In this episode, Ashley Seiler, Chief Partnership Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, joins Robert Balfanz for a discussion about how BBBS created an ecosystem of over 100 community partners, three school districts, and 18 schools that serves over 10,000 students in a range of critical supports both in and out of school.
We often say it takes a village to raise a child. We don't, however, organize our schools that way. The assumption is that everything the school needs is provided by teachers and staff, with little coordination or communication with out-of-school activities that students and families engage with after-school or on weekends. In many ways this puts too big a burden on schools and leaves too many community assets underutilized.
The result is students don't get the full set of supports and experiences they need, school staff are exhausted doing the best they can without all the resources they need, and community organizations are often frustrated that they could be doing more, but don't have a clear way to do so.
In eastern Missouri, a dedicated nonprofit partner with a listening ear helps coordinate a community-school ecosystem, offering large numbers of young people an integrated support framework rather than relying on ineffectual shift work.
In this episode, Ashley Seiler, Chief Partnership Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, joins Robert Balfanz for a discussion about how BBBS created an ecosystem of over 100 community partners, three school districts, and 18 schools that serves over 10,000 students in a range of critical supports both in and out of school.
We often say it takes a village to raise a child. We don't, however, organize our schools that way. The assumption is that everything the school needs is provided by teachers and staff, with little coordination or communication with out-of-school activities that students and families engage with after-school or on weekends. In many ways this puts too big a burden on schools and leaves too many community assets underutilized.
The result is students don't get the full set of supports and experiences they need, school staff are exhausted doing the best they can without all the resources they need, and community organizations are often frustrated that they could be doing more, but don't have a clear way to do so.
In eastern Missouri, a dedicated nonprofit partner with a listening ear helps coordinate a community-school ecosystem, offering large numbers of young people an integrated support framework rather than relying on ineffectual shift work.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education podcast. In today's episode, we'll be talking to Ashley Seiler from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, about how schools and community organizations can work together to support student success. We can't wait to jump into the conversation, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google podcast, just to name a few. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (00:40):
Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Pathways to Adult Success program and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. I'm delighted to have you join us today. This is the eighth episode in a series of conversations we'll be having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country. We'll talk about what will it take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to long-term success. In today's episode, we'll be joined by Ashley Seiler, Chief Partnership Officer, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri. We often say it takes a village to raise a child. We don't, however, organize our schools that way. Typically, we treat the hours from eight to three, Monday to Friday, as school time, and the other hours as family, community, and out-of- school time. The assumption is that everything needed in the school hours
Dr. Robert Balfanz (01:38):
is provided by teachers and the school staff, with little need for coordination or communication with the providers of the activities students and families engage in after school or on weekends. In essence, we have organized youth development as shift work. In many ways, this puts too big a burden on schools, and leaves too many community assets under-utilized. The result is that students don't get the full set of supports and experiences they need, school staff are exhausted doing the best they can without all the resources they need, and community organizations are often frustrated that they could be doing more, but don't have a clear way to do so. Community schools are one means of addressing this, and during the pandemic, school, community, and home life was briefly brought together. Today, though, we're going to focus on a different way of bringing the community into schools. The efforts of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri create an ecosystem of over 100 community partners, three school districts, and 18 schools, serving over 10,000 students with a range of critical supports in and out of school. Welcome Ashley.
Ashely Seiler (02:45):
Well, thank you! I’m so excited to be here today.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (02:49):
Before we dive in, we always like to start all our conversations by asking our guests: When you were in school, what was a good day?
Ashely Seiler (02:58):
Wow. Have think back a little bit, what a school day was like for me, but I can recall. I think for most of us, there's a pretty vivid image of what a good school day was. You can remember those bright spots that really stick out to you. And for me, I played sports. So it was always game days or days that we had activities leading up to those highlighted moments. After school, we were having games and just the celebratory preparation and all of those things that kind of get you to the end of the day.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (03:33):
Yeah. And what's really interesting about that is that a number of our guests have brought up that the extracurricular aspect, if you will, of schools, is when there was their best day. And that actually connects to a growing body of research we have on school connectedness, which says kids are connected to school when they think there's an adult that cares and knows about them as a person, when they have a supportive peer group, when they feel like they're doing something for themselves. And all those things really describe what a sports team does, right. So let's dig into how we get more kids to have those experiences and make them connected to school. And let's start by just learning a little bit about Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri.
Ashely Seiler (04:19):
Well, I'd love to share more. So at Big Brothers Big Sisters in Eastern Missouri, our purpose is really to partner with young people in finding a meaningful, stable, independent life. And what that means is different for all kids, right? It's not the same. We don't put kids in a box and say, okay, we have to do it this way. But really we focus on meeting young people where they're at, from about age five to 25 and building this network of supportive adults in their life. And not necessarily just one person, but organizing resources, opening doors, and really focusing on the whole family and whole child. That's really the work that we've been doing in Eastern Missouri. And obviously we do that through mentoring, but we're doing that through a number of other ways as well. So we have something called ABCToday schools, which I know we're going to talk a little bit about today. And then we do things like first jobs and work with kids after they graduate from high school, through a program called Big Futures. So really trying to diversify how we're working with young people and how we're working with adults to support young people.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (05:33):
That's wonderful. And so young people are your focus and you're organizing adults to help young people. And that's something that, you know, many Big Brothers Big Sisters share in common, but then in Eastern Missouri, you took it a step further, right? And you decided to build a whole ecosystem that brings together a hundred community partners into 18 schools over three districts. How did you get to that point?
Ashely Seiler (06:01):
So maybe 15 to 20 years ago—I think it was around that timeframe—our board really pushed us to identify, how are we making a difference in the lives of young people; and how do we prove that we're doing that through third party data, and not just our anecdotal stories? We have a ton of those, and they're all wonderful, but how are we really proving that we're making a difference in the lives of young people in different areas? And education obviously was one of the areas that stuck out the most to us. And so, we quickly tried to identify, where do we have school relationships, and how do we understand what that means? And so we commissioned a group of education experts, because we're really in the social service sector, and we're not the experts there.
Ashely Seiler (06:49):
So we got them in a room over the course of about nine months, this focus group, and we talked and met regularly and said, what data would we need to look at? What would we need to prove? And so essentially, we arrived at what we call ABCs, that we would need to look at the attendance, behavior, and coursework of the young people that we were working with in the schools. So we did that, and through a very modest, systematic way, we're talking with our schools and very graciously, they said back to us, You know, this is great, what you're showing us on your little brothers and little sisters, but we have a whole number of kids in our district that you aren't working with. And how do we really bring a model together that can support all kids in our schools?
Ashely Seiler (07:38):
And so, at that point we said, that's really not typically our work, it’s collective impact work; but let's do it. Let's learn, let's venture into this together. And so at that time we launched what we call our first ABCToday school, where we work with the school to say, Talk to us about your partners, talk to us about your needs. We get the data, so if we look at the ABC data, we can clearly have conversations back with you; but who are all the players in the school, and how do we bring them together in one conversation? I really love how you talked in your opening about how we have all these people that want to do great things in our schools, but sometimes they just don't know how, and sometimes our schools don't know how to engage the community either. They're overwhelmed with all of the things happening. And resoundingly, that's been our experience: we found that bringing these partners together with the help of what we call a network manager, they're able to coordinate conversations and really bring the community partners in and learn how they can really make an impact in schools.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (08:49):
Yeah. And I think one thing that you said there that is both so simple and yet so powerful—and unfortunately, it's sort of rare for when schools and community partners work together—is that you mentioned multiple times these dialogues that you had. First a dialogue to figure out, where could we have impact? And then a dialogue with the schools pushing back a little bit and saying, we need something slightly different than what you're offering. And it's through that dialogue that you build the trust and connection to do a much more expansive effort such as you're undertaking. Did you learn anything about what it takes to engage that type of dialogue between schools and community partners?
Ashely Seiler (09:35):
Absolutely. I think the first thing that we learned is that we have unexpected partners, right? Like knowing that business partners and faith-based partners could play a role. Typically, when you think of resources and what things you can bring to school, you think of the typical social service resources that you can bring: the programmatic, intervention kind of things. Those are the things that come to the top of mind first, like, what can we do to really help the kids that are really in what you would call, quote unquote, “need”? And what we found is very quickly was, there were things happening within the school. Like, gosh, these business partners, they have so much to offer and so much to give. But it's reciprocal, because what we can also provide is value in a better understanding from the community perspective of the things happening in schools. So you can sort of negate some of the negative things that might be circulating in the community, or the myths about things that happened in schools.
Ashely Seiler (10:31):
Like, “Can you believe that the school did this?” And then you have people in the community that said, “Hey, wait a second. Let me tell you about what I know about this school and some of the challenges that they're faced with. You may not have all of the information to fully understand why that decision might be made. ” So we really see this as a great opportunity for investment of community members to become more aware of the things that are happening in schools and to share all of the great things that are happening in schools, too.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (11:02):
Yeah. That, I mean, that really reminds me of another effort I heard about that, where they would bring community partners in to do report card conferences, so that every quarter a student could have a caring adult just have a conversation about their report card with them, following some scripts and some prompts and some things. So folks could be trained in a couple of hours. And in some of the smaller communities, they're brought in the chief of police and the mayor and all these folks. And they said—sort of like what you said—that one of the biggest impacts is that people had these myths about what the school was like, or the kids in the school were like, and once they got to know them, suddenly, it was like, “Hey, these are my kids.”
Dr. Robert Balfanz (11:40):
Like, “We have to help my kids.” And you know, we've just built up too many walls, right? Between the community and the school, sometimes for good reasons. But what we haven't really recognized is, once we built those walls, we don't have the dialogue, and without the dialogue we don't have the understanding, right? So I think it's very powerful, what you're learning and doing in Eastern Missouri. To go a little deeper into that, can you share with us… partnering, as we said, with a single school is hard enough, right? Let alone multiple schools in a district. But you decided to partner with multiple school districts. How and why did that come about?
Ashely Seiler (12:27):
We identified districts where we had a concentration of students that we were working with, and then tried to establish, how do we also bring resources [so it’s] mutually beneficial for us? If we have a large group of students who are receiving mentoring services, but they're attending schools that are under-resourced, then how do we start to bring extra resources, because that will ultimately impact our little brothers and little sisters. And again, we just started with a dialogue to understand how each district worked, how they functioned, what kind of challenges they had, what kind of cool things were happening within the district as well. And you know, come from a place of understanding, of how do we help support? We know that schools’ jobs are hard enough, so how do we come from a place of support? And we brought some of the school leaders together and said, “Hey, we'd like to do this.”
Ashely Seiler (13:29):
And we had some great endorsement from school leaders. And then, of course, we worked with schools within those districts, to find where were the schools that could really embrace this, and where could we see pockets of some of this work already happening? Because like you said, it's hard to go into a school and work with a school that may seem a little bit… they've been under the radar or maybe they've been judged and they have some hesitation about opening their door to criticism and things. And it's been cool to see how these folks come together and say, we're putting kids first, and we're thinking about the kids in our school and how these relationships that we're forming with our community can benefit them all. So I hope that answers your question a little bit.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (14:26):
Absolutely. And then one other thing I believe I read and I think I heard you mention is that again—because in a way, for some of our listeners, this is such an expansive effort, three districts, multiple schools, 10,000 students, that's a big endeavor. I think you mentioned network coordinators, and I read something about data reviews. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the infrastructure you've had to build to make this whole multisite network work?
Ashely Seiler (14:55):
In our structure we assign staff to work with individual schools and their role is what we consider an ABCToday Network Manager. And they are the coordinator of all the communication and the efforts that happen between community partners in the school. We collect data on the youth and the buildings four times a year. So when the typical report card times come out, we're also gathering whole school data during those times and we're organizing these conversation and the dialogue around that data. So we have meetings four times a year with all of our partners that our staff are really driving and coordinating. Our staff are also trying to identify where there are gaps in resources for each of the schools. So some schools naturally have a lot of partners just because of the folks who are in the school, maybe they're school leaders and that's a natural talent of theirs.
Ashely Seiler (15:55):
And in other schools they don't have as many natural relationships. So our network coordinators are also trying to identify where there are gaps in that and how we can recruit additional community folks to be members of these networks.[DL1] So we have a kickoff meeting at the beginning of every year, for the network to hear from our school leaders: what are their priorities for the year? What are the things that they really want to accomplish? The things that they're paying attention to? Obviously over the last two years, it's been a different conversation than prior to that. And then every quarter we're meeting around data to say, how's the data trending? Is it trending in a positive way? Is it trending in a way that we don't want to see it go?
Ashely Seiler (16:42):
And then, how do we all collectively decide on things that we're going to do to really impact? What are the activities that we're all going to commit to? In some schools it's a career focus, of how do we expose young people to different careers and different people in our community doing different careers? In other schools, it is how do we really help youth with a passion for reading. Collectively, our staff are working on two things: how do we focus on attendance, and how do we focus on a culture of really belonging in schools and how do we support that? How do we ensure that we're recognizing and understanding that kids do have to be connected? They have to be connected in some way, whether that's to an adult or, as we were talking about earlier, a sports team or something. And how we can all be a part of that, whether you're a community member or you're a school leader or a school staff.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (17:43):
Yeah. I mean that's so powerful. That fundamentally, kids have to be in school on a regular basis and they have to feel like they belong there. And those two things intersect, because if you feel like you belong, you're probably more willing to push through some challenges to be there. You know, many things matter, but nothing good will come if kids are not in school on a regular basis. And if, when they're there, they don't feel like they belong or they're welcome… So those were really very foundational things. And we know from some recent research from the CDC, as a matter of fact, that during the pandemic, students that = felt a connection to school, whether it was virtual or in person, reported half the mental health impacts of those that did not.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (18:32):
So that really shows the power of those caring relationships and how bringing additional adults and other community partners helps solve the scale problem of, there are so many kids that need those relationships, and only so many teachers. So where I want to go just a little more now, is that I’m just curious about what you're seeing, about how the pandemic has been impacting the, the type of needs and the scale of needs, uh, that, that you've observed in your, in the schools and communities you're working with?
Ashely Seiler (19:06):
What we're seeing is that the pandemic has very much impacted students, and all students, not just one type of students. We characterize need a lot of times as students who would be considered at risk or have factors that would put them at risk for certain behaviors, negative behaviors at that. But what we're seeing now is that almost every student in a school district is impacted, whether they have strong family systems at home, strong family systems outside of their home, all of these students have been impacted. And a lot of it, to your point, is the connection. They haven't been in school for a couple of years. So whether it's a peer connection or whether it's an adult connection with a teacher, we're really seeing a lot of students struggle with those things and how they can navigate their way back, because for some of them, they're a couple years older now.
Ashely Seiler (19:59):
And so they went through these transitions that sometimes you go through with peers and sometimes you you're able to work out a little differently. So, we really see in all schools, in all districts that we work with, there's a different kind of a need, now. It's that need of connecting with other people and belonging and how do we find that? One of the most interesting conversations that we've heard recently is that females in particular are having more difficulty in the secondary years, as you throw in implications of social media and some of those things, and how do we resolve healthy conflict? It's very widespread, what we see, and the impacts, I think, of the pandemic are something that we also have to be very realistic about how quickly we can turn that tide. It's just going to take us some time to find ways to recover.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (21:01):
And, you know, you can see that… you wouldn't want this to happen as to prove the case, but the fact is that you already had this system in place. Can you imagine trying to put it in place after the pandemic? = I think it really speaks to this idea of how do we really blend the community and schools in this organic way where we're listening to each other and we could be adaptive and be ready when a pandemic hits. We know the places that had some of the groundwork laid were much better able to navigate a shock to the system.
Ashely Seiler (21:43):
Absolutely. I would say, I'm thankful that we had these systems in place for the schools that we were working with, because it made it so much easier for us to make the call, when we first entered the pandemic, for us to make the call to say, "Hey, I know this is the way that you were helping before, but can we put this aside? And can you just come help us hand out food bags?" So that relationship was already clearly established with our schools and, and everyone saw the need and had the desire to figure out how to pivot really quickly. And you're right. I think if we would have tried to put that together in the middle of a pandemic, when everyone in the world was going through something very similar, it would have been much more difficult.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (22:28):
All right. So I want to now bring us home with a series of questions about how others can learn from your experience. I want to first talk about it from the school side. When I've talked to a lot of principals over the years about this very question of how to get a better integration of school and community, what they sometimes tell me is, "That sounds nice. I really wish it could happen, but I don't have the time to provide all the orientation, communication and ongoing dialogue that I know it’s going to need to be effective. And the reason for that is I had some bad experiences. Like I brought a community partner in, and they didn't know the culture of my school, and so they started promising kids things we couldn't deliver, or [promising] families things that we couldn't deliver." What have you learned about establishing trust with school leaders, and making community organization and school partnerships doable?
Ashely Seiler (23:24):
I think one of the very first things that we learned about developing those relationships with school leaders is, again, coming from a place of support. We're not coming from a place of being critical, nor do we want to be; again, their jobs are so hard. So it's seeking to understand first and really partnering. Partnership is a word that we use a lot, but to be a true partner means that sometimes it's doing things that are out of the box. Sometimes it is thinking together and brainstorming together. Sometimes it's listening and trying to work together to say, "Hey, let me just help you with this one little thing." And I think one of the first things that I can recall in our early learnings and our early work was we had a principal who very much agreed to do this work with us.
Ashely Seiler (24:24):
And when we showed her the data, the first time she said, “Oh my goodness, I look at this and you know, I know my data, I look at data all day long, but this is really simple and easy to read.” She said, “But I've been putting all of my focus on third and fourth graders because in Missouri, MAT testing scores are really important, right? And that's where I've been putting all of my resources, but I'm seeing here that my first graders are really struggling. And I need to find a way because my first graders are going to become third and fourth graders. And it's just going to be a continuation of the problem. If I had some folks who could just lean in and come and sit in my classrooms and help me with the students who were good or adequate readers at this point, then my teachers could take time to focus on some of the students that needed extra support.”
Ashely Seiler (25:12):
And so we were able to bring in some folks from the local faith-based organization, and they just literally sat in groups with first graders and read stories during their reading and ELA time. And so some of those early wins are really big because I think it shows that we're really here for what they need, not necessarily us to bring in a bunch of ideas that we need to tell the school that they need to go do. They have enough ideas and enough work to happen. So this is not about us saying, “Hey, this would be really cool for us to do this, now you guys go do it." It's, no, if we're going to commit to doing this, then the people around this table are going to figure out how we bring that resource, not tell the principal and her staff, or his staff, how they have to go get that.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (25:59):
Yeah. I think that's the way to do it. I'm going to talk about the flip side now. Sometimes community organizations express some frustrations in working with schools. One is that the there's such turnover in principals that they build a relationship and then the person[leaves and] they have to start anew. Every year. And I've talked to some organizations that, because they’ve had these frustrations, they basically say it's just more viable for me to focus on out of school time and not try to get into schools. So what have you learned about how you help schools meet the needs of community organizations?
Ashely Seiler (26:38):
I think that's something that we constantly and are continually learning. As we evolve as a community and as a society, of course you're going to have pain points. You're going to have growth points, you're going to have pain points. And we consider this a constant relationship-building exercise, that we have to continue to build relationships, whether it's with the school leaders, the community organizations, and all in between, but again, seeking a really good understanding of how are we engaged in this work and how it can be mutually beneficial. I think being upfront and having conversations with each of the stakeholders at the beginning of the involvement about what is realistic and what's not realistic and what we can hope to achieve and how we come together to focus on the students and the young people in the building.
Ashely Seiler (27:29):
We of course have organizations who wan tot do some things and it's just not possible. It's just yeah, it would be really great, but the timing is just not right, right now. And so we’re trying to norm on that, like, "Hey, can we, um, can we figure out another way, can we figure out a different timing?" But really trying to bring those conversations together so that everybody has a clear understanding and everyone feels comfortable with how we're approaching that work, but we know that there are tons of community organizations out there and we can continue to bring them in.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (28:02):
And it strikes me too, that some of the other things you do are probably pretty important for this, the idea that you are building from the needs of the school, to see who could provide and help meet those needs or those experiences; but also the infrastructure you're providing with your onsite coordination and these quarterly review meetings with data. So my guess is it helps a lot that the principals and the community organizations don't feel like they have to spend all this time, finding each other and talking to each other one on one. Which would not be viable.
Ashely Seiler (28:40):
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's been one of the advantages that we hear from school leaders is, “I can say something to this group of partners and not have to do the follow up. I don't have to take the time to call these folks and say, ‘Hey, something's come up really quickly.’ We can send it to you and you can put it out there to everyone and you can figure out how to organize it, and then we can come back together.” So that it isn't a lot of legwork for the principals and the school staff to have to administer.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (29:13):
Thanks. And so we're going to conclude now with the big question: What will it take to make the integration of school and community that you have achieved in Eastern Missouri, the norm for all schools?
Ashely Seiler (29:25):
Oh my gosh. That is a big question. I would just encourage it and coach people to come to this partnership from a place of seeking to understand and just learning and knowing that every school and every community and every building is different, and the needs of the kids within those schools and within those walls are different. And really trying to again understand how the partnership can be mutually beneficial, but how it can be focused on the support of students in the community. And undeniably there will be gaps and there will be systematic challenges that we can never overcome. We know there are plenty of those, but we can put those aside and say, “How can we come together and really celebrate and elevate these students?” I think those would be my encouraging words. It's just to come at it from that angle and hopefully the rest of the pieces will fall into place.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (30:26):
Thanks. That was great. You know, what could we do now together, right? So thank you, Ashley. As we close out, are there any last words you'd like to share with the audience or let them know where they can learn more about what we discussed today?
Ashely Seiler (30:39):
Certainly. They can visit our website, www.bbbsemo.org, where we have more about Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri and the work that we're doing there. And I encourage everyone to look it up and call us with questions. We'd be happy to entertain questions from folks about the work that we do here.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (31:01):
Thank you. I'm sure you'll get some, because it's truly quite amazing work that you guys are doing and quite important. To bring our discussion to a close, I would like to thank Ashley again for sharing what Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri is learning, about how we can create the village it will take to provide all our students with a pathway to adult success. As we have heard, this will require bringing schools and community organizations together in a thoughtful and intentional way, not only within a school district, but across them. School district boundaries have been built over the past century for a wide range of positive and negative reasons. As we design schools for the future, it'll be important to recognize that people live and interact in communities, which often overlap multiple school districts. To provide all students the experience and supports they need to thrive in the 21st century,
Dr. Robert Balfanz (31:49):
you'll not only have to move from shift work with schools and community organizations working on different facets of youth development at different times, to an integrated holistic approach; but also break down the walls of push against community. As we've learned today, a better way is possible. Before we let you go, we want to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education, to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five star review, and also please share the show with a friend or a colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center and the Pathways to Adult Success project. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We’re inviting you to listen to the other episodes at our Designing Education series, wherever you listen to podcasts. Onward and be well.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (32:45):
Great. Thanks Ashley. That was great.
Ashely Seiler (32:50):
Awesome.
Dr. Robert Balfanz (33:07):
Of course, of course the opening paragraph. I knew that already. All. All right. All right. Let me get that up.
Ashely Seiler (33:33):
No, as long as you all feel like it was good, I'm fine with that.[AM2]
Dr. Robert Balfanz (33:38):
Hello, and welcome to the Designing Education podcast. In today's episode, we'll be talking to Ashley Seiler from Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Eastern Missouri, about how schools and community organizations can work together to support student success. We can't wait to jump into the conversation, but before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google podcast, just to name a few. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.[AM3]
[DL1]Suggest cutting this.
[AM2]Delete
[AM3]Delete—unless you want to use this instead of the intro you already have.