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Ideagen Radio
Ideagen Radio
The Future of Education, Esteban Olivares & Aaron Dworkin: 2024 "Future of ... Summit"
Join Esteban Olivares, Head of New University Partnerships at Summer Discovery, and Aaron Dworkin, CEO of The National Summer Learning Association, as they discuss their career paths, the inspiration behind their focus on youth education, and the transformative impact of technology and AI on learning. Esteban highlights Summer Discovery's upcoming Georgetown Campus programs and the Ideagen Future Global Leaders Academy, while Aaron examines the pandemic's influence on summer learning trends and outlines support resources for students. Both emphasize the importance of educational partnerships and share their visions for the future of summer learning and enrichment programs.
Watch the entire 2024 "Future of ... Summit" here: https://www.ideagenglobal.com/futureofsummit2024
Learn more about Summer Discovery and their programs here: https://www.summerdiscovery.com/programs
Learn more about The National Summer Learning Association here: https://www.summerlearning.org/
Learn more about Ideagen Global and Summer Discovery's Future Global Leaders Academy here: https://www.summerdiscovery.com/campuses/georgetown-university
Esteban's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estebanolivares/
Aaron's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-philip-dworkin-11b3374/
#Ideagenglobal #futureofsummit #Summerdiscovery #NSLA
Esteban Aaron. Thank you both for being here today and welcome to IdeaGen. So to start off, could you both just introduce yourselves, share a little bit about your career path and what inspired you to focus on educational programs for youth bit about your career path and what inspired you to focus on educational programs for you.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm steve only bodice. Thank you for having me here today. I'm head of new university partnerships and manage programs at summer discovery. So some discovery magic services and why am I interested? I do summer is what I do and and summer opportunities for students and working with universities. Summer is just an amazing time to explore and discover new things about yourself.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, thank you for having me as well.
Speaker 1:My name is.
Speaker 3:Aaron.
Speaker 2:Tworka.
Speaker 3:I'm the CEO of the National Summer Learning Association, so I do work closely as a partner with Esteban and his organization. So we believe, and I believe that every kid deserves educational opportunities not only during school but outside of school.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 3:I spent my last 25 years of my career, working to give every kid in America not just those who could afford an access opportunity but those who can't the chance to learn, grow, play, thrive everything you'd want for your own child to have you want to make sure every kid can have whether it's an after-school experience, a summer program chances to do enrichment and sports and learn about careers and gain new skills and have mentors, things they don't have time to get to during the school day uh, gain new skills and have mentors things they don't have time to get to during the school day, and that's what we try to do.
Speaker 1:Awesome, just inspiring motivations from both of you. Thank you for being here, um. So to start us off a step on um, ideagent is proud to be presenting the academy this summer as part of the summery discovery of georgetown course program. So could you please share a little bit more with us about summer Discovery's Georgetown campus this year and highlight any other university campus residential courses you offer?
Speaker 2:Yes, so there's a lot of courses being offered this summer at Georgetown. We work very closely with School of Human Studies and they select all the professors. We have this one great program in partnership with that Diagen. It's Future Global Leaders, really kind of focused on that innovative, entrepreneurial mindset, you know scaffolded with the UN SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals, and just it's really, how do you become creative, how do you become innovative to solve some of the real world problems that we're seeing?
Speaker 2:But I would say, along with Georgetown, you have programs at UCLA, programs at University of Michigan. All of them they're hands-on. There's something that you can study. Maybe that's not gonna be offered during the fall and spring. It just allows you to kind of dive deeper into a passion that you can really figure out. Is this something I really wanna do or is this something I just want to explore? At the same time, have fun during the summer, because after class there's just amazing activities opportunities to just, you know, see the city that you're in, cultural exploration, make new friends, have friends from around the world. We have students from all over the country 80 different countries overall so it's just an opportunity to just once again discover yourself and find new things that you want to explore.
Speaker 1:That is amazing. I know personally.
Speaker 2:I'm sold and I would love to participate in. That sounds like an amazing opportunity.
Speaker 1:So, shifting gears a little bit. Something that I know has definitely been on my mind is kind of how COVID changed education in general. So, aaron, how would you say the pandemic has altered the way people view summer learning particularly, and are there any relevant trends that you think we should be aware of for the future?
Speaker 3:No, it's a great question. So I started in this role a couple months before COVID shut down the world and every kid in our country and every school, and so our topic of summer learning, which is always a niche issue that some people cared about, it's been around. There's research for decades showing that some kids who had resources could do great things, and those who didn't didn't have those opportunities and they fell behind. We call that summer slide, summer learning loss.
Speaker 3:It was always a topic, but not widely discussed. Covid happened, and summer became one of the national priority strategies of this country to help every kid in America bounce back and catch up on what they missed.
Speaker 2:And so there was in the federal emergency American rescue plan.
Speaker 3:There was almost $30 billion put available for after school and summer programs.
Speaker 3:So that has kind of blown up our topic in a good way, where everybody was getting involved. Our conference has quadrupled in size over the last few years and everybody wants to know. President Biden mentioned summer learning as a priority. In this recent State of the Union. That's the first time ever that happened. So there's all this interest, there's all this funding, and so now we're seeing a lot of new programming, we're seeing expanded programming, we're seeing new partnerships, and the thing about summer is this is my opinion it's the most entrepreneurial type of education. I would almost call it the R&D type of education. If you have a good idea that you wanna help kids, especially lonely kids, you would start it as a summer program before you would work out the gains, before you scale. So there are national nonprofits, there are entire school systems. Kip Charter School started out as a six-week summer program. Now they have thousands of schools across America. So you get a lot of unlikely allies. The NBA was creating summer programs. The New York Times creates it has a school. The New York Times People that you never thought medical schools, hospitals everybody is trying to serve these kids who suffered during COVID and they're starting out in the summer, and so my job
Speaker 3:is to bring them together for the spotlight and what works and train them up.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing to hear. At least one positive thing that came out of COVID is the development of summer learning. So COVID, obviously the game changer. Another thing I kind of wanted to ask your opinions about was technology. I know as a student right now, with like chat, gpt and everything that's coming up, a lot of that seems to be changing the education scene in general. So, from your perspectives, how has technology and AI transformed the learning environment at Summer, discovery and learning in general, and what tech-driven strategies have proven most effective in engaging students in this new learning environment?
Speaker 2:There's different pieces. There's the use of technology, there's the hands-on application of technology, but there's also the learning about technology. At Dartmouth College we have a new program and Dartmouth is one of the home of AI. We have actually courses learning about AI. What's the impact on society? The impact on just future technology and impact on future careers. So it's not just learning about technology and how to do the coding behind it. So it's not just learning about technology and how to do the coding behind it. It's understanding what is its impact on society and what can that mean for me. If I'm a high school student thinking about what do I wanna major in the future? What kind of careers do I wanna explore? I've had conversations with George in the past that we don't even know all of the jobs that this generation is going to inherit, how to prepare them, because there are going to be new jobs that we don't even know exist yet, and so courses like AI and learning about some of that is important.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll just add, I go to a lot of education technology conferences and I think people still don't know that there's a lot of positive and there's a lot of negative concern and we don't know exactly how it's going to play out. But I just want to kind of share two pieces. One is, and there's a great education leader named Sal Khan from Khan Academy. If you've ever heard of him, totally.
Speaker 3:And he is a great preacher that AI is going to transform education. It will create a personalized tutor for every student. It's for them to know exactly what they need. It gets a little beat in and they'll know the students' needs and what they need to be helped with. And also it's almost like a teaching assistant for every teacher. So that's in the most perfect view. But I just also coming from a meeting this morning at the White House where mental health and being online and being on social media and being with technology has had a real negative detriment and effect on a lot of young people.
Speaker 3:One thing that people like about summer programs is you get to be off technology for a lot of times and you get to be off your phones and you get to build face-to-face relationships.
Speaker 3:We all will benefit and we have to embrace the future. It's obviously coming, it's already here and we want kids to be prepared to utilize it. But there is this the mental health challenges facing teens and young adults is so severe. The data is coming out. I mean, there is a Surgeon General warning about how depressed and how lonely because kids are spending so much time on their phones and online and they're not going out and being with people in the real world.
Speaker 3:So there has to be a balance, and so that's what we're all trying to weigh in the world of education.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Those are such good points because obviously AI technology very useful and can be used as a great tool by students, but also there's a flip side to that which is just as important to consider, so that's very interesting to hear about. So obviously, education is such a multifaceted topic, so I'd love to hear a little bit more about partnerships. So for both of you, could you kind of just describe the importance of partnerships in your experiences, whether that's just through higher education or within other sectors and industries?
Speaker 2:So partnerships are very important. We can't do it without the partnerships. Nothing's going to happen, even when we're at a university campus. It's partnerships with conference services, housing, dining and spaces where we have fun activities after class, making sure that we have the right classrooms for class and primarily.
Speaker 2:That's the space that I'm in is higher education, so we're partnering with the universities. We're partnering with all of their campus stakeholders. We are partnering with university faculty who may be teaching an amazing course for high school students for the very first time. We're also working with folks who are teaching gifted and talented youngsters a course on introduction to surgery for fourth and fifth graders, and you know they're suturing oranges and bananas and things like that, but it's just making sure that those partnerships are there, so that we can deliver an amazing experience, and it's realizing that there's opportunities and that there's space during summer for these things to happen, and let's utilize that space, especially on university campuses and I'll do it.
Speaker 3:So partnerships are the name of the game in education. It's the only way you're going to know one organization. It's not going to be schools, it's not going to be nonprofits. It's not going to be government. It's not going to be nonprofits, it's not going to be government, it's not going to be business. We're going to be able to reach all the kids that we want to reach with all the things that they need. Sometimes adults say to me people say oh, does my kid need help with math or do they need?
Speaker 2:mental health support.
Speaker 3:I'm like they need both. Why are you making people choose? It's a false choice. Think about your own kid, think about you, think about me, think about all of us. What do you want to do? Do I need to learn how to write a paper or do I need to run around? Of course you need both, but here's the thing not everyone is good at all. Some people are great at teaching math. Some people are great at coaching sports. Some people are great at teaching music. So the partnerships someone, some group it's part of my big job and that's about it too has to.
Speaker 2:Kids need all these things, not everyone's great at delivering all these things, so you need partnerships to give kids everything they want. And, by the way, kids have different interests.
Speaker 3:So we don't want a monolithic summer experience.
Speaker 2:Some kids want to take your coding courses.
Speaker 3:Some people want to take your screenwriting classes. You know we don't want to say every kid in America needs to do something Now for low-income kids especially. Here's the good news and the bad news. The bad news is we have so many silos in education Because of local control. We have created this fragmented education delivery system. You know you work with kids from 8 to 3. I'm boys and girls. I work for them from 3 to 6. You're the summer camp you work with them from.
Speaker 2:June to August.
Speaker 3:It's like we've all pieced ourselves, cut ourselves into these little pieces, and the kid doesn't know the difference. I'm here at school now, I'm at my practice, now I'm here, and so somebody's got to tie it all together and keep it aligned. So we're very siloed, but to reach all the kids we can be more efficient, and we saw that during COVID. That's what COVID kind of lifted up. When schools closed, all of a sudden everyone was forced to work together. All of a sudden the boys and girls would say well, I got a thousand bands, no one can come to my clubhouse.
Speaker 2:You want me to deliver meals.
Speaker 3:You got packets, the parks and recs, you know we got kitchens. It's like everybody started coming together and that's what we want to keep coming out of COVID. And what I'll just last point is about I see the resources. We have hundreds of thousands of organizations, 135,000 public, private, charter schools in America more than millions of teachers.
Speaker 3:We have millions of staff in these nonprofit groups and these after-school programs, and so what I take from that is we actually have the know-how, the people, the organizations to reach every kid who wants to be in a program, a summer program, and so now we need the partnerships to tie both.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah. I think that's something that we've really been seeing, especially after COVID is just how important it is to have a well-rounded education. So not just the classes, but also what are kids doing after, what clubs are they going to? What resources do they have? How are they taking care of themselves? So it's amazing to hear about the partnerships that go into that Awesome. So, esteban, could you touch on Summer Discovery's TRIO programs, how they're're impacting students and also how they could hopefully expand in the future?
Speaker 2:uh, trio, programs are something that are great and amazing. We don't offer trio programs, but I think it's it's pointed because universities do so. When we're talking about university summer experiences, I think there's something for everybody and there's opportunities. Um, we have to find them. We have to create the partnerships we have to do that cross-cultural and cross-sector connections and make sure that something is available for everybody.
Speaker 2:I myself, I was a TRIO student 1992, 30 something years ago that was my first experience living on a college campus and really seeing the power of summer and you see yourself there. So, between TRIO programs, between university pre-college programs that are working with community-based organizations to provide scholarships, it's really providing an opportunity for everybody to have that experience on college. And as a high school student, a middle school student or a day program student, you know K through five. When you can take those courses on a college campus, you can see yourself there, no matter where you come from. If you can see yourself there and you have an experience there, you are going to be able to have that experience and walk in as a freshman understanding what the college campus is about. You're not going to be afraid, You're not going to second doubt that you do not belong there, and I think that's the great thing about summer programs at university campuses. So whether it's a camp on campus or pre-college program, it's providing an opportunity for youth to see themselves in that environment.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, and college is such a big transition, so being able to just envision yourself in that setting is already just such a massive step in the right direction. So that's amazing. Thank you, aaron. Could you share a little bit about the support resources you offer students, and whether that's in the form of academic assistance or it's more about prioritizing students' physical and mental well-being, or a combination?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So just to share, I used to. For many years was the national president of a group called Afterschool All-Stars that ran direct service afterschool and summer programs for almost 90,000 kids Before that. I was started by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Speaker 3:I used to live in LA, and it was in 20 cities Before that I got into this by running a direct service mentoring basketball camp actually in New York City called Hoops and Leaders. So I used to work directly with kids. I just want to make that distinction because now I'm leading a national coalition of almost 25,000 different organizations school districts, nonprofits, libraries, parks and rec, summer job programs so I don't work with kids directly. I support all these organizations, me and my team. I just wanted to say why matters and then how we do it. So you got to start with the why, like Simon Sinek says. So the why Esteban's organization is so important, his work is so important and the work of all my partners in the summer space is so important.
Speaker 3:One summer is a time of improvement, not just for the students who get to improve their skills and their knowledge, but for the adults who work in those programs. So all summer programs also double up as staff training. You want to teach a new teacher, a new curriculum that you want to roll out, test it out in the summer program. So it's good because it trains adults and kids at the same time. The other thing we've talked about a little bit is about innovation. So we've talked about that a few times.
Speaker 3:A lot of new ideas, a lot of new programs, and then they scale the third piece that we've talked about is interconnectedness and that's the partnerships and all the silos tying people together. And, and the most important thing here is about impact and the reason people are spending so much money. It's not just on the policy kind of impact on the policy side, and so this is what I do to support all these partners, uh, but it's at the so the policy level. We advocate for more funding. We are uh trying to make this a bigger issue.
Speaker 2:It's also at the program level.
Speaker 3:So we do a lot of staff training. We have standards of what a good summer program looks like. So if you're trying to start a new program, you come to our organization. We have trainings, we have evaluation tools, we have a whole staff that will train you on how to grow your program. We have award winners to learn from and then, ultimately, it's about people and leadership development, and so we do all these trainings for leaders who are trying to start the program. We have a summer innovation fellowship. We do an all expense paid congressional summer internship program, because summer internships are a form of summer learning, actually the highest form of summer learning, but an unpaid internship is one of the most unfair forms of summer learning.
Speaker 2:So we are trying to deal with that and then public awareness.
Speaker 3:So all this money I was saying has been put out into our system. All these programs are being created. Who's going to tell families about it so they sign up? So my organization is running a national multimillion dollar public service announcement media campaign with iHeartRadio and Clear Channel Billboards to go to and this is going to sound confusing a website called discover summerorg, which anyone watching if you live in the U S especially you go in and you've typed in where you live and all these programs near you pop up and also resources for parents of what they could do with their kids. So we call those five P's program quality, partnerships policy, public awareness and investment.
Speaker 1:Amazing. That is an amazing combination of things to be focused on, and it's great that summer is an opportunity to develop those programs for the future, too Awesome. You've both talked about so many amazing things in the field of education, so now kind of just looking into the future and action that can be taken, how do you both envision the future of education evolving over the next decade, particularly in terms of summer learning and enrichment programs, and what role do you see organizations like Summer Discovery playing in shaping that future?
Speaker 2:I think there's. I'm going to focus more on what's not going to change. I think this is. We saw this because of the pandemic you know, we did a summer online and that was the first time for for some discovery.
Speaker 2:We've been doing this for almost almost 57, almost 60 years and um we realized that there's a power to the in-person summer experience and I don't think that's going to go. Um, I think the way it's going to evolve is more partnerships providing more opportunities. So that's something that we're doing at Summer Discovery. You go to summerdiscoverycom, you can see a lot of the programs that we partner with universities. You go to summerdiscoveryservicescom, you see a different partnership that we offer, where a university has an idea and a university says we have the academics, we have the passion, we have the people, we have the marketing, we have the academics, we have the passion, we have the people, we we have the marketing, we have the application. But we need the people who are experts in working with youth during summer, after class 24 7, providing services, providing the fun activities, and that's what we do. So we are able to partner with universities and organizations, um and corporations now who have an idea and want to do something during summer. We can provide that opportunity for them.
Speaker 3:And I'll just add I mean by definition summer is a life transition point. Think about your summer before high school or your summer between high school and college. And if you're in a life transition, you are vulnerable, you're a little bit nervous and you're open. So if somebody wants to talk to you and teach you something right before you know you want to go to Esteban's program before college because now you're like oh my God, what am I going to do?
Speaker 3:I want to be successful. So it has that. And if you're vulnerable and it's a transition time, you can remember that. And and if you're vulnerable and it's a transition time, you can remember that it's a high impact time I always want to mention.
Speaker 3:You know, people sometimes say to me like, oh, you're the CEO of this group. I like to turn it around and say, actually, what I care most about is the EOC and that's educational equity, opportunity and community, and that's really what we're talking about. People say, oh, you're like the summer guy, but if kids in America were out of school january to march, I would be focused on that. This is the time that millions of kids don't have what to do and, in particular, I will say this it's a very um self-selecting topic, because the truth is, middle and upper middle class families happily pay and seek out and spend thousands of dollars to give their kids great experiences like the ones Esteban got. I know he has scholarships available for kids who can't afford it, but then what I'm and my group and my partners are most focused on are the 30 million kids in America kindergarten through 12th grade who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program?
Speaker 3:That is how we talk about poverty in America. We don't say are you poor. We say do you need a meal? You say yes, that's the kids who cannot afford these programs can't access, even if they want to.
Speaker 3:They can't maybe get a transportation. They're the ones who have to babysit their brother. They're not allowed, or they need to go get a job. They're not going to be. So how do we make sure all kids and so I'm focused on not that's the equity part and we, you know, the kids who are of higher income. I care about them, but they're going to get, they're going to find a way to a great experience.
Speaker 2:When I was saying earlier about all the partners.
Speaker 3:so we have a very contained topic, contained group 30 million kids. I believe we have all the resources to reach them, and so the thing that's hopeful in the future here is America.
Speaker 2:future here is America as we've been hearing today. A long list of problems, a long to-do list Some problems I care about.
Speaker 3:I care about global warming. I'm not personally going to be able to solve that. I'll do what I can. I care about wars around the world. I'd like them to end. I'll do my best, but I don't know that I can do that. But finding a summer program for every kid low-income kid in America, that is something we could cross off America's to-do list and I think people take inspiration around that.
Speaker 2:I really, genuinely believe it.
Speaker 3:And so when you're saying what's the next five, ten years, I think this is just something if we pull everyone together we know where the programs are. We know how to get them started. We know how to find the kids. We now need to connect them all and then we can focus on the bigger, bigger problems beyond this, but this is a very solvable challenge.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Education really is central to shaping the youth and the future of our world. Really, so the work you're both doing is very inspiring. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you so much for being here today, thank you.