In Worcester’s Telegram and Gazette, our Deputy Director, Julia Kilgore, explains the origin story, goals, and early outcomes from Woo-Lab’s Phase I partnerships.
For more information, read the article below.
NEWS - Woo-Labs project seeks to strengthen city's educational opportunities outside schools
Woo-Labs, launched by the Worcester Education Equity Roundtable, a group of local youth-serving and cultural organizations, is starting out this summer at five sites, and organizers hope to expand it to six more this fall.
Already, the initiative is involving around 800 students, mostly in kindergarten through sixth grade, according to Julia Kilgore, deputy director of the Worcester Education Collaborative, which is spearheading the effort.
While the programs are open to any students – including those outside Worcester – “we’re targeting students we want to support the most,” she said. That includes children attending low-performing elementary schools in the city school district. “We want to make sure we reach kids who have higher needs.”
The aim of Woo-Labs, Kilgore said, is to provide more robust out-of-school enrichment opportunities to those kids, helping them develop not just better academic skills but also their social/emotional skills.
"The biggest objective is to draw a connection between what's happening during the school day and what happens outside school," she said.
In the planning stages for the last couple years, Woo-Labs is being funded with a $250,000 Worcester Together Reimagining Grant from the United Way of Central Massachusetts and Greater Worcester Community Foundation, as well as support from the Amelia Peabody Foundation.
That money has helped the initiative provide stipends to participating organizations, training for their employees, and salaries for college fellows who have been assigned to each of the sites, Kilgore said.
Girls Inc.: Main benefit focus on education
Victoria Waterman, chief executive officer of Girls Inc., which was still in the planning phase of its Woo-Lab program this week, said the project’s main benefit to her organization is its focus on education.
“We’re not a school, and we’re not teachers,” she said, adding Girls Inc., takes a more holistic approach to serving the girls it enrolls in its own programs. “There’s a lot of training and professional development (Woo-Labs provides) we wouldn’t be doing otherwise … there’s a much more academic focus.”
The initiative will also give Girls Inc. access to evaluation tools to help it better track how students are doing and what they’re learning, Waterman said.
Part of the motivation behind Woo-Labs is the concept that Worcester has a strong, built-in network of organizations that may be underutilized as a compliment to the city school system, Kilgore said.
“The idea is to be able to really use collective action to build quality programming across the entire city,” she said, a goal that came into even greater focus during the pandemic, which drove home the lesson that, “there’s so much we can accomplish when we come together.”
In addition to Girls Inc., the other organizations serving as pilot sites this summer are Broad Meadow Brook, the Boys and Girls Club of Worcester, African Community Education and the YMCA of Central Massachusetts.
Each program own curriculum, schedule
Each of those programs will have its own curriculum and schedule, although they will be tied together by Woo-Labs’ overarching educational strategy and supports. They’ll also have their own targeted populations: African Community Education, for instance, will be focusing on African youth who have recently arrived in the region, Kilgore said.
Their common objective, however, is “to boost (students’) academic performance in school,” she said, a general aim that Woo-Labs is still working to define in statistical measures.
“We’re just starting the conversation with the school district around what data-sharing could look like,” Kilgore added.
If successful, organizers intend for Woo-Labs to become a lasting part of the city’s organizational infrastructure, she said.
“We’re hoping this will be a year-over-year project,” she said.
Scott O’Connell can be reached at Scott.O’Connell@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottOConnellTG
Photography by Christine Peterson | Telegram and Gazette
