Change The Tune

Did you know that students spend 80% of their waking hours outside of school? That fact sends a clear message that learning ONLY during traditional school hours will not be sufficient to help students become fully contributing members of our modern society. Extended learning—programs for students outside of school hours—are a staple for students from upper-income households. In fact, they participate in these types of programs at 9 times the rate of students from disenfranchised communities. This imbalance is UNJUST and leads to significant disparities in both graduation and dropout rates—cause Black and Brown youth to suffer disproportionately.

Change The Tune works to close the opportunity gap for youth in underserved communities by creating holistic, radical, and transformational extended learning experiences in partnership with communal organizations. We have three key strategies in our approach to this work: 1.) Create & Lead Programs that Students Love, 2.) Train & Develop Organization & School Leaders, and 3.) Mobilize Communities to Invest in Innovative Learning Approaches.

Charli believes “music is the universal language of the soul” and a panacea for societal problems. She is a curator of transformative, musical-learning experiences that empower individuals to create positive systemic change. Utilizing education as a vehicle for activism, Charli is driven in her desire to end inequitable systems, to create opportunities and access for underserved communities. With Change The Tune, she seeks to reimagine the learning space by creating revolutionary extended learning spaces that provide radical and transformational learning experiences in partnership with communities.

Charli is committed to growing Change the Tune and her daily role is to oversee summer programming and to deliver professional development to schools across the county.  

Charli is well positioned to effectively support the LEAP project, in collaboration with her team. Since 2018, Change The Tune has provided extended learning opportunities to 600 children and youth in Los Angeles, the Bahamas, Chicago, and Somerville, MA. Change The Tune is working hard to secure $2 million over the next three years to grow its operations at existing sites and open new sites to ultimately impact thousands of students across multiple cities (Change The Tune currently serves about 150 youth in four cities each year). With this goal, Charli has the capacity to work exclusively for 2-4 hours a week over the 12-week project sprint. We want the students to help us build a strategic growth plan. We are utilizing our powerful afterschool and summer models to create experiential professional development models that can be utilized in the daytime. We also utilize the funding from our professional development model to fund additional summer and afterschool programs. We believe that we can work with approximately 50 schools over 8 markets to build out powerful summer models, and strong professional develop capacity over the next year. With serving these 50 schools we can look to potentially serve 1500 teachers and 15,000 students.

Change The Tune offers evidence-based programming to students who need opportunities to learn and grow beyond the school day.

Black and Brown students are disproportionately disadvantaged in our PreK-12 education system. Students spend 80% of their waking hours outside of school and most students in low-income communities (who are disproportionately black and brown) rely on school hours for most of their development. This is in stark contrast to upper income families that supplement their children's development spending 9 times as much on after-school, summer and other enrichment programming for their children.

Unfortunately, the 20% of time spent in school for low-income black and brown students is met with low expectations and mundane curriculum which is designed in a set and get model which leads to student disengagement. This unjust system of lower standards for communities of color inevitably yield lower outcomes. Additionally, the teachers that serve students feel ill prepared and at times disenfranchised with only 29% of teachers being satisfied with the professional development they receive. There is a clear need for dissemination of improved teaching and learning strategies which utilizes the 80% to improve outcomes for our communities which need it most.

Change The Tune offers high-quality, evidence-based programming at no cost to families who, like everyone, need opportunities to learn, connect, and grow beyond the traditional school day. Change the Tune’s after-school and summer programs are dismantling opportunity gaps for students from low-income communities.

Change The Tune’s mission is to close the extended learning opportunity gap for youth in underserved communities by creating holistic, radical, and transformational learning experiences in partnership with community-based organizations.

Change The Tune employs three key strategies to pursue its mission:

1. Developing innovative revolutionary learning models to grow leaders: Change The Tune offers two key innovative programs throughout the year. The Lab is a 25-30 week afterschool program and The Studio is a four-week summer camp. Both feature a multidisciplinary, culturally responsive curriculum and programming focused on cultivating 21st Century and social and emotional skills.

2. Building organizational capacity: Change The Tune provides hands-on, holistic, organization and facilitator-development training focused on providing soft and hard skills to support the curation of innovative learning models.

3. Mobilizing communities for increased extended learning funding and new learning models. Change The Tune partners with foundations, corporations, public officials, universities, and community organizations to bring awareness to the egregious challenges facing the education sector. By collaborating with their community village, Change The Tune shifts what is possible for learners and creates new funding models to support the development of the extended learning space.

Education (and after school programming) often provides one-size-fits-all with little regard for types of variability, but our programming is inclusive and project-based to meet the needs of all students. Our goal is to embrace learning variability in order to provide all children with a quality education.

As an organization, we have conducted significant foundational research and formative research to establish the need and success of our after school programming.  

There are many organizations in the extended learning space that work to address the learning opportunity gap including:

• The YMCA is one of the oldest afterschool and summer programs in the country. The organization has been a longstanding champion of the importance of extended learning time for children and youth in communities underserved by the current system. They provide safe spaces for youth that “put Christian principles into practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all” (though many chapters welcome people of all faiths).

• The BUILD program teaches students how to build a business and become the CEO of their own lives, focusing on building 21st Century skills through mentorship. BUILD is a leadership development program that builds the capacity of its partners and places students at the center of their work. 

• The Boys and Girls Club of America runs “innovative programs designed to empower youth to excel in school, become good citizens and live healthy, productive lives.” The organization is national in scope, with more than 1,000 independent local organizations across the country. 

Each of these programs operates in the extended learning space and provides safe, developmental spaces for underserved youth. Change The Tune deeply respects the work of each of these organizations and can – and does – learn from the paths they have tread. 

At the same time, Change The Tune offers an exciting, homegrown alternative to Angelinos in two ways: a focus on liberatory learning and collaboration with educators to influence learning models in school.

First, Change The Tune is focused on co-creating liberatory learning experiences through project-based learning with and for students. Before every program is designed and delivered, Change The Tune staff builds a set of open co-construction sessions with students and teachers employing a human-centered equity and design framework to identify the major challenges facing participants and their communities. Then, staff, students, and teachers dream of new possibilities that address those felt problems. That process informs the design and delivery of each program so that every Change The Tune program is tailored to the community of people it is serving, and so there is collective investment in the program itself. 

Second, Change The Tune seeks to influence the school system through its unique partnership with educators. Change The Tune provides collaborative, developmental training to teachers ahead of and during programming that they then bring back to their classrooms. The organization takes advantage of being in a more experimental space outside of schools to create hands-on, experiential, 21st century, holistic learning environments–teachers know this, and are able to experiment with exciting learning models with a high degree of support from Change The Tune. 

We have conducted informational interviews with parents and administrators. We also looked at aggregated data in the marketplace on summer-learning. We have also attended conferences on summer-learning and have begun developing a network. Additionally, we surveyed students about their school experiences.

We have noted the following highlights from school administrators:

·       Concerned about what happens in the summer with youth. Lack of options for youth. School often lacks bandwidth and complete funds to run summer programming. Summer makes an impact on how well students are able to readjust to school.

We have also noted the following highlights from students:

·       Bored in the summer. Need programs that help to build their ability to matriculate into college. Interested in creative opportunities and experiences in the summer.

Lastly, the following are highlights from parents:

·       Lack of options for youth in the summer. Need a learning space for youth. Affordability is a big issue for youth in the summer.

We originally had a model exclusively for youth, but after speaking with different constituents and learning more about desired experiences, we have enhanced and adapted our model to include the growth and development of teachers. Just as the achievement and academic gap are exacerbated by summer loss, the same could be said for the lack of fun engaging professional development for teachers over the summer. Additionally, instead of delivering direct academic content, based on feedback, we have created project-based learning opportunities that are driven by student interest and community need, so that youth can remain engaged, and build the necessary skills they need to become successful.

As an organization, we have a need to strengthen the evidence base of our solution by working with a third-party independent reviewer. Additionally, we could continue to analyze participant data for trends to ensure our afterschool and summer programming are helping children thrive during the traditional school day as well. Right now is the time to engage in a LEAP Project because we have successfully implemented our programming in 4 cities and it would ideal to get support from expert researchers and social entrepreneurs while we try to expand to additional cities. Additionally, now more than ever in the United States we need to leverage out of school time to raise awareness and build programs to cease oppressive practices that victimize communities of color broadly and black people specifically; and to empower those communities to step into the gaps that are created by opportunity to lead change. We start with young people in mind because history has shown us the power and impact that comes from young folks. We are inspired by the Frederick Douglas quote: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”. However, we build upon that philosophy with our belief that our school systems, and those who work within them, are uniquely positioned to create the conditions necessary for students to develop into the effective leader society needs today and for the future.

We would like our LEAP Project to answer the following two research questions:

1.  How can we successfully replicate and implement our programming with fidelity in additional cities across the United States? 
2. How can we draw a correlation between student success in our out of school programming with their overall success in the traditional school day?

We want our students to help us build a strategic growth plan. We are utilizing our powerful afterschool and summer models to create experiential professional development that can be utilized in the traditional school day. We also utilize the funding from our professional development model to fund additional summer and afterschool programs. We need the help of the Leap Project sprint to help us build a system that supports this work and to help us growing to 8 large urban markets in the next year. We want support with building a strategic growth plan, where we are able to sustainably scale our model and impact. It would also be beneficial to synthesize our quantitative and qualitative data on student and teacher experiences to provide to donors and to use for additional funding and grant opportunities. 

With the support of 4 LEAP Fellows each working 6-10 hours per week, I believe we can reimagine what’s possible in the learning environment, through after-school and summer programs to equip learners with the social and entrepreneurial skills to meet the changing demands of the 21st-century economy. Our multidisciplinary approach focuses on developing the whole learner, through hands-on lessons that cultivate students’ shared interests in food, music, and entrepreneurship, free of charge.

Student and family voice and input guide Change The Tune’s continuous improvement strategy. In pre- and post-camp surveys, youth who participated in Change The Tune’s latest Studio program in Los Angeles grew several skills (self-ranked on a scale of 1 to 10): nearly 2.5 points in entrepreneurship and business knowledge and skills, about 1.5 points in mindfulness, over 1 point growth in collaboration. When asked what they are able to do that they were not able to do before camp, students provided answers such as “Grow plants,” “Make a complete business plan,” and “Talk to new people without being nervous.” Students developed social justice business plans to address a problem in their community, and the strongest plans were awarded seed funding to prototype their unique, research-driven approaches.

We anticipate using the Fellow-produced research recommendations, guidance, and strategies to support our strategic plan using data (as mentioned above). Change The Tune has established its proof of concept and is embarking on an ambitious growth plan to bring its innovative learning models to more youth. Change The Tune is working hard to secure $2 million over the next three years to grow its operations at existing sites and open new sites to ultimately impact thousands of students. 

We think of success in both tangible and intangible ways. Success for us means that through this summer experience and afterschool programming, both learners and learning facilitators shift their minds and gain confidence in their abilities to learn and lead learning.  In the short-term, we would like to have a research-based strategic plan and a comprehensive and tangible guide with quantitative and qualitative data on student and teacher experiences.  Long-term, we hope to gain the skills and tools needed to carry out and build upon the strategic plan, as well as actionable steps to ground our programming in data that is representative of the participant experiences and research driven. Additionally, a strong strategic plan will give us the roadmap to exceed our fundraising goals ($2 million) over the next three years to grow our operations at existing sites and open additional new sites to ultimately impact thousands of students. Ultimately, our view of success will be those who are enrolled in our programming are so engaged and regard the quality of the program highly such that 90% will recommend this experience to their peers.

In the 12-week LEAP Project sprint, I hope to build on Change the Tune’s successful prior approaches such as partnering with the business community and activists to create and pitch social justice business plans, developing social-emotional skills, learning and practicing routine mindfulness techniques, engaging in the arts, and learning new knowledge and skills to improve academics while having fun. Additionally, for teachers, the program is designed to immerse them in innovative, out of the box, collaborative teaching experiences which expose them to culturally responsive, project-based, and social-emotional learning pedagogies in the “lower stakes” container of summer and after school learning. Upon completion of the program, teachers and students will possess the self-efficacy, social cognition, and 21st century leadership skills they need to be successful in positively transforming our local and global community.