance to national service programs working with schools to provide tutoring, mentoring and out-of-school time support to youth.

In October, we built on this experience to partner with the Michigan Community Service Commission (MCSC) on The Symposium: National Service as a Strategy to Support Schools. This two-day event in Thompsonville brought together teams of practitioners to learn about evidence-based best practices in tutoring, out-of-school time and school readiness and to hear from successful program peers. Teams spent focused planning time translating best practice into site-specific strategies that will strengthen their programs and bolster their school partnerships. The MCSC will follow up the event with facilitated learning communities that will help to carry on the conversation post-event.

We at Education Northwest have a long history of collaboration with MCSC and were happy to have this latest opportunity! MSCS does terrific work supporting programs throughout the state and sharing knowledge and expertise across the larger national service community. It’s our hope that our event can be replicated in other states in support of the Corporation for National and Community Service’s continued focus on education as a priority area.