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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Episode 74: Building Better Summers: Transforming Summer School for Student Success
Summer school is no longer just a place for credit recovery or extra practice—it’s a powerful opportunity to reimagine what’s possible for student engagement and growth. In this episode of the Compass PD Podcast, Dr. Sherri Lorton is joined by three passionate educators—Dr. Kara Dalton, Dr. Elizabeth Malloy, and David Gentili—who’ve spent years leading and evolving summer programs across K–12 settings.
Together, they share their candid experiences—what worked, what didn’t, and how the most meaningful transformation came not from perfection, but from reflection, feedback, and data-informed tweaks along the way. Whether you’re launching your first summer program or fine-tuning a well-established one, this episode offers practical strategies, lessons learned, and encouragement to keep evolving. Because when it comes to building better summers, it’s not about getting it perfect—it’s about getting it better, every year.
Okay, thank you for joining us on the Compass PD podcast. I am Dr Sherry Horton, one of the Compass PD consultants, and today is a very special day. I am joined by Dr Kara Dalton, dr Elizabeth Malloy and David Gentile, three educators who have worked closely with me in various summer school roles and who bring a wealth of knowledge for the elementary level, the secondary level and enrichment camps. Welcome to all of you.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Kara Dalton. I'm the Practical Arts Content Leader in Francis House School District and I was a career ed ag teacher before this role, and I worked a couple summers. I was an assistant principal at the high school level for both the enrichment credit advancement and our credit recovery program, and then I was the head principal in 2021, which is really our big year after COVID, and so I'll have a few things to say about that.
Speaker 3:And I am Liz Malloy. I am currently an AP at Henderson Elementary in the Francis Health School District and my involvement with summer school kind of ranged over the course of 13 years. So I started summer school when it was for fun and then I transitioned into a classroom teacher, an interventionist and then eventually an admin in that role and so I kind of had a lot of experience with different roles and expanding the program to include all kinds of things. Dave, I'll hand it over to you.
Speaker 4:I'm Dave Gentile. I teach fifth grade at Warren Elementary in the France House School District. I've been teaching for over 20 years now and I feel like I've had probably 23, 24 years of summer camp or summer school experiences. I started my career in the Ferguson-Florissant School District and started their STEM camp for them. I did that for about five or six years and then a life-changing experience. I went to Space Camp for Educators and because of that I was recruited by a place called the Gifted Resource Council. We did summer academies every year and had a lot of freedom with that. That was a good time. And then also did a lot of programs for the summer with Challenger Learning Center. And then for the last I tried to count, I think it's like 12 years, I think or so I've been working in the France High School District, started their STEM camp and just have been along for the ride to watch it grow the entire time. So excited to go back again this summer.
Speaker 1:Great. Thank you, guys so much. If you've been listening to the podcast lately, you will notice we've been working to create opportunities to support education as a system, education as a system. One of the ways we're doing this is by the Compass PD team talking with different stakeholders about what needs to be on their radar predictable problems that they may face throughout the school year. An additional layer we have added is bringing guests who are outside of our organization but have worked with some of us in some way to share their story.
Speaker 1:Today. I'm happy that Dr Dalton, dr Malloy and Dr Gentile will each be sharing their stories about some of the work we have done together related to summer programming over the last 10 plus years. Our hope is that you will gain some insight into the process, some wisdom about what we wish we could have done differently and, as always, take the learning and make it even better. Then come back and share it with us, because that's how we collectively get better as an organization. So let's take them back to the beginning. When did we start working together? What was the current reality for summer school at that time? For you, what was the catalyst that led to our collaborative journey?
Speaker 4:So Sherry and I started working together, probably about 13, 14 years ago. I was in the French South School District for a couple years and heard that they were starting up a STEM camp. So applied had some experience, as I mentioned, and um was lucky enough to get into the program. I think. I think it was actually the second year. Uh, the first year I think it started with three teachers. Uh, they added me to be the fourth teacher, so it was an extremely small program.
Speaker 4:Uh, a lot of freedom, a lot of a lot of fun with what we did.
Speaker 4:There's a lot of choice involved. You know, we didn't really have too much too many restrictions or too much guidance as far as, like you can't do this or you have to do this, so we could just, basically we just pick passion projects and just presented those to the kids and just had a great time with them. So over the years, obviously, that three to four teachers turned into seven or eight, and then we had to expand the program. We did a lot with Lego Mindstorms, so we introduced the kids to Lego Mindstorms, which led to future first Lego League competitions for a lot of the students. We did a lot of projects like making tissue paper, hot air balloons and soda bottle rockets and work with budgets and things like that. But eventually the camp got big enough that we needed to have some sort of leadership. So Sherry checked on us the whole time but she had a lot of super superficial duties to do so she was in charge of. Weren't you in charge of summer camp and summer school at the same time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all of the programs together, correct?
Speaker 4:So she was pretty busy and kind of let us do our thing. But eventually we needed some on-site leadership on a daily basis. So they hired lead teachers and so I got to be one of the lead teachers and you know just kind of took over some of those administrative duties that needed to be done on a daily basis.
Speaker 3:I think, dave, probably about the same time. I know that summer school and summer camps used to be at separate buildings. When I first started summer school and it was probably about 13 or 14 years ago when I first started that I kind of worked with Sherry and at that time I was just I was a classroom teacher and we were just kind of really digging in. Just kind of really digging in. I just transitioned from summer school for fun to more of a let's work on those kids who were kind of falling on that bubble, who needed that extra little push to, you know, kind of stay in that grade level bubble. And so we had kind of had some conversations around like what standards are we using to teach and are we looking at these high leverage standards to help support these kids? I think we had landed on using three or four ELA standards and a couple of math standards and that really then kind of transitioned.
Speaker 3:After a couple of years of doing that, my love for literacy was winning out and I kind of moved into that interventionist role and really helped crane and work with students who needed that mandatory tutoring for when we used to have SB 319 in Missouri and so taking that role and ensuring that we are meeting the needs of students in that data-driven way. And then I think that is when the camp started kind of coming on board and they were getting really big and we were at the same location and I transitioned into the admin role for summer school and so that was a lot of fun, with all of us under one roof, but it also brought some challenges that I think we'll probably talk about later. But the admin role, I think, really was about making sure that we're organized and we were collaborating with all the people in the building and that communication piece with parents and other students and community members, making sure that we were taking care of everybody who was on site.
Speaker 2:So I actually worked for seven years in HAL as Sherry's teammate in our regular work, so I've worked with Sherry a lot. And then in 2019, I decided to go to the high school assistant principal job. I at the time was pretty set. I was heading into administration in a few years and thought it was a great experience. One of the things that year we were in the middle I also support health and PE in my regular role and we were in the middle of a lot of laws coming down as far as what other training and learning we had to provide for students related to suicide awareness, child abuse, some mental health awareness so just a lot of things that our summer kids weren't getting, whether it was required by law or just something that we knew was important for our kids. And so we kind of restructured health. Health is a online but the teachers are with us and they come in and take their final, and we changed that structure up so those kids were coming in to get some of that learning and really seeing those programs and other than the COVID year, that is still happening. We know that that's really important for those kids and we also. Cpr was the other one that had just come down as a mandatory and it's just so much easier to get them in health class when they're there, and so we start, instead of trying to get 150 kids across the district retrain some other time. They do that on the day that they take their final.
Speaker 2:I took 2020 off, one because it was crazy, but one because I had a six month old, and so I didn't feel like that needed to happen that year, and so in 2021, then I applied for the head, the head principal role, and that was just. That was a ton of expansion that year because we had which on that, that backside of COVID, so many kids failed so many classes and we we had kids coming back in the building for the first time that hadn't been in the building all year and we had a little over a year since we had went home in spring break and just we had to add a second, essentially a second year. So we did our one year in our normal in-person four weeks in June, and then we had another three-week session that was all virtual the teachers were there, but the kids were all virtual to get another year of credit in for our kids, and that was I don't think we ran any credit advancement. I think we only did credit recovery in that portion and so those were kind of the big ads that we did during my time there.
Speaker 2:I know it's changed a little bit in the last few years. I've kind of moved away from thinking I'll go admin. So I haven't applied the last few years kind of enjoying being mom to in the summer and having that times. But I do think even in my role as a content leader, just that experience with summer programs has made me a better leader in that I really understand more of the system side of it and planning a school. You're essentially starting a whole new school every year from scratch. You're hiring the people, you're setting schedules and all of those things, and so I think you know staffing can be a challenge. But I would use that nugget to encourage people that you really get to understand the district on the system on a different level when you're working in it, especially from, I think, an admin leadership side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's probably one of the coolest things is that you merge all those people together. But it can be. You have to be really strategic, because you are mixing up people from all over a district and I know, virtually, maybe not necessarily, but like in person you're mixing everybody up too, and that can be difficult.
Speaker 2:Then you get a lot of, but we do this. This is our school. I'm like, well, but this is summer school, so we're not doing that here. This is how we do it now yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:It is tough bringing everyone together. As you said, in our district we had 10 elementary buildings, five middle schools, three high, four high schools, and so bringing staff from all those buildings and even students from all those buildings down into one or two buildings provided a lot of challenges. Provided a lot of challenges, and so let's talk about what that looked like. What were some of those obstacles that got into your way, and how did the process go? How were you able to overcome some of those things?
Speaker 3:When I think about at the elementary level, probably some of the biggest obstacles were making sure that we had the right kids at summer school and then, once we had that kind of determined, was getting the right staffing and the sufficient staffing in place to support kids. You know you have your classroom teachers and you had your interventionist and when you're having all those striving readers come, you need a lot of reading support and so making sure that you have people in those spots that can help support those kids is important. I also think you know in the district we have several title schools and so when you are putting, you know, merging kids from all over and you need multiple locations, it's important to think about the needs of those schools and also balancing with that when you mix up schools just to make sure that one is not more heavy with the other as far as needs go for kids. And then I think that I don't necessarily think that the budgeting is an issue, but it's a lot to when you're first starting up, like getting all the materials you need and the supplies and things like that can definitely be an obstacle.
Speaker 3:If you're not used to a school budget, that can be difficult. And then I think you know and I, dave, I remember us digging into supplies at the old building and then going to the gym at the school you're working at and like everything's dumped everywhere, and so I think making sure that people have what they need to be successful for a very short period of time, you know, could also be a challenge when you are trying to do things very quickly. And if there was any snow days and summer school was coming, you had even less time, you know, with that, like maybe you had a week between regular school and summer school, and so it was always like crunch time all the time.
Speaker 4:That was on my list too, that that tight turnaround, because it seems like our camps start uh, we get a week off after after school, and you're right. So this year we had snow days. We're going to go to school and end our school year on a Tuesday and camp start the following Monday, but we move into our building, camps move into their building on Wednesday and open house for parents is on Thursday, so we literally are going to have two days to put it all together. And that, I mean that seems like that's always been the issue for us is like, when can we get into the buildings? When do the gen ed teachers clear out? So those tight turnarounds are always, always something that we stress about and then just crossing your fingers, are the right supplies going to be delivered? We've had a lot of movement in our district. It just so happens that this morning I had to go take a visit to where all of our supplies are being held right now and I had to climb over the mountains of cartons on top of pallets and find just the right things. And it's not pretty over there, but yeah, so you just have to cross your fingers and hope they show up, and if they don't know somebody that has a pickup truck, they can go pick stuff up for you, because we've had to do that as well.
Speaker 4:But I think, like, as far as my camps go and the programs I've been in, finding those teachers that have that passion that they want to share during the summer is one of the biggest obstacles.
Speaker 4:You know, we can always find bodies to fill the classrooms with teachers, but just finding the people that have that niche and have, you know, that passion to do what they, to share their love for whatever subject it is they're teaching, whether it's, you know, robotics and STEM with me, or, you know, we started culinary camps or dance camps or art or music we just have to find the teachers that have the passion and want to share that knowledge with our students. And sometimes that gets a little difficult. But as our camps did grow and we branched out into other areas, we felt the need to come up with uniform plans so that freedom as we grew, the freedom that we had to begin, kind of started to get a little bit less. But the need was there because you might have three or four different sections of the same content and we wanted all the kids to have the same experience that we had. So that was. You know, it's the give and take, less individuality, but like a better experience for everybody.
Speaker 2:Oh my, I'm going to probably shift from what you guys are talking about. I mean, logistics is definitely an issue. High school doesn't have near as much stuff and so I think you know, compared to trucks and trucks that you guys have, we have like four boxes and so it's just not that big of a deal, for there's a lot with logistics, with scheduling to have to do. But really, the thing that stuck out when I was reading that question was especially from the difference in 2019, and then 2021, you know, there's always elementary has, even when they're there for interventions. I think there's a lot of fun factor with school, with summer school, and kids are more excited about it. For the most part, with high school they're there because they failed classes and so you know, remember 2019, sometimes feeling just really like there was a drag, and there's even there. There are a few credit advancement kids there, but not near as many that are there on a day-to-day basis as kids who have already failed. So they're already down on themselves because they failed classes and then they have to spend four weeks in summer school or two weeks in summer school. And we knew then, coming into 2021, that not only do we have kids who have failed even more epically than ever before, kids who typically don't fail classes who failed classes and being back in the building, but just the stress that everyone was under and the uncertainty and things that we'd kind of been through that last year. We really try to implement some more strategic ways to build some culture, build some fun. We were really strategic in how we had ways for the kids to go and select to see the counselor, which they do in high school already, so they're kind of used to that formula of having a QR code they can scan. So a lot more kids were going and utilizing the counselor services. We had a kind of a quiet room or a relaxed room that kids could use and I bought a bunch of stuff from the Dollar Tree little sensory type stuff that you wouldn't think high schoolers would love but they love. So they come and talk to you, they play with every fidget spinner in your box and we did a lot with rewarding kids for different things. So teachers were asked to nominate kids every week for something and we drew so many names and they just got a. It was like $5 gift card and a candy bar or something like that and then we made a big deal and took pictures and put them up and just trying to bolster the fact that they were in summer school.
Speaker 2:After what was probably a very hard year for most of them, I will say that from 2019 to 2021, our discipline rates went incredibly down. We had zero altercations. We had a handful of kids who were trying to vape. I think we only in summer school there's really not you summer school there's really not, you know, there's really not um in school suspension. So if they do something that would normally merit in school suspension, a lot of times they're just gone and they don't get to go finish summer school.
Speaker 2:I had one, only one kid that we had to to do that for and it's a pretty funny, long but funny story there was some trash bag stealing incidents, um, and we finally had to send him home because he kept breaking into the custodial closet to steal trash bags and wear them. So it wasn't the wearing the trash bags, it was stealing them. But I think that that effort and really thinking about them and making that, giving those people to go to and ways that they could easily come and talk to some of us, I think really helped that transition. Some of them were transitioning back into the building for the first time and I think I wish we'd have done more for teachers. But I think I put that on a question later, so I'll stop talking now.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, I appreciate you guys talking so much about these obstacles that we've experienced and many of the things that I'm sure other educators have gone through over the years, especially the COVID years, as Kara mentioned quite a bit, but let's talk about how things are now. What lessons did we learn over time, because you guys did spend a significant amount of time with summer school. What did you change? What would you still change or do differently? Um, what would you say to people who are considering this work?
Speaker 2:well, one thing we wound up, and it was it was because of uh, a weird calendar. I think because of snow days, because we started late because of covid somehow. Calendar, I think because of snow days, because we'd started late because of COVID Somehow, with the way the hours worked out, there was a day that the credit recovery didn't have class and so credit advancement wasn't supposed to come, but that didn't get sent out to credit advancement. So we had some kids show up, so I happened to be there working and it was just me and the secretary, so we were able to get them sorted out. So I think my my takeaway is the first time as an administrator was more communication and separate that out. It was in an email home that there was no school that day, but it clearly was missed by some parents. So another email should have went specifically to credit advancement parents as a reminder, because the credit recovery kids were getting their grade on the day before, so they it was like more they knew it was over, whereas the credit advancement is half day and goes the whole time. So their semester wasn't over, they just weren't supposed to be at school that day. So just some better clarification on that. Was it kind of our, our big oops.
Speaker 2:I think I would have focused a little more on the teachers that summer.
Speaker 2:I think you know there were some that were struggling too, especially during our virtual session.
Speaker 2:They were there and you know they would all kind of get there and kind of close their doors and be on Zoom at least part of the time and I feel like it really realizes the last few days that it was just getting to be kind of a drag and a struggle for some of them and keeping up with kids. And I was in my office calling kids and families who were not keeping up with the work. But I should have done a better job of kind of focusing on them. It was also weird because they would move. They'd have to go to a different room like every other day because we were doing summer scrub and apparently nobody told custodial so every morning it was well what. Two teachers are displaced now and they'd go in and there'd be not even a desk for them to put their computers on. So maybe also some planning on that and figuring out a way to not touch the rooms or plan better so they would not just show up and have all their stuff moved and gone.
Speaker 4:So what you just said about teachers, you know we, we borrow rooms every every summer and so the teachers that we moved into their rooms, you know it's it's funny that the some of them use zip ties to lock their drawers and some of them just leave everything out for us to use. So, uh, it's always interesting to see what kind of space we have moving into new to new places. You know, like one of the things that we learned over the course of time that I've been doing this, you know we've learned a lot of things, a lot of more little things. But you know, like, don't touch teacher stuff. That's what we have to tell people. You know, like the teachers that move into these summer school rooms don't teach. You know, don't use the teacher materials. You know that dish of life, of breathness, is not there for you. It's meant for them. So that's that. I mean little things like that. There's tons of little things like that but like in overall the program you
Speaker 4:know, communicate with parents. You know that was one of your stories too. It's like every year, because we're at a new place, parents don't know how to pick their kids up, parents don't know where to go, you know, to even drop them off, they, you know. So over the years we've had to send maps, we've had to send emails, we've had to send letters. You know there's every single possible way that you can communicate with parents. You got to do it because if you don't do it that one way, there's going to be parents out there that that's the only way they communicate and they're going to miss out. And, and you know, when they miss out, it's usually pretty big deal, because it means that they're either stopping up the traffic line or you know their, their kids, missing out on the first hour of the day because they didn't know when school started, or you know things like that. So I mean, over time, one of the biggest things I think that we learned and it was really good, is that?
Speaker 4:we went from full day to two half days so the kids can experience two different camps. Now that we have that variety, um, you know, spending spending six hours with one teacher during the summer is not great.
Speaker 4:So, uh, you know, for kids or the or the adults, so it's nice that we can you know get in, get them in, get them excited, do some cool things and then send them, send them on their way. And some kids do half day. Some kids, do you know two get in, get them in, get them excited, do some cool things and then send them, send them on their way. And some kids do half day. Some kids, do you know two half days to make up that full day. So that that was a big change to our program that ended up being really good for the kids and and the staff, I think.
Speaker 2:I thought of one other thing, because of something you said, david the the phones for us. I well, the smartest thing I did from the second year was I took my own phone so that I would get my voicemails and could I mean I can get them on my email. But it was just so much easier than trying to use them, calling into somebody else's line and then leaving a voicemail on that line, because they would call the number back and with our phone system at least that was a pain and so that was that was a good move. I made from the first year to the second year was like it is just my extension, that's always out there.
Speaker 3:How it echoes some of the same things that you guys said about communication, especially when you're merging staff and students and families from all over usually the North end and the South end and just making sure that you're being really proactive with that messaging.
Speaker 3:And I agree, dave, like you know, we have some parents who they live by their email and then we have populations of parents who they want a text message of information and so you know, or they need that robo phone call and so just making sure that you're over communicating every little thing, um, so that it doesn't get missed.
Speaker 3:I also think um being proactive about um, you know, taking staff from all over and finding some time for them to get to know each other. Um, I know, over time, I you know there are some people I worked with every single year and you kind of get in that groove and you go work for the same principal and you know, and so you you do those things because you're comfortable with those people. But it's still important to kind of build that team and the camaraderie with the people who are teaching, just so that summer school is a fun experience for the staff as well. And so I think that that being proactive about that communication with parents and staff and making sure they're having fun and then making sure that all your community members are up to date on information. Is is important as well.
Speaker 1:Great. Well, thank you Dave, liz and Kara for joining me to talk about our collective summer school journey. This experience will be so helpful for someone who's thinking about getting started. If you didn't know, compass PD has a big goal of impacting the learning of 1 million students. One way you can help us meet that goal is by sharing this podcast with a fellow educator. Thank you for joining us today.