Tenacity’s Ned Eames discussed the importance of after school programs at the Center for American Progress on Wednesday, February 18, 2010. He spoke about the measurable effectiveness of targeting programs towards the students who most need them, citing examples from his own experience with Tenacity, as well as findings from a recent study “Expanding Time, Enriching Experiences” by Kathleen Traphagen and Christine Johnson-Staub.” From the study: “Tenacity’s outreach catalyzes parents to increase their involvement in their children’s education.” The study details many of the methods used by Tenacity to improve the lives of schoolchildren – for more information, click here.
Tenacity was founded with the goal of leveraging public-private partnerships to teach urban youth to play tennis and sharpen their literacy and life skills. Tenacity partners with the City of
Tenacity offered summer programming to 4,400
Tenacity, then an afterschool provider at Umana, was invited to join the ELT planning team in 2005. The Tenacity-Umana partnership has continually evolved since the first year of ELT implementation, school year 2006-07. Currently 70 students—one class each of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders—take the Tenacity class at Umana. The Tenacity model, across all of its sites, is structured for students to remain in the program for three years from sixth through eighth grade. The sixth graders attend Tenacity every day for an average of 65 minutes per day—80 minutes Monday through Thursday and 50 minutes on Friday—and the seventh and eighth graders two times a week each for a 2.5 hour block. The instructional time is split evenly between literacy and tennis. Tenacity has full use of the gym for its time blocks, a dedicated storage space for its tennis equipment, a dedicated classroom, and office space at Umana.
The organization provides a free afterschool program from 4:10 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. four days a week focused on tutoring and homework help, in addition to the class during the school day. About 25 students from Tenacity’s classes attend the afterschool program daily.
Literary Curriculum
When Tenacity initiated its programs in 1999 the academic support focused on homework help. Tenacity introduced its own literacy curricula in 2004 that is aligned with the ESE’s learning standards. Tenacity developed its literacy curriculum after realizing that homework help alone was failing to have any effect on the students’ more basic academic performance problems. Tenacity augmented the curriculum in 2009 to further emphasize students’ needs for vocabulary development, reading comprehension skills, and writing.
In 2006 Tenacity became the first sports-based youth development program named by ESE as an official Supplemental Education Services provider. Having SES provider status is key to financing Tenacity’s Umana partnership.
Tennis instruction
Tenacity describes its focus on tennis instruction for urban middle schoolers: “Few sports are at the same time as physical and cerebral as tennis, requiring stamina and quickness, sudden conviction and exceptional patience. That’s why learning tennis helps young players improve their ability to focus their thoughts while developing physical strength, speed, and flexibility. The game of tennis helps a young person become both more self-aware and self-confident; more physically fit and mentally tough; more highly motivated on and off the court.” Tenacity’s approach to tennis instruction focuses on ensuring students learn basic skills quickly so they can enjoy competing and playing the game.
Coutts describes additional benefits to giving Umana students the opportunity to learn tennis: “The urban environment is all about football and basketball. Teaching tennis allows these children to cross class lines,” he explains. “It’s an experience that’s similar to one that their suburban counterparts have. Tennis is a sport these young people can play their whole lives, with each other, with their families. It’s helping to build their cultural capital, equipping them to function effectively in many different environments.”
Staffing model
Tenacity has four full-time staff at Umana: an academic coordinator to teach the literacy curriculum, a tennis coordinator to teach the tennis curriculum, a family engagement coordinator to build relationships with parents and increase family involvement, and a site coordinator who is responsible for the overall site. Each coordinator is responsible for supervision and oversight of the classroom in addition to teaching. Tenacity staff also supervise their four AmeriCorps members and volunteers at Umana, who provide support throughout the day during the literacy and tennis instruction. Tenacity has two full-time staff and three AmeriCorps members each at its other afterschool sites.
Tenacity’s site coordinator at Umana is a certified teacher who is in constant contact with faculty on behalf of Tenacity students. The coordinator attends Individualized Education Plan meetings—for students receiving special education—and cluster meetings of gradelevel teachers. As Gary Phillips, Tenacity’s school year program director, pointed out, Tenacity staff “understand and speak the language of the school.” Tenacity’s leadership cites its intensive staffing model as the key to its quality programming. Phillips said, “Teachers often have a wall up: is this a partner—are they here to stay or are they in and out? Our staffing model helps break down barriers. Deep relationships develop between teachers and site coordinators.”
Said Eames: “The reason we put all this money and effort into this level of staff is the relationships they develop with the young people. Our staff and our young people form relationships that deepen over multiple years. We know from research and from our own practice that these relationships are the most important reason the program has any impact. The kids need these relationships very, very much.”
Partnership impact
On students: a sixth grader enrolled in Tenacity’s class said, “I like that Tenacity cares about us and cares about our education. They contact our parents, they motivate us to do our best in school.” Added another: “They help me solve my problems. They are preparing us for college—helping us find the right school and scholarships.”
Umana outperformed three of the four other Tenacity sites—all of which are traditional afterschool programs—on the pre-post literacy tests in 2009. Among the members of Tenacity’s eighth grade class at Umana, 88 percent scored proficient or above on the English language arts test for the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System versus 49 percent of the eighth graders in the school overall and 59 percent across the district. “We know we are a contributor to that achievement,” said Phillips. Coutts adds, “The instruction that Tenacity is providing is as good as that in the academic classrooms.”
On Umana: Coutts acknowledged that “for our first two years, the attitude of the school was like, this is us, conform to us.” In the last two years, however, Umana has seen Tenacity model best practices within its classroom that they want to replicate for the whole school. Two such practices are:
Family engagement. Tenacity conducts a minimum of two home visits per year for each student enrolled in one of their classes. Tenacity also organizes mid- and end-of-year ceremonies for students to showcase their work in front of their families and friends. The family engagement coordinator at Umana speaks Spanish and understands the cultural and linguistic barriers to family involvement many Umana parents face. “The family engagement work increases our credibility with the school and further embeds us in the school community,” said Phillips. Montes McNeil and others commented that the Tenacity parents are more involved in their children’s education as a result of Tenacity’s outreach.
High school selection. High schools in
Tenacity has developed a comprehensive program for helping its eighth grade cohort across the city choose and apply to high schools that match their interests and preferences. This effort has special resonance in East Boston, where many students and their families do not even consider applying to high schools in other
Massachusetts 2020’s ELT School-Community Grants program funded Tenacity and Umana in 2008 to scale the eighth grade high school selection program to involve all eighth graders, not just those in Tenacity’s class. Tenacity staff members are providing instruction for Umana teachers on the strategies of their initiative. Said Coutts, “We are in our second year of this effort. We are building the capacity of the eighth grade teachers, although we cannot replicate Tenacity’s level of individualized attention. The shift for us is that the teachers own this process more and more—they are becoming invested in the effort to ensure that each of our students attends the high school that is his or her best choice.”
On Tenacity: Said Eames: “ELT has enhanced our organizational commitment to public private partnerships. We took risks entering into this partnership financially and with the changes to our model we needed to make to integrate into the school day. That risk has paid off for us in many ways. ELT helps with recruitment, attendance, and year-to-year retention. It provides a different level of opportunity to influence kids’ trajectories, which is at the core of our mission as an organization.” Phillips notes, “With ELT, the degree of relationship with the kids and their families is more intense, deeper, because we are involved in the whole day. We are more involved with them because we see them during the day, we talk with their teachers. We don’t just see them after school.”
Finances
Finances continue to challenge the Umana Tenacity partnership. Coutts points out that even though the grant revenue per student in ELT schools has been fixed at $1,300 since the program began, the hourly contractual rate for
Coutts leverages the school’s annual ELT grant of $740,000 to bring in a total of $1.5 million per year to support Umana. Tenacity estimates its costs at Umana are $350,000 per year. Umana provides Tenacity with just under half of the funding it needs to sustain its programming using a combination of ELT, Supplemental Education Services, and other funding. Tenacity makes up the difference with a combination of private and public funding. Remarks Eames, “We need a more sustainable model of financing ELT partnerships at a level that approaches what they actually cost.”
