The Kenneth Rainin Foundation is committed to unlocking potential in all of Oakland’s children. We envision every child entering kindergarten ready to learn and able to read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. That requires investing in the adults who nurture them—from their parents and guardians to caregivers and teachers. We’re dedicated to building children’s social, emotional, language and literacy skills. Skills that make learning fun and enable children to flourish.

Education begins with believing in every child. That belief lies at the heart of our Education Program. It also drives Shaheena Khan, our Director of Education Strategies and Ventures, who was appointed in July 2019. With her leadership we sharpened our focus on equity and reaffirmed our commitment to disrupting conditions that inhibit children’s learning.

Believing in every child is by necessity forward-looking. Making equity-centered investments in early childhood education sets the stage for sustaining the impact we can have on every child’s future. With our Oakland educators and partners, we are aiming to achieve equitable, system-level solutions that recognize the broad context for student learning.

Collaboration—through authentic and meaningful engagement with our community—is crucial to finding equitable solutions to complex challenges. Increasingly, the Rainin Foundation is centering the voices of people who are marginalized and disenfranchised. Too often, these voices are absent from conversations that impact their community and children. We want to change that. Our vision for Oakland’s children requires us to be more intentional about approaching our work with an equity lens. Looking at it any other way perpetuates systems that have not worked.

In 2019, we took another step along the path toward equity. We have long known that listening to our stakeholders informs and improves our philanthropic practices. To provide an accessible structure for those conversations, we are creating a Community Strategy Council for Educational Equity and Excellence. The membership draws on a range of experiences, backgrounds and relationships. It includes teachers, school leaders, administrators; students and parents; and our literacy coaches.

The Council will be listening and learning from those who are closest to the problems we’re collectively trying to solve. By trusting the wisdom of these community members, we can better understand the root causes and co-design solutions. We want to be a part of building a community of shared practice that centers equity and fuels a thriving future for children.

The Rainin Foundation continues to champion community alliances focused on professional development for early childhood educators. Last October, the Oakland Early Learning Symposium drew more than 300 participants. Mayor Libby Schaaf and Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) Superintendent, Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell, kicked off this first-of-its-kind day of training and networking. We served as co-funder and thought partner to a broad coalition of city agencies and community groups who organized this event. The hosting team included OUSD Office of Early Childhood Education, City of Oakland Head Start, BANANAS, Oakland Starting Smart & Strong and the Oakland Literacy Coalition.

Event organizers were responding to a range of needs expressed by Oakland’s dedicated educators and caregivers. And the women and men working in both the formal and informal systems showed up with enthusiasm. Designed around “powerful interactions for powerful learning,” a morning keynote and two special sessions offered simultaneous translation into Spanish and Mandarin. Six afternoon workshops, all led by experts from the community, covered a variety of early childhood education issues. Topics included dual language learning, supporting families with developmental concerns and addressing implicit bias in adult/child interactions. The day featured plentiful opportunities for networking, along with a chance to get up and dance together.

Another collaborative effort is focused on drawing from the local community to increase the diversity of early childhood educators. Our 2018 planning grant supported a partnership with the Unity Council and OUSD’s Office of Equity and Office of Early Childhood Education. Designed over the last year, The Men of Color Early Education Teaching Fellows Pilot will launch in the 2020-21 school year.

The pilot combines professional development with life skills mentors and other wraparound supports geared to men of color. It aims to increase teacher retention through culturally responsive instructional practices and community-centered workforce development. The program will leverage the successful SEEDS of Learning model to train community members to be highly skilled classroom tutors. We are hopeful about the potential for this work, knowing that students, especially boys, benefit when teachers share their race or gender.

Since 2014, the Rainin Foundation has funded and implemented SEEDS of Learning. The program is a proven method for supporting teachers and unlocking the potential of Oakland’s youngest learners. Its strategies are rooted in evidence-based practices that nurture the language, literacy and social emotional skills children need to thrive. The role of caring relationships and high-quality interactions are central to SEEDS of Learning. Through our research, we know that meaningful relationships with adults are essential to a child’s social and emotional growth. That’s why we’re invested in the adults who interact with children every day.

Our research is now focused on longer-term questions. How long does it take for teachers to achieve mastery in SEEDS of Learning practices? And how long do these learning outcomes last? The Rainin Foundation teamed up with NORC at the University of Chicago to assess impact.

Our first study focused on understanding time to teacher mastery as measured by child outcomes. Using randomly controlled groups of students, it involved 26 Kidango preschools over three academic years. A portion of the results will be available in 2020. The second effort is a longitudinal study following 400 transitional kindergarten students across 26 OUSD classrooms. It will help us understand if positive SEEDS outcomes persist through third grade. Results from this study will be available in 2025.

Through our investments in organizations that nurture the whole child, we’re seeing how culturally responsive approaches are fundamental to their success. They strengthen family relationships and create more successful learning environments for children. Lincoln‘s programs provide family coaching, classroom supports and summer learning opportunities that create a sense of belonging and positive identity. SEEDS of Learning teachers at San Antonio Head Start learn words from more than eight different languages as building blocks for connection and literacy, helping every child to feel comfortable, safe and loved. The family resource centers led by the East Bay Agency for Children and Lotus Bloom provide literacy-rich, early childhood programs and parent supports. These programs, and so many more, elevate family learning and literacy.

We are honored to partner with these schools and community-based organizations who are helping children become confident, capable and joyful learners! View more information about these grants.