Big Thought

Programs: Since our inception 30 years ago as young audiences, big thought has grown to become a national model, first in arts education, then in out-of-school time systems, and again in summer learning systems. Were also one of six u. S. Community partnerships that are helping to scale national best practices in social and emotional learning. Through each iteration, big thought has risen to the task of being an effective and flexible organization that can work with communities and partners to close the opportunity gap. Whether our focus is on the arts or stem, there have been two consistent themes that have driven our work: 1) we empower youths creativity, and 2) we help build social and emotional wellbeing. Through our partnerships, big thought serves more than 170,000 dallas children, families and teachers each year, both in and out of the classroom. Annually, big thought also delivers more than 1. 5 million hours of learning. Our best-in-class programs and system-wide partnerships include the following:dallas city of learning a public-private citywide commitment to ensure all students have access to summer learning opportunities as we collectively combat summer learning loss and the growing opportunity gap that disproportionally affects low-income youth. We connect youth to thousands of high-quality learning experiences provided by hundreds of partners, deploying technology and programs to our most underserved neighborhoods and raising the quality of instruction in summer. The initiative is convened by the city of dallas and dallas isd, and managed by big thought. Learning partners we provide elementary school students exposure to hands-on experiences in arts, humanities, and sciences through access to thousands of imaginative on-campus community programs and field trips that are vetted for quality and aligned to state education standards. Creative solutions we partner with the dallas county juvenile department and southern methodist university to develop and manage an intensive performing and visual arts program for disengaged youth in the juvenile system. Together we instill skills associated with job and college readiness, and we develop critical social-emotional skills including communication, empathy, self-control, and cooperation. Other core programs include thriving minds (after-school enrichment), artivism (empowering youth as social justice advocates through the arts), daverse (spoken word performance), the fellowship initiative (youth leadership mentoring), and library out loud (literacy and culture). Our innovative methods of tackling the opportunity gap have a proven track record of success:many students participating in big thought programs increased their writing abilities, performed better on state mandated tests, and started school with a meaningful advantage in math. 52% of students assessed showed positive gains in social-emotional competencies. 71% of our programs are ranked proficient or advanced for instructional impact.