The arts have a wide array of social, emotional, health, and collaborative benefits arts programming for students, leading to a healthier and stronger community (Halverson, 2021). Art Collab seeks to understand those benefits by implementing a three-part keystone study measuring social-emotional learning outcomes for students participating in Art Collab performing arts programs. Drum Power is a dance and drum workshop emphasizing discipline, community, and leadership. Performing Ourselves is a dance group that seeks to empower underserved youth. Whoopensocker is a theatre nonprofit that teaches storytelling and theatre performance. Now that we have collected all our interview transcripts, observation forms, and surveys, we will begin conducting data analysis in small themed teams: connections through observation, kid profiles, and thematic. My sub-team uses Konopasky’s linguistic tools (Konopasky, 2016) to analyze interview transcripts and describe agency throughout the programs. We will be disseminating our findings to a growing base of school and community arts educators and local and national partners. We will use our results to expand the literature on how arts education increases collaboration and apply for funding to underserved communities.

In recent years, the “no-excuses” model of education has become a popular approach to increase academic achievement in schools serving low-income students of color. The no-excuses approach is a strict disciplinary system where schools dictate how students should behave in school. This approach has a set of practices such as longer school days and school year, more student testing, and a college-going culture. In particular, charter schools have been at the center of this debate for their use of no-excuse approaches to bolster test scores and graduation rates. However, research suggests that these policies are frequently detrimental to students’ emotional health and do little to combat systemic inequality in schools. Among these critiques, there has also been a strong emphasis on the ways these policies have led to the punishment and pushout of particularly boys of color. This presentation aims to complicate and grow this discussion by centering the voices of Latina high school students that experienced a no-excuse education. Drawing from five semi-structured interviews with Latinas who attended a charter school in the San Francisco Bay Area, this study explores the ways Latinas experience no-excuse policies and school discipline. This research also examines how respectability politics played a role in defining a student successful and college-ready, or problematic and under-performing.

A student's academic success depends on their support system through school, community, and family environments. The emergence of community and schooling services through a community-based support model has been studied to increase students' extended access to services, uplift student-family structures, and remove academic barriers. For Black students, the role of culturally competent community support can illuminate educational experiences. Thus, increased achievement for Black students relies on the furtherance of informed community intervention to offset the effects of educational, social, and economic inequalities in underserved school districts. The Los Angeles Unified School District - Community School Initiative (LAUSD - CSI) aims to address the school structural inequalities students face through the access to community services and support systems. While the integration of community support systems within school structures has been proven to augment student achievements, there must be an in-depth look at how LAUSD-CSI upholds culturally relevant approaches to care for their “minority-in-the-minority” population of Black students. The study will analyze foundations of schooling, care, and extended support that Black students receive through the LAUSD-CSI, and how it advances their academic engagement and self-perceptions among cultural identity.

There is abundant evidence for the positive impact Outdoor Education Programs (OEPs) have on the general health, development, and environmental awareness of youth of all ages. Many studies show youth's connection to nature as an effective proxy for measuring these positive impacts. Youth with a lower socioeconomic status (SES) remain underrepresented in OEPs; an unfortunate reality for youth who could use the benefits OEPs provides the most. The broad efficacy of OEPs programs regarding the participation and perspectives of people from lower socioeconomic statuses (SES) remains relatively understudied despite the significant benefits in general health and connection to nature OEPs may provide to at risk youth. This study will evaluate the impacts OEPs may have for people of lower SES, with a focus on the programs’ ability to foster connections with nature and inspire passion for the outdoors. Qualitative and quantitative analysis on surveys measuring youths connection to nature will be performed comparing youth from lower SES with the respective higher SES. The fieldwork is being conducted during a 6 week period of summer camps in Sonoma county, with a youth from different SES. The findings from this study will provide guidance for employing best possible methods for prioritizing equity in OEPs and outdoor learning spaces at large.