How Spokane Public Schools is helping kids engage in real life

Key points:

Social media has connected kids like never before, but what they gain in likes and shares, they lose in real, meaningful engagement with their peers and classmates. Lunch hours are spent hunched over smartphones, and after-school time means less sports and more Snapchat.

The adverse effects of this excessive screen time have significantly impacted students' social-emotional health. Forty-one percent of adolescents With the greatest struggle of social media use with mental health problems, and between 2010 and 2020, anxiety among adolescents shot up by 106 percent.

In Spokane Public Schools (SP), educators and administrators are reversing the side effects of social media by reconnecting with students through school-based extracurricular activities. Through your transformer Engage IRL (Engage in Real Life), the district is encouraging kids to get off their devices and onto the pickleball court, into the pool, and outside in the fresh air. With over 300 clubs and sports to choose from, SPS students are happier, healthier, and less likely to reach for their smartphones.

An innovative approach to student engagement

Even before the pandemic, SPS saw levels of engagement among the student population, especially in school attendance rates, due in part to an increase in mental health issues caused by social media. Reconstruction of connections in the classroom at the time from childhood based on the phone would require district leaders to think big.

“The question wasn't 'How do we get kids off their phones?' But “How do we engage them more often?” said Ryan Lancaster, executive director of communications for SPS. “Our intention was to get every child, every day, involved in something positive outside of the school day and extend that community learning. beyond the classroom.

To meet the district's goal of creating a caring and connected community, in 2022, school leaders formed a task force of parents, community members, coaches and teachers to develop the inventory of current extracurriculars in all schools in the district and identify gaps to meet diverse student interests. and hobbies.

Engaging with students was a priority for task force members. “The students were excited to be heard,” explained Nikki Otero Lockwood, SPS board president. “A lot of them wanted an art club. They wanted to play board games and learn to knit. No matter their interests, what they really wanted was to be in school and be connected to others.”

Working with community partners and LaunchAn Innovia Foundation initiative focused on helping every child feel a sense of belonging, SPS launched involves IRL, an ambitious push to turn students' ideas seeking fun and fulfillment into engaging, real-life activities.

Over the past two years, Engage IRL has been the catalyst for increasing access and opportunities for K-12 students to participate in clubs, sports, arts activities, and other community events. From maths it's a cool club and creative writing classes to fighting and advanced martial arts, kids can find a full range of activities to join in across the Elite IRL Website. Besides, five compromise navigators in the district helps connect families and students with engagement opportunities through Individual IRL plans and work with local organizations to expand programming.

“All day, every day, our navigators are working to break down barriers and address challenges to make sure nothing gets in the way of kids wanting to participate and participate,” said Stephanie Splater, executive director of athletics and activities. for Sps. “For example, when we didn't have a coach for one of the schools in our middle school football program, our navigators moved on to really good candidates in a short amount of time just because of their personal reach.”

In just two years, student participation in extracurriculars has nearly doubled. Additionally, according to Lancaster, since the launch of IRL Engage, SPS has not experienced a day where it fell below 90 percent attendance.

“That's an outlier in recent years for us, for sure, and we think it's because kids want to be in school. They want to be engaged and be a part of all the cool things we're doing. We are off to a great start to the 2024-2025 school year, and Englet IRL has played a huge role.”

Englar IRL also helped SPS Weather Student Blowback when the district launched a new cell phone policy this year. The policy prohibits cell phone use in elementary and middle school and limits it to lunch and periods between classes for high school students. Because students were already building personal connections with classmates and teachers through Engage IRL, many easily handled the withdrawal from social media.

Creating opportunities for all children

The key to engaging IRL success was ensuring partnerships and programs were heritage-focused, allowing every child to participate regardless of ability, financial or transportation limitations, or language barriers.

Establishing a no-size policy in athletics by creating additional JV and C teams ensured kids with a passion for sports, but not college-level skills, continued to compete on the court or field. The partnership with Special Olympics also helped SPS build new unified sports programs that gave children with disabilities the opportunity to play. And engagement navigators are helping English language learners and their families find activities that help them connect with children in their new country.

For Otero Lockwood, getting her daughter with autism connected to clubs after years of struggling to find school activities has been life-changing.

“There are barriers to finding community for some kids,” she shared. “We know that children with disabilities are more likely to be underemployed as adults and not connected to the community. This is something we have the power to do that will have a lasting impact on the children we serve.”

Through Engage IRL, SPS has redefined student engagement by expanding access and opportunity to 6,000 students in 58 schools. In just two short years, the district has seen attendance increase, student well-being improve, and reliance on smartphones decrease. By continuing to listen to student needs and bring the community together to partner on activities outside of school, Spokane Public Schools is successfully fostering the face-to-face connections that every child needs to thrive.