Education support is the range of services, resources and guidance aimed at helping students succeed in their learning journey. This can include academic support like tutoring and counseling services as well as financial assistance.
ESPs are the backbone of our schools. They keep kids healthy and safe, help teachers teach, provide extra care to children with disabilities, prepare meals and perform myriad administrative duties.
Student Success
Student success is a popular term in higher education, but the concept can be difficult to grasp. Different educational providers use it differently, and the term can mean a range of things to students, administrators and other stakeholders in higher education.
For example, some higher education institutions focus on student retention and graduation rates, while others prioritize access and inclusion initiatives. Regardless of the specific emphasis, most higher education professionals agree that student success should be a top priority.
However, it’s important to remember that the idea of student success is complex and varies by student needs. It involves a number of factors beyond academic performance, including personal and professional development. To achieve this goal, it’s essential to get to know your students and understand their challenges, strengths and goals. Providing personalized resources that match these individual needs can help ensure that your students are successful in their academic journeys. This in turn leads to better outcomes and more engaged students.
Family Support
Families can use their natural support systems of extended family members, friends, neighbors and religious community for many purposes including information, advocacy, parental training, counseling, daycare and respite care. They also may receive formal support from publicly funded entitlement programs based on income or disability.
Research has documented that family support is critical to launching youth into successful adulthood. However, most studies focus on parents alone, overlooking extended kin as an important source of social and material support for young people. Consider incorporating a broader definition of family in your educational outreach efforts and sharing resource lists with the full range of available supports for families. This will help to normalize these resources and nudge families to access and utilize them. Providing family to family support, such as carpooling and phone trees, can also encourage this collaboration. Also, offering ongoing evergreen local resources that are rooted in the community context of your schools can be very helpful to families.
School Resources
School resources are the elements that work together to create a positive educational environment for students and teachers. These can include physical facilities, human support, and funding.
In addition to building partnerships with local businesses and organizations, schools can also use digital tools that make it easier for teachers to stay current on teaching techniques and technologies. Many of these tools are available for free, allowing educators to try them out before investing in them.
Communication apps and platforms make it easy for teachers to share homework reminders, schedule changes, or important announcements with students and parents. Remind is one popular option that allows teachers to send messages through text or voice while keeping personal phone numbers private. Other tools, such as Asana and Evernote, break big tasks into smaller, manageable steps and allow educators to keep track of notes with visual timelines.
Science and STEM resources make difficult topics easier to understand with interactive lessons, videos, and hands-on activities. These tools are great for promoting student engagement and showing how the classroom relates to real-world issues, such as environmental degradation and climate change.
Community and Online Resources
Digital learning resources help learners with everything from reviewing content to mastering a new skill. They can include everything from downloadable PDFs to interactive maps, primary source documents and videos. They can also include tools like graphing calculators and online educational games.
Educators can work with peers to identify and curate resources online. Collaborating as a team makes the vetting and aligning steps easier, especially when educators use a platform like Hapara Workspace to organize resources by subject, unit, lesson or standards.
Another way to support learners during extended closures is by connecting them with regional community partners. Organizations like CommunityShare connect teachers with local “human books” of wisdom and experience, who serve as mentors, project designers, internship hosts, field trip sponsors and content-area consultants. These community volunteers make students more connected to real-world learning and social capital. They also inspire them to become advocates for education.