By Nancy Livingston, CEO, NSSI
We’re halfway through summer programming, and I wanted to share some insights I think you can put to use; there’s a lot to be excited about.
This summer, NSSI has led 15 institutes and stepped into classrooms across 11 partner districts in six states — Georgia, Texas, California, New York, Illinois, and Washington, DC.
Getting to see this many classrooms across the country in summer is a rare vantage point. A few things keep showing up wherever we go, and together they tell two stories at once: proof that the choices we’ve built into our program are working, and a clear signal for where we still need to grow. Here’s what’s standing out.
#1: Novel Studies Are Driving Comprehension Gains in Summer School
Most high-quality instructional materials lean on short passages during the school year, so summer is often the first time students get to sit inside a real story for days at a time. I watch them dig into interesting texts and deepen their comprehension through discussion, and it’s one of the clearest reasons we keep novels at the center of our program.
Sustained time with a single text builds background knowledge and stamina that short passages can’t, which is the case we make in Beyond Phonics: Novels, Knowledge Building and the Pathway to Comprehension.
As author and educator Jarred Amato put it during that conversation:
The classroom can be the only place a student is asked to slow down, to read for 20 minutes at a time, to focus.
That kind of sustained attention is exactly what summer gives us room to build.
#2: Student Engagement Is Thriving in Summer Classrooms
At every site I’ve visited, teachers have brought real energy to their lessons and found smart ways to adapt on the spot for the kids in front of them.
As one NSSI mentor teacher, Roberto De Leon, put it:
Teaching is like playing baseball with no practice whatsoever. It’s just live games every single time. You’re making a thousand decisions a minute.
That adaptability is not something teachers are expected to figure out alone. In Teaching Gets Better When Teachers Learn Together, Roberto talks about what that coaching looks like in practice: “I’m not trying to make little clones of my teaching style. I’m trying to help you see it yourself and make it yours.” That is the difference between a classroom that is just getting through the day and one where teachers are actually growing.
That’s what a summer classroom looks like when it’s working: a teacher making it their own, one decision at a time.
#3: Instructional Consistency Matters in Summer Programs
Our instructional design leans on consistent routines on purpose. It lowers the cognitive load for teachers and students, makes it easier to see what’s working, and keeps training simple. We also hear, through surveys and conversations, that some teachers want more variety and more hands-on moments, and we’re taking that seriously. My belief is that predictable structure and joyful teaching aren’t in tension. The consistency should free teachers up to make each lesson feel relevant to their kids. We’re continuing to refine how we message and support that balance, because we know it’s the difference between a routine that feels freeing and one that becomes monotonous.
#4: Strengthening Formative Assessment in Summer School Instruction
Across sites, I keep noticing how much teachers rely on a single raised hand and a correct answer as their signal that a class is ready to move on. There are so many low-lift ways to widen that lens — mini-whiteboards, cold call, turn-and-talk before hands go up — and it’s given us a clear, concrete focus for how we can strengthen our training this year. For instructional leaders reading this, a sharper focus on how we collect and respond to real-time data is one of the highest-leverage moves available for student learning right now. That kind of instructional responsiveness is exactly what we mean when we talk about strengthening Tier 1 instruction.
As Lauren LaMont noted in that conversation, in effective Tier 1 classrooms roughly 75-80% of students should be mastering daily learning targets:
When that is not happening, the issue is often pacing, skipped formative checks, or insufficient time for student practice.
That’s the gap we’re closing in on this summer.
#5: Classroom Setup Still Matters
A mentor of mine, Max Koltuv, used to say classroom setup deserves as much attention as the lesson itself: where the carpet is, how far desks sit from the board, where the doc camera lives.
Teachers this summer are often working in borrowed classrooms built for a different age group, and they’ve made it work with real resourcefulness. It’s also a reminder that if we can find our partners even a little more runway between the school year ending and summer programming beginning, that extra breathing room would pay off for everyone. It’s part of why we’ve been thinking about summer planning as something that starts in September.
#6: Early Math Fact Fluency Data Shows Promising Growth
Our fact fluency data is starting to come in, and the early signal is strong. With one partner, we collected fact fluency data for 284 students: 85.6% showed positive growth, with an average gain of +7.2 facts completed in one minute. We’re still digging into the full data set and excited to share the fuller analysis soon. This one has us optimistic.
Taken together, these six things confirm something I already believed and sharpen something I didn’t see as clearly before: our core design choices, the novels, the routines, the consistency, are doing their job, and the clearest opportunity ahead of us is helping teachers see and respond to what students actually understand in the moment.
We’re grateful for every partner making this summer possible, and even more grateful for the trust it takes to let you into your classrooms and be honest about what we see.
