School before: Before- and After-School Programs | Childtime

Before & After School – Innovation Learning

Innovation Learning

Our leadership team consists of educators who are also parents that understand skills associated with an “innovative mindset” have a very high correlation with improved academic outcomes. We believe that such skills should be taught and practiced in a fun and exciting way, and our approach is a balanced one, offering the District a variety of choices when it comes to teaching the skills associated with Innovation. Our full-service program marries traditional features of before and after school programs, such as a focus on child safety, program licensing, snack, and the inclusion of a play-based curriculum, with a 21st Century twist. Each day offers a variety of different activities that fall into one of these four categories:

Academic Support

Licensed teachers not only check for accuracy and completion of homework, but also possess the expertise to ensure student understanding. Parents love that their child can complete their homework before pick-up. This ensures that families can spend more quality time together, and that teachers see positive impact in the classroom the next day.

Recreation and Physical Fitness

Students need opportunities to get out and move! The Innovation Learning recreation component helps students have fun with fitness and build critical social skills. Schools can choose from a variety of program elements such as our Discovery Play, Fun Fitness, and Daily SWITCH programs to engage students in simulations, role play, sports and games. By providing eclectic opportunities, we offer a program that children embrace and want to attend.

STEM Learning

Our STEM curriculum has been designed and developed by our experienced STEM Team. Together they have created a fun and engaging experience that serves to enhance STEM concepts and skills associated with innovation in a way that children enjoy and love. The result is Innovation Stations, a program that bridges the digital divide for students that might not have regular access to technology, but also offers those that do have access an opportunity to use technology in new and different ways.

Research proves that PLAY is a powerful tool to engage students in 21st Century Skills. With this in mind, we integrate the elements of play throughout our entire program and provide special attention to this process through a variety of program elements such as our Free Play and TINKER Time. All of our Play Periods include supervised structured and unstructured time for students to use their imagination to learn, practice and incorporate creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking skills into their everyday life.

Design Thinking

Based on human-centered design theory and the engineering design process, we challenge our students to become better at empathizing, asking questions, ideating, prototyping, and testing their ideas so that they understand and believe that all problems can be solved. By introducing this mindset of curiosity, bias towards action, reframing, mindfulness of process, and radical collaboration, we can empower them to solve both their daily problems and problems facing their community.   

“Innovation Learning is an extended learning provider that offers the children in their care more than just a safe place to be after school. Their philosophy is to provide students a true extension of their school day in a fun, creative way.”

– MARY VITULLI, PRINCIPAL, ST. PATRICK’S CATHOLIC SCHOOL

The Innovation Learning Day

Our program has been designed to promote active participation while helping children to experience increased control of their own learning. Over decades as career educators, we have crafted the ideal framework that marries structured programming, research based and skill-building methods with adaptable, creative frameworks that allow children to become innovators.

We offer a flexible format, so students can make choices about what and how they learn during their before and after school program. Coupled with the training we provide to our staff, teaching them to act as learning facilitators, our programs better position students for success.

SWITCH leverages the Responsive Classroom approach and the Choose Love curriculum, which emphasize social and emotional growth through a variety of daily interactive activities. Choose Love centers on four important character values – Courage, Gratitude, Forgiveness, and Compassion in Action – which cultivates optimism, resilience, and personal responsibility. Responsive Classroom focuses on academic success and social-emotional learning in grades K-8. The approach’s four key domains are engaging academics, positive community, effective management, and developmental awareness. We utilize simulation, role play, and fun games from both curricula to build community while teaching social skills and a sense of mastery, generosity, belonging, and independence for our students. 

Consistent with our emphasis on Gold Standard Project Based Learning, Innovation Learning has partnered with Children’s Hospital in Colorado, the Design for Community Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and EcosySTEM Arts to develop a yearly challenge. During this challenge, thousands of Innovation Learning students from across the country invent fun and interactive prototypes of STEM toys for health impacted kids at Children’s Hospital, Colorado.

Over two weeks, they research the problem and brainstorm wild ideas. Staff guides students to produce working prototypes of the products, which are tested and improved during our after school programs. Students communicate their solutions in a variety of methods, including school-wide assemblies, learning fairs, newsletters, technical drawings, photos, and video. They continue this process throughout the school year with the help of CU engineering students who assist them in refining and prototyping their ideas. The project culminates when EcosySTEM ARTS, a collection of passionate community members and college students who strive to deliver meaningful education experiences for health impacted children, bring the ideas and prototypes into the hospital interacting with patients.

Our STEM curriculum has been designed and developed by our Curriculum Team. They created a fun experience that serves to enhance STEM concepts and skills associated with innovation in a way that children enjoy and love.

Our STEM-based program incorporates the Buck Institute’s Project Based Learning (PBL) Gold Standard format. Robotics, electrical engineering, coding, gaming, engineer design process, flight, and chemistry are a few areas of focus. We also incorporate play, movement, discovery, teambuilding, and interaction with multiple forms of technology to help teach and practice skills that foster innovation. The result is a program that bridges the digital divide for students that might not have regular access to technology, but also offers those that do have access an opportunity to use technology in new and different ways.

Schools are unique when it comes to how they each approach homework. Some schools give very little while others give large amounts. Regardless of the camp you are in, Innovation Learning can offer just the right level of support. Our homework program goes beyond a simple homework club. We incorporate licensed   teachers who provide the expertise necessary to ensure students not only complete their homework but understand it. They check for accuracy, and completion, so children can enjoy quality family time each evening and are prepared for school the next day.

We embrace a holistic approach to before and after school programs, and this includes the need for students to have both a healthy body and a healthy mind. Our goal is for students to participate in a minimum of 60 minutes per day in physical fitness activities. All of our morning programs include fun fitness, which incorporates San Diego State University’s SPARK (Sports, Play and Active Recreation for Kids) approach. We add a minimum of 30 minutes of fitness programming as part of our afternoon programs. Each school district can also add up to 60 minutes of fitness time to their afternoon programs if desired.  

Daily, vigorous outdoor play, team building, and discovery activities are essential to engaging mind and body. Children are physically active in a structured play time that includes games that foster collaboration, curiosity, communication and creative problem solving. Students practice innovative thinking through gaming and sports. By developing games using a set of predetermined materials, they learn and use the Sprint Method, a process Google developed for answering critical questions through design, prototyping, and testing to create and adapt the games they develop. Students engage in teambuilding games to accomplish a common goal. Upon completion, they debrief within their group and collaborate on how to best present their accomplishment to the rest of their peers. 

At Innovation Learning, we offer TINKER time for children so they can investigate topics of their choice while subsequently developing solutions to everyday problems. TINKER Time allows students to pick their own projects and learning outcomes, while still hitting all the standards and skills for their grade level.

Art, Drama, STEM based enrichment activities, such as robotics, coding, computer gaming, karate, guitar, piano, drama, visual arts and some sports are all included in our program at no extra charge for those students enrolled in our regular after school program.

Based upon our relationships that with national providers, we can offer a catalog of additional on-site and online enrichments such as Band, Orchestra, Violin, Golf, Tennis, etc. Most of these enrichments require extra equipment and are more specialized. Premium Enrichments do carry an additional charge. We make Premium Enrichments available to the entire student community (not just those who attend our programs). Where implemented, these classes offer additional choices for students to expand their interests.

Connected Learning Partner

Our tailored approach to a District and individual schools ensures we will become a connected partner and an extension of your school day.

Online Enrichment

We partner with high-quality enrichment providers to offer virtual enrichment opportunities that keep students engaged and motivated. Contact us to learn more!

Program & Curriculum

We offer a flexible format, so schools and parents can make choices about what components of our program they want to use.

• “We love the creative projects they work on, seeing the staff work with the kids not just on their homework but taking it further and going above and beyond to work with the kids on their basic skills, communication, presentation, creative thinking, etc. They’re learning and having fun!“

  – Parent at Eagle Heights Elementary, Missouri

• “Wonderful staff!!! The BEST program we have used!!! Thank you, EVERYONE!!!!”

  – Parent at Ridgeline Academy, Arizona

• “I really enjoy the staff! They help with my child’s needs and concerns. I highly recommend Innovation Learning!”

  – Parent at ALA San Tan Valley, Arizona

• “The staff is awesome! I love how they do so many activities with the students. They are never bored. My children always get mad they have to leave for home when we pick them up. This shows how the program is wonderful and the staff as well. Such a nice group of people. ”

  – Parent at St. Patrick Catholic School, Illinois

• “The team is amazing – great caregivers and very nice people. I have great confidence in them and can leave my granddaughter there without any worries. Gives us such peace of mind which is important to us. I also appreciate how well stocked the center is. There is an abundance of supplies for crafts, work and play. Please ensure the team there is recognized. We don’t know how we’d manage without this service!”

  – Guardian at Elk Creek Elementary School, Colorado

Before School Program (Elementary) / Overview

2022-2023 School Year

Program Details

Starting September 12, 2022, Newton Public Schools will be offering the Early Morning Program for students in Grades K through 5 in each of the elementary schools.  The program is designed to provide a needed service by giving parents the opportunity to bring their children to school prior to the beginning of the regularly scheduled school day.   Within the program, each elementary school will offer supervised before school care from 7:20 a.m. until 8:10 a.m. when the school day begins.

Registration

Please register your student online through MySchoolBucks.com starting on August 1st. Once you have registered, your student’s registration status will not be active until it has been approved by the Business Office.  If your registration is approved, you will receive a confirmation email. We will try to accommodate all students who sign up, but due to staffing and space constraints, we may need to limit the number of students in this program. If this is the case, we will put your student on a waitlist and send an email notifying you of this status.

If you register after Oct. 1, please contact the business office at 617-559-9025 or [email protected]. A pro-rated payment will be determined based upon your child’s start date and payment will be coordinated.

Payment

Payment will not be required until your student’s registration in MySchoolBucks. com has been approved by the Business Office. Payments should be made online using MySchoolBucks. Several payment schedule options are available. The program cost is $12.00 per day.  The yearly costs detailed in the chart below are based on 176 total days.  If you have a credit from a prior year due to the circumstances surrounding COVID-19, please contact the Business Office before submitting payment. 

Financial Waivers are available but you must be approved for a financial waiver before you select this option when registering.  To apply for a financial waiver, please apply through Aspen. 

For more information regarding the financial waiver, please visit this page: NPS Financial Waiver Information. If you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected].

Frequently Asked Questions 

Who is entitled to sign up for the program?

Any child registered at any Newton Public elementary school is allowed to attend this program.

What are the hours?

You may drop your child off at 7:20 a.m. at his or her respective elementary school.  At 8:10 a.m., students will be brought to their regularly scheduled class.

Is financial assistance available?

Yes; all waiver requests must include an Early Morning Program Financial Assistance Application. The Assistant Superintendent/Chief Financial and Administrative Officer will review all applications and determine eligibility.

Can my child attend the morning program at a different elementary school than the school they attend for class?

No.  There will be no transportation available to take the children from one school to the other.

How many days do I have to sign up for?

You may sign up for a single day of the week, or as many days as you’d like.  However, the days are not transferable and your child will only be allowed to attend the program on the days for which you pre-registered. 

Why must I sign up in the summer?

Staffing for this program is contingent upon the number of children we will have attending.  Accurate numbers are necessary in advance to insure a proper staff to student ratio from the onset of this program. 

If I do not sign up for the program in advance, may I drop my student off on sporadic days when assistance is needed?

No.  There will be no one available to collect a daily fee, and we cannot guarantee the program will be properly staffed for additional children who are unregistered.   If circumstances arise where weekly early morning care becomes necessary, please contact the Department of Business, Finance and Planning.  If space remains at your child’s school, it is possible that your student can be added after the program has begun for a prorated fee.  This is strictly subject to availability and the discretion of the program administrator.

What if there is a delayed start?

The program will not operate on days with a delayed start due to inclement weather or other unforeseen circumstances.  The delayed start is designed to give the city time to prepare the schools.  There will be no refunds for delayed starts.

Will I receive a refund if there is a snow day?

No, there will be no refunds.  However, if snow days cause the last day of school to be after June 22, 2022, the program will run on those days with no additional charge. 

Who will be watching my child?

The program will be staffed by trained Newton Public Schools personnel.  

What will my child be doing for the duration of this program?

Depending on the age of your child and the school they attend, students will spend their time reading, playing games, doing homework, or working with staff members on a variety of other projects.

Breakfast will not be provided, but your child is welcome to bring a small snack to eat.

Who can I speak with if I have further questions?

Please contact the Department of Business, Finance & Planning at 617-559-9025.

Is there a paper application?

Elementary Early Morning Program Paper Application

5 challenges facing the modern Russian school

New professions, internet instead of books, gadgets 24/7. And the most difficult thing is to get used to new conditions, schools and teachers. On the air of the Radio School program on Radio Moscow Talks, the director of the Pokrovsky Quarter school, Ilya Novokreshchenov, spoke about the challenges the modern Russian school is facing.

1. The school should be constantly changing so that children want to go to it (at least a little)

If the school is not changed, it will disappear as an institution – children will stop going to it. At best, it will remain a storage room for teenagers so that they do not do anything bad on the street. There is a popular teaching method from the founder of pedagogy Jan Comenius – the “talking head” technology. When a talking head comes out, who knows a lot and tells the children about it. And the ideal child is a voice recorder child who recorded everything and then reproduced it. Nobody needs such reproducing pedagogy anymore. In a modern school, it is important that the teacher can help organize the child’s classes, and that these classes are varied. After all, children not only listen, they write, read, discuss with each other, and do some projects. During the lesson, the activity of the child should constantly change.

2. The school should prepare children for real life

Not the school should teach, not the school should educate, but the school should help. This is probably a challenge that the school is not coping with very well so far. For a teacher who is used to seeing himself as the only center of proven knowledge and a window to the world of the future, changing the idea of ​​his new role is the most difficult task.

But at the same time, the school should still remain a kind of navigator for the child, because if he independently gets, for example, into the Internet, he can easily get lost there. He has not yet been taught to work with information – which thesis can be considered true, how much it is confirmed by arguments and examples. And the school should help him with this.

A school can become an integrator of those opportunities for a child that are available in the city. The city itself can be perceived as a big school: it has museums, theaters, architectural monuments and many other interesting things. The school can become an integrator of all this wealth so that the child receives the education that he can and wants to receive.

3. The school needs to “clean up” the curriculum a bit

Information and knowledge are different things. The school curriculum is heavily overloaded with information that will not become knowledge anyway. Therefore, it makes no sense to inform the child about something, if then it does not matter to you what part of the information will be learned. And today there are already attempts to get away from this congestion. In Moscow, for example, there are engineering classes, medical classes – what are they talking about? About the fact that in the main school the child must decide what is close to him and will be useful in the future, and already in the 10th-11th grade, begin to seriously immerse himself in the subject.

4. The school should teach children to learn on their own

The modern child will live in a future of uncertainty. We understand what the Soviet school was preparing for – the child’s whole life was scheduled. But what will happen in the future with the children who are now leaving school is not clear. The top 10 professions are updated every two or three years, and so radically that when today’s eleventh grader graduates from high school, this list will be completely different. And in this sense, we have no right to put a child in a situation where he graduated from school or university and thinks that he has received some kind of education and it will allow him to go somewhere further. The child must be ready to continue his education, therefore one of the key tasks of the school is to help the child learn to independently master and acquire knowledge. Otherwise, a person will not be able to enter the labor market.

5. The school needs to understand that gadgets are a new way of knowing the world. They cannot be ignored

If most of the parents of today’s students studied the world through reading books, then the child explores the modern world through the Internet. And this is a completely different way of knowing. Moreover, for a child, this method is much more natural than through reading books. We all sound the alarm with horror: “How is it that children don’t read much.” In fact, they don’t read much. They read a lot, it’s just that the text is now not where we are used to. Therefore, gadgets need to be legalized. It is foolish to ignore them, realizing that the child uses them every day. Gadgets are a way of knowing the world, nothing more. Of course, we have not yet come up with such meters that would not be afraid of using a smartphone during exams, but this is another challenge for us adults.

Cover image: iStockphoto (Choreograph)

Right to face the challenges of the technological revolution

May 31 – June 1, 2019

XIV International School-Practicum for young legal scholars

A new word in law in the face of the challenges of the technological revolution

Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation May 31 – June 1, 2019holds the XIV International School-Practicum for Young Lawyers on the topic “Law in the face of the challenges of the technological revolution”.

One of the main goals of the annual School is to bring together young representatives of legal science from different countries, different scientific schools and directions to solve pressing problems of law.

The purpose of the School held this year is a joint scientific search and understanding of large-scale processes occurring in law under the influence of new technologies. It is necessary to study the consequences of the widespread introduction of technological innovations in various spheres of public life, as well as in the activities of state and public institutions.

The School will be attended by representatives of federal state authorities and authorities of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the Council of Europe, international organizations, as well as scientists from France, Italy, China, Iran, Kazakhstan, Belarus and other states.

The plenary session is chaired by the Director of the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation, Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Member of the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission of the Council of Europe), Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Full Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law, Doctor of Law, Professor, Honored Lawyer of the Russian Federation Federation, Honored Lawyer of the Republic of Tatarstan T. Ya. Khabrieva .

Speeches are planned: President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation A.M. Sergeev , Minister of Justice of the Russian Federation Candidate of Law A.V. Konovalov , Member of the Committee of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on constitutional legislation and state building, Doctor of Law, Professor I.V. Rukavishnikova , President of the Islamic Research Center of the Islamic Consultative Council (Majlis) of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ayatollah Ahmad Muballegi , Chairman of the Board of the Skolkovo Foundation Candidate of Law, Associate Professor I.A. Drozdov , Secretary of State – Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Candidate of Economic and Legal Sciences M. B. Lukashevich , Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on the financial market Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Doctor of Economics M.L. Shakkum , President of the Russian Association of the Cryptoindustry and Blockchain Pripachkin and others.

Within the framework of the School, sectional meetings and round tables will be held in the following areas: “The dynamics of law in society: “human” or “technical”; Interactive Round Table “Modern technologies and law: international objective overview”, “The regulatory role of international organizations and the challenges of the technological revolution”, “The digital matrix of financial legal relations”, “Legal protection of the individual in the context of the technological revolution”, “Law in the era of convergent technologies” ”, “Law and genomics: legal regulation of genomic research and the use of their results”, a master class on the topic “The quality standard of legal education through the eyes of an employer, or how to build a career as a lawyer” and others.