We all have stories to tell, but for these students, telling it may be the key to their success.
Spoken in rhyme, Get Lit presents teen with opportunity to express their frustration, joy and thoughts on life through poetry. By entering the lyrical world, these students are able to verbalize and escape the trials of everyday life and envision a different future.
It all began back in 2006 when teacher and literary coach Dian Luby Lane started the program in a South Central Los Angeles high school. Coming from a low-income community herself, Lane wanted to show her students that there is a hope for a better future. So she introduced them to the world that saved her: books and poetry.
Since then, Get Lit has expanded to other schools and communities in order to show at-risk teens that there is hope. Through curriculums taught at high schools and in communities, Get Lit uses poetry to instill confidence and show the value of self-expression. Students who participate learn not only to read poetry, but also to write and perform it, reports Good.
The curriculum includes classical, spoken word and canonical poems from Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound to Langston Hughes.
Get Lit is more than just a class, though. It’s also a traveling troupe of performers known as the Get Lit Players, which performs famous compositions, as well as originals. During their travels last November, the Get Lit Players found themselves on The Queen Latifah Show where a video of their performance went viral.
One member of the troupe is 18-year-old Kyland Turner, a senior with aspirations to work in television and movies.
“[Get Lit] came to my school and someone did a poem about a father son relationship and it spoke to me and my struggles so I decided to get involved,” Turner tells The Queen Latifah Show. “Since joining Get Lit I have turned my grades around and now I’m looking and applying to colleges, something I never thought I would have a chance at doing two years ago. They saved me in so many ways; I owe my life to Get Lit.”
Currently, Get Lit has a pilot program in Washington, D.C., and it’s also working in coordination with After School All-Stars, a program offering after-school programs to almost 90,000 students. The organization is currently holding a fundraising campaign with the hope of further expansion.
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Tag: low-income students
7 Reasons Why Community Colleges Are Necessary for America’s Prosperity
In last week’s State of the Union, President Barack Obama laid out a plan to offer a community college education free of charge to every American. These schools, as Obama said back in 2010, are “treated like the stepchild of the higher education system. They’re an afterthought, if they’re thought of at all,” but now he’s hoisted them up as the “centerpiece of [his] education agenda.”
Some question whether his proposal for free tuition is the best use of limited cash, but setting politics aside, there’s no denying that the nation’s 1,130 community colleges play a vital role in higher education. Here’s why they’re essential to our success.
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At This School, Parents and Kids Learn Side-By-Side
School is in session, but at the Briya Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., the students are certainly not who you’d expect to be roaming the hallways. Instead of just kids, there’s adults in attendance, too.
Back in 1989, Briya began as a family literacy center run by and for immigrants, but it gained charter school status in 2005, reports National Journal. Since then, the school has doubled as a place for both adults and young children to learn, as well as a day care for the adult students’ young children. While not a requirement, most students are immigrants, who attend for free.
The philosophy behind Briya? That the only way to stop the cycle of low-income families is for parents and children to have access to the same essential resources: education, health care and work skills. So Briya combines all three of those into one, offering classes for adults in English language, basic computer skills and parenting. While classes, which are held each day for two-and-a-half hours, aren’t compulsory, it’s expected that adults will attend for at least one year (some may enroll again the following year).
Through its “two-generation” approach, Briya is aiming to tackle the problem of poverty at its core: the family.
“They’re getting English classes, and someone’s going to take care of [their] kid,” Briya Executive Director Christie McKay tells National Journal. “They want [their kids] to do well in school, better than they did.”
And for many, that’s the first step to success.
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This Unlikely City Is Cranking out IT Experts
In the Victorian building on State Street in Camden, N.J., computers are whirling as part of the IT training and consulting nonprofit Hopeworks N’ Camden that’s bringing education and help to the city’s residents — and rejuvenating the spirit of the city in the process.
Camden probably isn’t the first place that comes to mind when thinking about IT. After all, 43 percent of the population doesn’t have a high school diploma and 47. 8 percent are living in poverty, reports Next City. Hopeworks is working to do something about this and so far, the program has assisted more than 1,000 youth enter college, begin careers and achieve GEDs. It’s also provided training in web design, geographic information systems (GIS) and the global cloud computing platform Salesforce. Additionally, trainees can put their schooling into practice by working in the Hopeworks consulting firm, which services members of their community. The nonprofit has around 60 clients for whom they provide GIS services.
“We offer a service and people hire us to work for them, just like any other consulting firm,” GIS director Luis Olivieri tells Next City. “We just finished a project with the Merchantville-Pennsauken Water Commission to locate their fire hydrants using GPS technology.”
For the student-employees, the experience is rewarding and something they probably thought wasn’t possible. Theadie White attends Camden County Community College and works at Hopeworks as a web intern as well.
“Yeah, I like it. It pays me, so that’s awesome,” Theadie explains. “But it also gave me a lot of skills I didn’t expect that I needed improvement on. I’ve gotten a lot out of it and a lot of other people can get a lot out of it, as well.”
MORE: This City Gives Dropouts a Realistic Way to Earn Their Diplomas
The Surprising Thing That’s Giving Low-Income Students Internet Access
In the evening, when students are supposed to be at home toiling over their homework, the school buses that carry them to school usually sit idle in a lot. But one school district in Salton City, Calif., is putting these vehicles’ downtime to good use.
How so?
By installing Wi-Fi routers inside the school buses and parking them in neighborhoods where many low-income students lack Internet access. For as long as the battery on the bus lasts, the community can use the free Wi-Fi — something that could have huge outcomes, considering that about half of the low-income students in the U.S. lack home Internet access, according to Nichole Dobo of the Hechinger Report.
The only other choice for these kids is to stay at school and use the Wi-Fi there to complete their homework. Darryl Adams, superintendent of schools of the Coachella Valley Unified District, tells Dobo, “I had kids sitting outside my office yesterday because they want to connect to the Internet at, like, 6 o’clock at night.”
When low-income students stay after hours to hop online — missing the school bus home — it creates difficulties for the parents who must come fetch them, as many of them live an hour’s drive or more away.
Thirteen-year-old Jasmine Jimenez says that she’s looking forward to the day when the district might enable Wi-Fi on the bus during its route. “It won’t be a big bug to ask your parents to pick you up,” she said.
School district officials haven’t completely worked out the kinks of the system. So far they’ve only been able to install routers in two buses out of their fleet of 90. Drivers park the two buses on lots in trailer parks and must obtain permission from the owners to do so. But the biggest problem is that the battery tends to die after only one hour of use, an energy crunch which some have suggested might be solved by installing solar panels on the buses.
Still, the Coachella district is determined to try to make the program work. “Come on. We can do better than that as a nation, especially for our low-income families and our disadvantaged families,’’ superintendent Darryl Adams says.
MORE: Every Kid Needs An Internet Connection to Thrive In School. This District Has A Plan to Make it Happen
How Can One Nonprofit Solve Two Big Problems Facing Both Veterans and Low-Income Kids?
Bob Kincaid, co-founder of the Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Get Veterans Involved (GVI), has found that it’s possible to kill two birds with one stone. His nonprofit helps two groups — veterans who struggle when they return from service, and elementary school kids in need of mentors — at the same time.
How is that possible?
While veterans train for new jobs or attend college, the organization pays them to visit local elementary schools each week.
“They’ve got no mission. No purpose. The hope is to give them purpose,” Kincaid tells the Times Free Press. “If we can have these service members recognize these kids need them, we have a mission for them.”
Kincaid believes the program, which kicked off in five elementary schools this year, will help veterans feel connected to their community as they work to make a smooth transition into civilian life. Additionally, the work will help low-income kids in innumerable ways. “We mentor the kids, who then mentor the vets,” he adds.
Instead of having the vets come to the schools with a lesson to teach or a talk to give, GVI instructs them to simply help out in whatever way the classroom teachers need them to. One basic task the veterans assist with at Calvin Donaldson Elementary, for example, is helping kindergartners learn their ABCs.
Principal Cherrye Robertson says, “Right now all of my kindergartners know all of their letters, which is phenomenal. We’ve never had all the kindergartners in the whole building know all their letters at this time of year.”
With early successes, GVI is aiming to expand through funding and donations. GVI co-founder Ron White says, “The vision is for this one day to be in school districts around the country.”
MORE: For Female Veterans Experiencing Employment Woes, This Organization Offers Strong Advice
When Traditional Disciplinary Actions Don’t Work, Restorative Justice Can Bring About the Healing Process
Professor Carolyn Boyes-Watson remembers getting a call from distressed administrators at a Boston high school: “We have so many girls fighting,” they said, “we’re picking up clumps of hair in the hallways.”
Students were yanking each other’s hair out while brawling in the school’s corridors and cafeteria, and administrators couldn’t figure out how to make the violence stop.
So they called in Boyes-Watson, a sociology professor at Suffolk University in Boston, to train students and teachers in a conflict-resolution practice known as restorative justice. Drawing from Native American traditions, the concept uses ritualized dialogue to try to mend broken communities. Participants gather in circles to try to resolve problems through discussion, rather than retribution.
Across the country, more and more schools are turning to restorative justice as they realize that traditional disciplinary measures — suspensions and expulsions — often don’t deter misbehavior, but can instead set troubled students up for failure by further disengaging them from school.
While traditional justice systems are based on punishing perpetrators (usually by ostracizing or isolating them), restorative justice focuses on healing the harm that has been inflicted — personally and community-wide. Restorative justice programs in schools seek to establish cultures of openness, communication and respect.
Boyes-Watson helped the Boston school set up a practice in which groups of students and teachers met regularly to discuss problems while sitting in a circle. “The kids absolutely take to the circle immediately,” Boyes-Watson says. “They treat each other better. They’re kinder to one another. They feel a sense of belonging and connection. It’s really quite simple. … It’s a small intervention that makes such a powerful difference.”
The effect was transformative. By the following year, the school had solved the problem of girls fighting — no more brawls in the halls.
With similar results being reproduced in other schools, restorative justice is catching on nationwide: Schools in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota are using the practice. Even the federal government is getting on board.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration released new school discipline guidelines asking administrators to move away from zero-tolerance discipline and begin using alternative measures like restorative justice. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted that suspensions often lead to additional disciplinary action, repeating grades, dropping out and ending up in the juvenile justice system. Restorative justice seeks to change that trajectory, known as the school-to-prison pipeline.
DIVERTING THE PIPELINE
The growth of restorative justice in schools comes in response to the failure of zero-tolerance discipline, which uses removal from school as a punishment. During the 1990s, suspensions and expulsions became increasingly popular, paralleling a dramatic increase in the country’s prison population as a result of the War on Drugs.
Initially, zero-tolerance discipline was focused on the most extreme offenses: guns and drugs in school. “But what happened over the years was that morphed into including more and more things into what were zero-tolerance offenses,“ says Dr. Martha Schiff, a restorative justice expert at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla., including bringing nail clippers or butter knives to school.
Not surprisingly, the number of suspensions and expulsions has nearly doubled since 1974.
Disproportionately, students of color have been the recipients of those punishments. Nationwide, while 17 percent of school-age children are black, African-American students comprise 37 percent of suspensions and 35 percent of expulsions. Additionally, black students are suspended or expelled at a rate three times that of white students.
“Kids who should have been in school were being systematically kicked out and winding up in the justice system,” says Schiff. A name for this dynamic emerged — the school-to-prison pipeline — highlighting the parallel failures of school discipline and the justice system, in which African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated.
Now, as restorative justice takes root in schools, studies are showing that it does reduce suspensions and expulsions — often quite dramatically. Whether the practice addresses the racial disparities in school discipline is a question that requires further study, says Schiff.
Not everyone is sold on restorative justice. Annalise Acorn, a law professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, has written a book-length critique, arguing that the practice can traumatize victims and allow unrepentant offenders to fake their way out of trouble. And Dr. Hilary Cremin, a senior lecturer at the University of Cambridge in England, warns that restorative justice is not a panacea and must be implemented carefully in order to avoid causing more harm than good.
At the moment, however, critical voices are in the minority. “I’ve never seen the momentum and groundswell around it quite like it is now,” says Schiff.
MAKING IT RIGHT
In Oakland, Calif., the entire school district has adopted restorative justice practices, after seeing dramatic results at a single troubled middle school.
In 2005, Cole Middle School was in crisis. Student behavior at the school — located in West Oakland, a low-income, high-crime neighborhood — was out of control despite aggressive disciplinary tactics. The school had a suspension rate nearly five times higher than the district average and was expelling four times as many students.
Fania Davis, head of the organization Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, helped the school implement restorative justice circles. In a single year, suspensions dropped by 87 percent and not a single student was expelled.
“In our first pilot, we were able to completely eliminate violence,” says Davis. Principals took notice, and by 2011 the Oakland Unified School District had hired a district-wide program manager to help administrators and teachers bring restorative justice into their schools.
According to David Yusem, Restorative Justice’s program manager, schools first establish dialogue circles as a regular practice in classrooms. Students sit with their teachers and establish group values, creating a space to connect and speak personally about events in school or in their lives. Circle members talk one at a time — without interruption — passing a “talking piece,” an object indicating whose turn it is to speak.
On their own, dialogue circles have a dramatic impact, says Ina Bendich, of the Restorative Justice Training Institute in Berkeley, Calif. “Eighty-five percent of your problems will be taken care of when you really focus on community building,” she says.
For the other 15 percent of problems, schools use response-to-harm circles, designed to address the aftermath of specific conflicts, like two students fighting, or a student yelling at a teacher. With these, the affected parties talk about what happened and what they were feeling at the time.
“It gives the person who did the harm a chance to make it right, rather than pushing them out of school,” explains Yusem.
Taking responsibility for one’s actions can include things like public apologies or community service, or a modified form of a traditional punishment, such as in-school suspension instead of removal.
Kris Miner, executive director of St. Croix Valley Restorative Justice in River Falls, Wis., says she helped facilitate a healing circle that included parents, students and school staff after a white 11th-grader used the N-word and nearly got into a fistfight with a black student.
As the talking piece went around the circle, one father, a corrections officer, spoke about how damaging racial slurs can be and how, in prison, they can get you killed. A Latina guidance counselor talked about being called a “wetback” and a “spic.”
The circle created an opportunity for reconciliation for all parties involved — a moment that never would have occurred if the offending student had simply been removed from school.
The student who had used the racial slur became more and more emotional as people spoke. “I am so sorry that I said that,” he said, tearing up. “I will never say that word again.”
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The Private School Education That Doesn’t Cost a Dime
Cristo Rey Columbus High School isn’t like other schools.
As part of the 28 schools forming the Cristo Rey network (founded in 1995 in Chicago by Jesuit priest John P. Foley), this Columbus, Ohio private school takes underprivileged kids and gives them the opportunity to learn and work professionally for free.
Initially, a full year’s tuition at Cristo Rey Columbus costs $18,000, according to the Atlantic, but after the school reaches capacity, the price tag drops to around $12,000 to $13,000. And then with a little more finagling, students pay basically nothing.
How is this possible?
First off, Ohio offers a voucher program (worth $5,000 each year) for students to attend another school if the one closest to them is deemed a “failing school.” Fifty-nine percent of Cristo Rey Columbus students are eligible. Additionally, the school offers the unique Professional Work Study Program. For five days a month (one day a week and two days every fourth week), students can work for one of the school’s partner companies or institutions earning about $6,500 a year, which goes straight towards tuition.
Opening in 2013, Cristo Rey Columbus began its inaugural year with 85 students, and this year’s class boasts 117. All come from financially-needy homes where the average income is $35,000 per year. So far, the school has found success: 100 percent of the 2014 graduates were accepted to college.
The school’s faculty is handpicked for their teaching skills and belief in the Cristo Rey mission that education will break the cycle of poverty. As a result, teachers are dedicated to helping the students succeed in the workplace by helping them prep for interviews, offering tips on dressing and giving basic training.
For school Director James Ragland, the hope is that this experience will bolster the students for the future.
“We don’t use the word ‘fear’. We prefer ‘opportunity’,” he tells the Atlantic. “The majority of their day is with us. The message [of a culture of positivity] is delivered in context from the janitor on down (sic) to the president.”
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Children Can’t Learn When There Are Problems At Home. That’s Where Community Schools Come In
Walking down a hallway of Chicago’s South Loop Elementary School, Melissa Mitchell heard a first grader unleash a string of profanities inside a classroom.
“I hear this little voice screaming every curse word I’ve ever heard,” Mitchell says. She looked inside and saw “teeny, teeny” Brianne, standing on top of a desk.
“I’m not going to do this — every word you can think of — spelling test!” the little girl screamed, Mitchell recalls.
At most schools, Brianne would’ve ended up in the principal’s office for discipline. But South Loop is a community school that includes a variety of social services for kids and parents — from medical care and counseling to food pantries and adult GED classes. These facilities, which are gaining in popularity, are based on the idea that no matter how great a teacher is or how many high-tech gadgets a classroom has, kids can’t learn if they’re struggling with challenges at home (think: unemployed parents, a lack of food, the threat of eviction).
Instead of being sent to the principal, Brianne ended up in Mitchell’s office. At the time, Mitchell served as the school’s resource coordinator and was in charge of determining what social supports the South Loop community needs and finding ways to meet them.
Mitchell learned that Brianne wasn’t simply being a brat. The little girl’s parents were going through an acrimonious separation, creating an unstable environment at home. At six years of age, Brianne didn’t understand everything that was happening; nevertheless, it was upsetting her and spilling over into the school day.
After identifying the source of the behavior problem, Mitchell worked with Brianne’s family to address some of the trouble at home. She helped the mother find stable housing and childcare subsidies and connected Brianne and her family to a counselor.
While the community school model that helped Brianne and her family has been around for years — maybe over a century — it’s recently been gathering steam as more and more educators and elected officials see the value of a holistic approach to education reform.
Advocates currently estimate that as many as 5,000 community schools exist in the U.S., with more on the way.
Last year, Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder expanded a program placing social workers in schools — a step toward community schools. In June, Democratic Mayor Bill De Blasio announced plans to spend $52 million to open 40 community schools in New York City. And in July, Maryland U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer and Illinois U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock introduced a bipartisan bill that would establish a grant program to create more community schools nationwide.
A strategy, not a program
Each of the community schools created by these efforts will look different. That’s because their underlying philosophy holds that each one should grow and develop in response to the needs of the community it’s in, not according to some pre-ordained plan.
“It’s a strategy, not a program,” says Jane Quinn, Director of the National Center for Community Schools, part of the Children’s Aid Society.
Community schools each do a comprehensive needs assessment to determine what supports are most needed and often end up with school-based health clinics to address student’s physical, mental and dental health needs, including vision-correction to make sure kids that can see the lessons on the chalkboard.
There’s a lot of evidence that wealthy kids succeed partly because they can take advantage of “out of school enrichment,” Quinn says. Community schools can level the playing field with an extended school day and more academic and extra-curricular offerings outside of the traditional school day.
At Earle STEM Academy in Chicago’s impoverished Englewood neighborhood, program supervisor Quintella Rodgers says that after-school activities include a job club that teaches financial literacy, a power group that focuses on social and emotional health and individual academic help, plus photography, karate, Pilates, volleyball, basketball and DJing classes.
For the whole family
In community schools, “the primary allegiance is to the kids in the schools,” said Sarah Zeller-Berkman, who works for Youth Development Institute, which runs Beacon Community Schools in New York City. “But they still need and want to serve the broader community.” One way they accomplish this is by offering programs for parents and finding ways to integrate them into the school.
Community schools offer extra programming by creating partnerships with existing organizations, like colleges offering classes or not-for-profits running mentoring programs. The social services offered in community schools don’t usually duplicate ongoing efforts, but seek to bring them together under one roof.
At Salomé Ureña de Henríquez, a Children’s Aid Society community school in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, for example, the additional services offered include a variety of classes and programs for parents.
On a recent tour of the building, Director Migdalia Cortes-Torres pointed out photographs depicting some recent grads, resplendent in caps and gowns, on a bulletin board outside the school’s health clinic. But they weren’t pictures of students who had finished high school or junior high; they were pictures of students’ parents who had received their GEDs through a program at the school.
In addition to the GED program, Cortes-Torres said the school, which serves a largely Dominican population, offers classes for parents in nutrition and cooking, child development, English language and computer skills. They can learn art history, go on poetry retreats and even travel internationally with other parents.
Lidia Aguasanta, the school’s parent coordinator, says that she’s been helping parents to not only get their high-school diplomas, but to go for college degrees as well. “I do trips with them” to local universities because, she says, “they’re scared to leave the community” and are intimated by the complicated process of enrolling in college since many don’t speak English.
In community schools, support for parents help students achieve success, too. Aguasanta recalls a struggling mom that she convinced to enroll at Boricua College in New York City. The woman is now thriving and the simple fact that she’s now pursuing higher ed makes it more likely that her daughter, a 7th grader at the school, will too, Aguasanta says.
Studies indicate success
Beyond anecdotes like this one, research studies are pointing to hard evidence that community schools can reduce absenteeism and dropout levels and improve grades and test scores.
Not everybody is sold on community schools, however. Jason Bedrick, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, tells the Wall Street Journal that the model needs more study before people invest in it on a large scale. And the New York Times reported last year that while the creation of community schools in Cincinnati has led to some improvements, many of the schools “are still in dire academic straits.”
Nevertheless, staunch opposition to the model is rare. “Community schools have no natural enemies,” says Quinn, quoting Martin Blank, head of the Coalition for Community Schools. Instructors, including those that belong to the American Federation of Teachers, like community schools because they can focus on teaching, not on whether their students are hungry or in trouble at home.
There are, however, “rival hypotheses” about where school resources should go, Quinn says. Some people believe, for instance, that the key to improving education is high-quality teaching and that anything else is just a distraction.
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach For America, has dedicated decades to putting new young teachers in schools, based partly on the idea that better teaching is central to better education. But, she also voices support for the principals of community schools.
“All the successful schools … are taking a community approach,” she said at a recent NationSwell event. It’s important that schools are responsive to people on the ground, not to theorists with big fix-all theories. “You need to empower people at the local level.”
At South Loop Elementary, where locals can address education holistically, Melissa Mitchell’s response to Brianne’s profanity-laced tantrum worked.
“It wasn’t a perfect rainbows and butterflies outcome,” says Mitchell, who’s now the head of Illinois’ Federation For Community Schools. But Brianne did settle down and “the father and mother came to a reasonable custody agreement.”
Leaving Brianne with a little less on her mind and giving her the ability to focus on what she was really in school for: Learning.
The All-Hands-on-Desk Initiative to Improve Low-Performing Schools in Tennessee
If several educators have their say, teachers, not Elvis, will come to mind when you think about Memphis. That’s because they have a bold plan to turn the Tennessee city into Teacher Town, USA.
The Shelby County school district (where Memphis is located) has identified 68 schools in its purview performing in the bottom 5 percent of the state. Pledging to bring these failing Memphis schools into the top 25 percent of Tennessee educational facilities (an unprecedented turnaround challenge proposed by the Achievement School District and Shelby County) in five years, superintendents Dorsey Hopson and Chris Barbic are using every lesson plan they can find to do right by their kids.
To create the best classroom environments, Shelby is taking a three-pronged approach for “1) retaining great teachers, 2) developing local teacher talent, and 3) recruiting national talent,” according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review.
As Sara Solar, portfolio director of the Teacher Town USA funding initiative explains, “We know that transforming Memphis … will require that we work at every stage of the teacher life cycle — from novices to our strongest teacher leaders.”
As a part of this initiative, they’re focusing on cultivating young teachers with the leadership and guidance of older educators and encouraging them to build a strong, personal and lasting bond with the community.
Knowing that big changes always come up against entrenched political, economical and racial tensions, Shelby started bringing together representatives from the schools (public and charter), civic organizations, non-profits, universities and others to start a discussion on “how to make Memphis the best place in America for great teachers.” Consulting the philosophy of “high-stakes donor collaborations,” Shelby’s school district is using the newest and best ideas out there to push the envelope into the future and secure long-range funding and philanthropy for their school programs.
One of the funders, Jim Boyd, sums up the initiative very nicely: “We know we have this moment in time, and something concrete and specific to work on together…And so we partner even when it’s hard. Perhaps because what makes it hard is also what makes it powerful.”