Summer Institute Helps Community Partners Respond to School Needs

In just a few short days, school is back in session for Chicago’s public-school students, but the school leaders, teachers, and community organizations supporting them have been hard at work all summer getting prepared for the school year.

Earlier this month, CIS of Chicago’s Partnership Team hosted its twelfth annual Summer Institute, a day of professional development and networking open to the more than 200 community organizations in our partner network.

For more than a decade, Summer Institute has equipped CIS community partners with the tools they need to meet the needs of Chicago students and schools. Our team knows that when our community partners are supported, Chicago’s young people benefit.

This year, Summer Institute centered around student voice and impactful experiences. The sessions focused on:

Creating safe, student-centered spaces

One session on belonging and anti-bias programming shared ways that community organizations can create spaces where all young people feel like they belong. Another session focused on ways that student voice can be incorporated into community partner programs and uplifted.

The CIS team understands the importance of student inclusion and engagement. We believe that when the voices of young people are heard and amplified, they are more likely to be active participants in their educational experience — and stay on the path to graduation.

Ensuring programs meet the needs of today’s students

Summer Institute also provided partners with a session on incorporating social-emotional learning, or SEL, into their programs and one on classroom management.

Developing social-emotional learning skills is critical to a child’s growth, and it’s something that schools in our partner network often prioritize.

The SEL session helped partners identify ties to social-emotional learning in their program descriptions and delivery, and the classroom management session helped partners manage classroom behaviors in positive ways.

Feeling supported through their partnership with CIS

Last, but not least, a few Summer Institute sessions supported community organizations as a whole — with how they get funding, how they connect with schools, and how they can make the most of their partnership with CIS of Chicago.

CIS’ Chief Development Officer Stephanie Truax presented a workshop on finding grant opportunities and writing winning proposals, and CIS’ Rishona Taylor and Katia Marzolf Borione oriented new and existing partners to CIS of Chicago’s impactful work and how our team builds bridges between community organizations and schools needing their services.

“For us, Summer Institute serves as a transition from one school year to the next,” said Associate Director of Community Partnerships Rishona Taylor. “It sets the tone and starts us off on the right foot by hosting sessions that will prepare partners for the classroom experience, give them opportunities to begin building collaborative partnerships, and gets them excited and prepared for a new season.”

Our team was delighted to provide a supportive, interactive, and relevant day of learning for our community partners, and we are looking forward to an impactful 2024–25 school year.