Arizona Education Solutions

AES' school structure and the outlined interventions are designed to address lost learning time and the affective needs of students. Interventions, provided through high-impact tutoring are planned using benchmark assessment results that have pinpointed missing skills. This targeted instruction meets the student where they are, and fills in critical gaps that were impacted by lost instruction time. Success in learning is a critical component to student mental health.

AES' general academic programming is available to students in their homes, and is not subject to interruptions that may be found in a brick and mortar setting. Students can access their courses at any time, and can adjust their pacing within the semester to meet their individual goals. We offer daily, synchronous and asynchronous instructional sessions that are hosted by content teachers in both group, and individual settings. These sessions are designed with intentional student interaction and content to address social, emotional, and mental health needs. Language learners and students with disabilities are provided with additional instructional sessions to ensure they have continuous access to services and school.

We offer a robust course catalog, which includes access to credit recovery, and a large variety of classes that meet state standard and graduation requirements. We provide these courses during our summer school sessions, which allows students to continue learning, and engaging with teachers and peers. Students who may have credit deficits are able to use this time to get back on track. Engagement is closely monitored. Teachers and advisors regularly communicate with students and their families to discuss progress in courses, areas of strength and need, student social/emotional status, and progress towards student goals. Students who may be off track can be referred to the MTSS team. They plan for and guide students into appropriate interventions for both emotional and academic concerns.

Check and Connect is a systematic SEL approach to student support. Students are assigned a mentor who builds a strong relationship with them through open communication and trust. The mentor completes monitoring of student performance variables (attendance, grades, social/emotional needs, and behavior referrals). Interventions are designed to provide support tailored to individual student needs, based on the student's level of engagement with school, and associated influences of home and school. Mentors partner with parents/families functioning as liaisons between home and school and striving to build constructive family-school relationships.

With these ESSER funds, students will also receive SEL supports from their Intervention Teacher. Interventionists are trained to utilize SEL lessons as part of the Nearpod curriculum. Nearpod SEL provides explicit instruction for the skills students need for life in and beyond school. Nearpod SEL covers a range of topics such as identifying emotions, relationship building, analyzing situations and building empathy skills. Each lesson contains an SEL theme/concept which is introduced to the students. Then they engage in discussion, collaboration and demonstration of skills learned during the specific SEL lesson, and concepts are reinforced throughout the week in other live instruction sessions and during Check and Connect touchpoints.

Students in disaggregated groups such as homeless, Low Income, LEP, Native American, Black, Hispanic, Multi-racial are targeted for this support in addition to other students who qualify for intervention and/or need engagement help.

Students that qualify for intervention sessions will join daily 30-45 minute zoom sessions with their small group (5-7 students) and Interventionist to focus on their learning goals. Additional one-on-one sessions with students can be scheduled as requested by the student and/or the Interventionist.