Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) Grant
Project Connect
Project Director:
Jennifer Knutson, Executive Director, Professional Learning
and Social Emotional Learning
Project Coordinator:
Gavin Vaughan
Schools:
Bartlett High School
Eagle River High School
Central Middle School
Gruening Middle School
Awards:
$2,500,000 (FY 11 - FY 14)
$1,747,157 (FY 15 - FY 17)
The project budget supports 2.0 FTE high school counselors; personnel costs for
tutoring, afterschool clubs, curriculum development, program planning, challenge
course facilitation, and professional development; staff travel; buses and field trips;
program supplies; and contracted services for external evaluation and for challenge
course installation, training, and annual safety inspections.
Military connected students served per year: 1,000.
Summary
The Anchorage School District recently received a Department of Defense Education
Activity (DODEA) invitational grant for the continuation of Project Connect, a multifaceted initiative that addresses the academic and social and emotional needs of
students from active military families and that directs resources to secondary schools
with high concentrations of these students. The purpose of DODEA’s invitational grant
program is to develop and sustain programs that meet the needs of military impacted
students. This invitational competition targets communities with substantial military
installations and relatively high numbers of deployments.
Project Connect builds a path of support for students from active military families,
grades 7-12. The effort is directed to the academic, social, and emotional needs that
come from being a part of the military culture due primarily to transition, mobility, and
deployment. The project focuses on ASD’s two high schools and two middle schools
with the highest population of military connected students: Bartlett High School, Eagle
River High School, Central Middle School, and Gruening Middle School. Typically each
year, over 1,000 military connected students attend these schools.
Although Project Connect is designed for and focuses on military students, all students
in the schools benefit. The project operates through ASD’s Professional Learning
Department, which includes social and emotional learning (SEL), and ASD’s Health and
P.E. Department.
Project Connect emphasizes both academic growth and positive youth development, as
advocated by the Department of Defense. The project provides a full-time counselor for
each of the high schools served. This counselor is dedicated solely to military students’
academic, scheduling, and social/emotional needs. The project also provides
afterschool tutoring by certificated teachers, four days per week. These counseling and
tutoring services provide opportunities for credit recovery, intervention, and
acceleration. This aligns with the ASD's RTI model and helps students grow
academically, socially and behaviorally.
Project Connect is breaking new ground in its employment of research-based
experiential education. The project eases transitions of military students into new school
environments through adventure-based, experiential education that builds SEL and
leadership skills. Examples of skills taught in the program include: Nordic skiing,
mountain biking, camp craft (fires, tarps and tents), backcountry cooking and fire
building, wilderness medicine, map and compass use, hiking, building snow shelters,
appropriate dress for outdoor adventure in Alaska, indoor climbing, team building, and
leadership skills. This model bonds new and transitioning students to the school
community, builds their confidence and motivation, and helps them transfer these skills
and attributes to their academic studies. The project expands the successful peer
leadership/transitions classes at Bartlett and Eagle River.
Project Connect also implements afterschool Adventure Leadership Clubs that are
structured to build cooperative team-building, empathy, and leadership across all
populations. An activities bus for each school makes afterschool activities possible for
military students. Over the last two years, Bartlett High School adventure programs
have included two 3-day winter ski trips into remote cabins where the students helped
plan and execute the trips. Greuning Middle School student did an overnight to Beech
Lake cabins to work on team building and leadership skills. Students have also had the
opportunity to Nordic ski at Girdwood, mountain bike at Kincaid Park, hike Bird Ridge,
canoe on Nancy Lake, climb at the Alaska Rock Gym, and bike at numerous parks
around Anchorage.
Project Connect has put in place a multiple-elements, permanently installed challenge
course at Bartlett High School and, with this grant, will add a similar challenge course
at Eagle River High School. The budget supports challenge course visits for Central and
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Gruening students. The challenge courses are curriculum-supported and based on
successful models in other high schools nationwide. The project provides national
certification training for staff in challenge course technology, curriculum,
implementation, safety, and maintenance.
Project Connect includes an intentional, comprehensive parent outreach effort aimed at
connecting parents to the school and to the components of Project Connect that are
available to their children. ASD’s SEL staff also will offer workshops for military
parents, with an overview of the district’s and Project Connect’s SEL components and
how they help meet student needs.
An objective external evaluation by the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the
University of Alaska, Anchorage uses both qualitative and quantitative data to assess
academic and social/emotional progress in the targeted military student population,
including progress toward graduation.
Project Connect follows military students’ progress toward graduation. The following
table shows the percentages of military students in project high schools in grades 9-11
who have earned sufficient credits to be on track for on time graduation.
Military Students On Track to Graduate, 2010-2013
School Year
2010-2011
2011-2012
2012-2013
Percent On Track
69%
72%
76%
Initial findings are showing increases in scores on the Positive Youth Development
scale, a researched-based tool that measures students’ social and emotional well-being.
Qualitative data from surveys, interviews, and focus groups indicate very positive
feedback from parents and students involved in Project Connect.
"It’s a great chance for kids that are having a hard time with life and family to go and have fun.
And it doesn’t cost anything, so you just join and you have fun. It’s only a few days a week."
- Student at Greuning Middle School
"In both PACE and Adventure Club we get to learn leadership… and it teaches us how to
organize and how to plan. So I think PACE and Adventure Club are similar in that way. It’s a
lot of team building in both classes. And in Adventure Club it’s like team building and means of
like friendship and community and it’s kind of the same way in PACE. Where you build
different types of relationships and you figure out how to talk to each other and how people
should be addressed and stuff like that.”
- Student at Bartlett High School
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