Jared Bravo thought he knew a few things about building a house. After all, he had helped his dad refinish their basement when he was a teenager and then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture. But in reality, he knew very little.
Bravo, 25, works for Habitat for Humanity New York City in Queens, N.Y. As the construction site manager, he oversees the gut renovation of old city-owned housing units that are being turned into affordable housing for low-income families. He’s had to learn everything about building on the job.
“The more I’ve been onsite, the more I realized I didn’t actually do much to help fix my dad’s basement,” he jokes.
Though Bravo hadn’t intended to go into construction, the opportunity to learn a trade skill was something that, to him, proved valuable.
That understanding is lost on many young Americans, as a so-called “skills gap” looms over the construction and manufacturing industries that could hamper output over the next decade. After the 2008 housing bust, almost 22 percent of the construction force left for other jobs, leaving 900,000 positions open. Today, the outlook remains bleak. Seventy-seven percent of builders report framing crew shortages and 76 percent say that there aren’t enough carpenters, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
The lack of builders is particularly acute after this year’s hurricane season decimated 25 percent of the Florida Keys and destroyed an estimated 30,000 homes in Houston; Puerto Rico is still reeling from Hurricane Irma’s destruction.
There simply aren’t enough people to help rebuild.
An October 2017 poll conducted by the staffing firm Adecco shows that close to 90 percent of American executives believe apprenticeship programs, which tend to enjoy wide bipartisan support, can close this gap. In 2016, President Obama allocated $265 million in grants for apprenticeship programs through 2019. More recently, President Trump funneled an additional $100 million into those efforts — a move that will likely experience funding struggles as a result of the president’s cuts to educational programs and a 21 percent decrease in funding to the Labor Department.
Nonprofits and local governments also run apprenticeship programs that achieve the same goal for less within the “new-collar” job sector (a term coined by the New York Times), while trade schools are also affordable options.
The worker shortage is already causing construction delays. In the Big Apple, for example, Habitat for Humanity New York City acts as a general contractor building affordable housing units. It’s had to stretch deadlines because skilled carpenters and other tradespeople weren’t available.
But it hasn’t been all bad news for Habitat — or other groups, like YouthBuild — that work to create a pipeline of workers.
“The upside is that we’re returning and providing roads for people in the community to become laborers or construction workers that may not have realized this was an option,” says Karen Haycox, CEO of Habitat for Humanity New York City.
Robert Taylor, executive director for New York’s East Harlem chapter of YouthBuild, echoes these sentiments. “Not every person who comes into our program is going to be equipped to take on tech jobs that require a four-year college education, especially if you’re already reading at the fourth- or sixth-grade level … If you’re someone coming from somewhere where you’re not finishing high school, construction jobs are great to be placed into with spillover benefits,” he says.
More than half of businesses blame schools for not providing pathways to middle-class labor jobs. But Albuquerque, N.M., mayor Richard J. Berry views the problem differently: Schools are failing to teach kids about trade jobs, and businesses aren’t jumping in with opportunities to learn.
“The industry on one side said, ‘We need a better-trained workforce’ but didn’t know how to put that through an educational framework, so we told them to create the curriculum and we’ll put it into practice,” Berry tells NationSwell after speaking at the 2017 NationSwell Summit on Solutions this past November.
Through the five-year long partnership Running Start for Careers, high school students receive dual credit for classes in plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry and other technical trades. The result? A 36 percent increase in the graduation rate among students who are traditionally lower income, according to Berry.
“We had kids asking, ‘Why am I in school?’” Berry says. “You can sit them down and explain to students all day in a classroom why they need geometry, but it doesn’t click until you get them to work with Joe the Carpenter who’s building roof trusses and explains why A-squared plus B-squared has to equal C-squared, or the roof will fall down. Then, they’ll become interested and see that there are actual roads to the middle class without having to be burdened with student debt.
Bravo, the site manager with Habitat for Humanity New York City, says that the interest to learn new skills exists, it just needs to be piqued.
“When you’re working with high school and college kids, you might spark an interest in something they didn’t realize they had,” he says. “You just have to show them a different angle of what they think they know.”
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Jared Bravo works for AmeriCorps. NationSwell apologizes for the error.
Tag: New Mexico
The Duel in the Desert: Albuquerque Residents Fight for Workplace Rights
When your 4-year-old daughter is suffering from a 100-degree fever, common sense says that you shouldn’t have to choose between her health and your job. But that’s not always the case, so a coalition of New Mexico’s families is fighting for better treatment in the workplace.
It may be surprising to hear that low-wage workers can be fired for not waiting by the phone on their days off, when they’re expected to be on call in case their store gets busy. Some are unaware that workers have no guarantee of a regular schedule or paid sick leave. They have no idea employees can be scheduled for “doubles,” a swing shift that ends at midnight and an opening shift that begins early the next morning, cramming 16 hours of work in less than 24 hours. For members of Organizing in the Land of Enchantment, or OLÉ, a 5,000-member group that’s made up primarily of females, in Albuquerque, these challenges are a daily reality.
Kris Buchmann, an active member of the group, had to quit her retail job at an Albuquerque mall because childcare for her 1-year-old son during on-call shifts was costing nearly as much as she made working in the store. “I still had to pay a babysitter. Sometimes I would have to go pick her up, take her back to my house because she didn’t have transportation, drive to work, get sent home, still have to pay her and drive her home,” Buchmann explained to The New York Times. Buchmann asked for a more stable work schedule, but her boss refused.
OLÉ is working with Fight for $15 to raise minimum wages for fast food workers and the National Domestic Workers Alliance to ensure fair pay for home caregivers, but the thrust of its own grassroots campaigning is for broad workplace protections that would apply to every industry, transforming low-wage work from dead-end jobs to a stable profession. At the Albuquerque City Council, it’s pushing for the Fair Workweek Act, a proposed ordinance that would require employers to create work schedules three weeks in advance, compensate employees for last-minute changes, provide paid sick days and guarantee a $150 retention stipend for every two weeks a worker was on call but had no work.
OLÉ started in 2010 with an ambitious core agenda that touched on worker’s rights, affordable early childhood education, naturalization for legal residents and conservation of water and public lands. Their most significant victory thus far was passing a hike in the minimum wage, from $7.50 to to $8.50, in a 2012 ballot initiative that swept two-thirds of the vote.
That boost marked a “big step forward for low-wage workers in Albuquerque,” Matthew Henderson, OLÉ’s executive director, tells NationSwell. “Even so, I think everyone recognized that it is still pretty inadequate. Even with the minimum wage increase, there were a growing number of problems with low-wage work so we started thinking about how we could do something bigger that would affect more workers.”
The Fair Workweek Act intended to be just that, but thus far, it’s encountered strong opposition. It was always going to be difficult to get a nine-member City Council divided between five liberals and four conservatives to pass the bill. But before it was even introduced, Mayor Richard Berry, a Republican, promised to veto it, referring to it as “an impossible burden on small businesses.” That scared off at least one Democratic councilmember, who called for an economic impact analysis that would delay the measure for months.
With an election just around the corner this November, OLÉ is using voter pressure to their advantage. In case their legislative attempts fail, they’re also preparing to ask voters directly in the 2016 general election to support the Fair Workweek Act. They’ve already started collecting 14,000 signatures required to get the issue on the ballot.
Henderson has been organizing “folks who felt like they’re getting a raw deal” since 1994. He has advocated on behalf of mobile home park tenants and against predatory mortgage lending schemes. This may be his most ambitious battle yet.
“When we passed a minimum wage increase, it was clear to us that people of every class and political persuasion — no matter age or gender — everyone was with us. We didn’t have to persuade anyone. But still, we felt like it wasn’t really changing the conversation,” he says. “We have been trying to think of a way to talk about all the problems with work these days that is much broader than these single issues like the minimum wage.” That’s why the Fair Workweek Act seems like an important measure. It prompts conversations about work the average person isn’t familiar with, and its policies will affect more people than just the lowest of the low-paid workers.
“The economy has gone down a bad road that is making the employment of most Americans really challenging, unsatisfying and something that makes it impossible to really care for a family and raise it the way you want to,” Henderson adds. If OLÉ’s successful, they’ll truly raise the standard of living. Any full-time job, even with lower wages, would be enough to support a family.
In the U.S., 1.7 Million Don’t Have Access to Clean Drinking Water. This Grandma Is Changing That
Darlene Arviso’s mornings begin early, usually before the sun rises over the high desert plateau of the Navajo Nation in the northwest corner of New Mexico. Parking a bright yellow, 3,500-gallon tank underneath St. Bonaventure Indian Mission’s steel water tower in Thoreau (which the locals pronounce “threw”), she fills it to the brim and sets off on 75-mile drives over mostly unpaved roads to the isolated families without running water.
A hardworking 50-year-old grandmother, Arviso visits more than 250 families on the reservation, leaving each with just enough water to last a month: about 7 gallons per day to be used for drinking, cooking and cleaning. It’s far less than the 80 to 100 gallons that the typical American consumes daily, but it’s the vital help that reservation households depend on to survive. Without her, many would rely on snowmelt and rainwater collected in livestock troughs, purchase expensive bottled water from the store or risk drinking muddy, uranium-contaminated groundwater.
“Sometimes they have to go up to Gallup, N.M., but they have to take that water about 60 miles. St. Bonaventure Mission, that’s the only place nearby for people to get their water,” explains Arviso, who’s been making deliveries for the church for seven years. “They depend on me for the water.”
People often think that access to clean drinking water is a problem only in developing countries, but nearly 40 percent of the 173,000 Navajo tribe members don’t have a tap or a toilet in their home, says George McGraw, founder and executive director of DIGDEEP, the only global water organization with projects in the U.S. that has partnered with St. Bonaventure Mission to bring water to the Navajo Nation.
“Generally, people are aware that almost a billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water worldwide, but what most people don’t know is that 1.7 million people live without it right here in the United States,” he says.
McGraw’s nonprofit is working toward long-term solutions by drilling wells in the rural areas where Navajo families have set down roots for generations. DIGDEEP found clean water 1,800 feet below ground in Smith Lake, a dozen miles north of Thoreau. It’s planning to wrap up construction on the $300,000 dig within the next nine months, meaning Arviso can refill her truck without trekking back to the Catholic mission’s tank. Since impassable, snow-covered roads often prevent Arviso from making deliveries in the winter, a deep well and network of pipes should provide a reliable supply of water throughout the year. It’d also provide a more reasonable amount of water — closer to 40 or 50 gallons — per day.
In the meantime, she continues to make her daily water runs. “I’m the only water truck driver,” she beams. For years, she worked construction jobs in Albuquerque about an hour and a half away, but after she was laid off, she found employment with St. Bonaventure closer to home.
“Navajos like our own people to be helping each other. If other volunteers come over, they’ll be embarrassed. They’re shy and they just don’t want to talk to strangers,” she explains. But if she’s there, families are usually more receptive. It’s part of what’s unique about DIGDEEP: Rather than working like a traditional water charity that imposes aid from the outside, the nonprofit tries to empower local communities to come up with their own solutions.
When people see Arviso’s huge truck barreling down the road, they wave. Kids run outside to greet her, familiar with the “water lady.” As soon as she pulls up, family members set up their barrels, jugs and buckets, eager to refill their supply. At times, she gets calls asking for other essentials: food, blankets, lamp oil, wood or maybe just emotional support. “I can’t just give water and leave,” she said. “I have to ask them if they’re doing okay.” No matter the distance, Arviso will come.
“I love what I’m doing,” she says. “I’m helping my people.”
The Homework Assignment That’s Saving the Lives of Hungry Kids in New Mexico
Marvin Callahan is no stranger to childhood hunger. As a kid living in a low-income neighborhood in Albuquerque, Callahan watched his parents do everything they could just to get by. For example, Callahan attended Catholic school, and while the tuition charge was $29 per month, his mom sent in whatever she could spare — be it $2, $3 or $4. Despite this, he always had something to eat.
Sadly, food is something that many of his students don’t have. For the past 29 years, Callahan has been working as a first grade teacher in Albuquerque public schools, and every day, he sees his students come into school without having had a meal.
This situation is typical for many children living in New Mexico. For the past two years, New Mexico has ranked number one in the U.S. for childhood hunger. Sixty percent of the students at Comanche Elementary (where Callahan works) are members of the federal free or reduced price lunch program, and 6,000 of the 87,000 students in the district are homeless.
While the federal programs provide lunch to kids from low-income households five days a week, oftentimes, the meal served at school is only one that these children receive. Which is why Callahan took matters into his own hands.
For Callahan’s students, class begins with breakfast. Every morning, he asks his students who has eaten breakfast, and those who haven’t are either sent to the cafeteria or given a snack from the classroom closet. The kicker, though, is that all the money for the food comes out of Callahan’s own pocket.
“I look into my kids’ eyes, and I can see that sadness and apprehension, and the discomfort of not being their powerful, strong, engaging little selves,” he tells the Huffington Post. “Kids are boundless, but the ones who aren’t being taken care of properly with proper nutrition and rest… you can tell.”
Daily breakfast isn’t the only way that Callahan helps out his hungry students. About two years ago, he also started the backpack program with school counselor Karin Medina and other community members. Every Friday, 37 students are sent home with a backpack containing two breakfasts, two lunches and two dinners — enough to feed them for the weekend.
It’s not much, but the breakfast bars, oatmeal, mac & cheese, beefaroni and sliced turkey is more than the kids would probably have otherwise.
“It’s hard for me to go home some weekends when the kids are saying, ‘I don’t want to go home because I don’t have anything at home,’” Callahan says. “I just hope that when I get home and open my refrigerator and there’s food in there, I hope that they have the same thing.”
Thanks to this special teacher, that hope is a reality.
MORE: This 14-Year-Old’s Homework Assignment Sparked A Mission to Feed America’s Hungry
This City Gives Dropouts a Realistic Way to Earn Their Diplomas
Over three million students drop out of high school each year, according to Statistic Brain. And although there have been many successful efforts to prevent future dropouts, such as Chicago’s After School Matters, few programs exist that give opportunities to students who have already quit school.
So that’s where Engage Santa Fe comes in. The idea behind it is to entice students to resume course work by enrolling in a program that’s more attractive to them and realistic for their lifestyle.
“[Dropouts] work 8 to 5. They have families. Who’s going to take care of the baby? Some of them are taking care of their brothers and sisters,” explains local resident Korina Nevarez to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Given these challenges, creating just the right program has taken creativity, and getting it approved has taken a lot of perseverance. Luckily, Santa Fe’s educators never gave up, despite working on it for a while.
First approved by the school board this spring, Engage Santa Fe was originally going to be funded by the state and run by a private educational company from Florida — though after criticism from Santa Fe teachers, that company withdrew its bid to run the program. That didn’t stop it from moving forward, though; with a combination of funding from the Department of Labor, the school district, and the Santa Fe Community Foundation, the program is currently kicking off enrollment.
To help bring dropouts into the program, the school district has enlisted none better than the dropout’s own peers to canvass neighborhoods. Valerie Alvarado, 18, a recent graduate of Santa Fe High School, and Udell Calzadillas, 19, a student at University of New Mexico, are both peer recruiters. Their goal is to get at least 75 16- to 21-year-old dropouts to resume their education through Engage Santa Fe.
“I want to graduate,” one candidate for the program told them, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Hopefully, with the continued work of volunteers in Santa Fe, completing their education can be a reality not only the dropouts in the southwest city, but the millions of dropouts across America.
MORE: A Simple Solution For America’s Achievement Gap
Poverty Doesn’t Prevent These Kids From Having Fabulous Feet
While harried middle-class parents might worry about finding the time to chauffeur their kids to all their different after-school activities, low-income families have a different problem: They can’t afford these activities at all.
Dance lover Catherine Oppenheimer didn’t want to let money stand between kids and the chance to dance (which, with costumes, costumes, classes, contest entry fees, and shoes, is one of the most expensive pastimes).
Oppenheimer began her career as a professional dancer with the New York City Ballet. Her mentor there, Jacques d’Amboise, not only led the company in performing, but he also established the National Dance Institute in New York to give inner-city kids a chance to dance. When Oppenheimer retired from performing, d’Ambroise encouraged her to bring such a program to another group of needy kids in New Mexico.
So two decades ago, Oppenheimer went and founded the National Dance Institute of New Mexico (NDI). Last year, the program taught dance to 8,000 kids in 80 public schools in the southwest state, according to the PBS NewsHour. It costs $5 million to run the organization, but fundraising covers the bulk of that so the majority classes are free, including in-school instruction for fourth and fifth graders and after school classes for preschoolers and older dancers.
The program culminates in a big show that gives the kids a chance to shine, such as one that recently featured 500 dancers in the Santa Fe school district, as well as some of their parents and a group of local firefighters.
In a 2013 study that measured the health and well-being of American students, New Mexico ranked last among all states. But an independent study found that kids participating in NDI raised their grades in science and math and improved their physical fitness.
Sixteen-year-old Emery Chacon, who has been dancing with NDI since fourth grade, believes dance has made a difference in his life. “Yes, my grades before, they were moderate, from C’s to — like C’s and D’s, but now, actually, with NDI, it’s actually improved to B’s and A’s in most of my classes,” he told Kathleen McCleery of the PBS NewsHour.
Through the years, NDI New Mexico has produced a few professional dancers. But more importantly, it’s created many more dedicated students who continue to perform the right steps toward a promising future.
MORE: Music Can Change A Troubled Kids’ Life. Here’s The Proof.
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Cycling Tourism Has the Potential to Transform This Hardscrabble New Mexico Town
While Gallup, New Mexico is known as the “Heart of Indian Country” because of the many nearby reservations and its sizable presence of Native Americans (who comprise 76 percent of Gallup’s McKinley County), that wasn’t always the case.
Back in the 1970s and 80s, Gallup became notorious for something else: The fact that, each year, police put 30,000 people in the drunk tank. Many of those arrested were Native Americans who flocked to Gallup since it was one of the nearest places where they could purchase alcohol, Jonathan Thompson writes for the High Country News.
But now a group of entrepreneurs, Gallup boosters, and outdoor enthusiasts are working to make the town famous for something much better (and undoubtedly, much healthier) — mountain biking.
Chuck Van Drunen, who lived near a vacant lot known as the Brickyard, contributed to the bike-centered transformation of this gritty town. Until 1960, the Brickyard held kilns for brick-making, but after that, it became a neglected piece of property where drunkards and transients hung out. Van Drunen tired of booze-addled people wandering in the alley behind his house, so he started leading bicycle trail rides over the Brickyard.
It caught on, and Gallup’s mayor Jackie McKinney convinced the owners of the Brickyard to donate or sell the land to the city. Community members hired a bike park designer to plan proper trails and enlisted the Youth Conservation Corps to clean things up. In September, the Gallup Brickyard Bike Park officially opened.
Thompson writes, “Over the last 15 years, local bike-advocates have built and designated dozens of miles of trails in the nearby desert and forests and spiffed up the old downtown.”
Various bike enthusiasts formed the nonprofit Gallup Trails 2010, working to establish trails throughout Gallup and the nearby Zuni mountains. And while no one thinks Gallup is on track to become the next Moab — Utah’s mountain biking mecca — the town now hosts mountain biking races and is beginning to attract outdoor adventure tourists.
Does the enthusiasm for mountain biking have the ability to turn around Gallup’s tough economic situation? Currently, more than a third of McKinley County’s population live below the poverty line, and its unemployment rate sits at 8.5 percent, substantially higher than New Mexico’s overall rate of 6.8 percent. Still, the bike trails and cycling-centered tourism promotion seem to be moving the city in the right direction.
Lindsay Mapes, the owner of Zia Rides, a Gallup bike-race promoter, said that when she used to tell people where she lived, she’d get a pitying or disgusted “Gallup Look.” “Now it’s like: ‘Oh, yeah, I love it there. The trails are great!’ I love it when I see locals interacting with someone in the outdoor community, boasting about the assets we have. There’s a lot of community pride.”
“Sometimes, I see it as a revolution,” she said. “This group is really using the bike as an agent of change.”
MORE: The Two-Wheeler to the Rescue
People, Not Stocks, Are What This Special Nonprofit Invests In
We’ve all heard of investing in companies, but what about investing in individual people? Perhaps, the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds.
After all, that’s the model of the Albuquerque-based nonprofit Prosperity Works. Ona Porter, the president and CEO of the organization told Kevin Robinson-Avilia of the Albuquerque Journal, “We believe in the concept that income gets you by, but assets get you ahead. Asset building creates a safety net for people to leverage more opportunities. It seeds dreams.”
So who’s eligible to enroll? People who earn up to 200 percent of the federal poverty rate — that’s $42,000 for a family of four — can build assets in three ways: personal, financial, and social. (Those earning more than that aren’t disqualified completely; they can still take free classes.)
The financial portion of the program involves free financial literacy and management classes, as well as Individual Development Accounts, or IDAs, through which participants can save money and receive dollar-for-dollar matching funds (up to $4,000) encouraging them to save. Once their goal is met, the participant can tap into the money to pay for education, fund a business, or put a down payment on a home.
Participants also build personal assets through gaining additional education or certifications and develop social assets by learning what resources are available to them in their communities. Porter describes the program as, “a coach-based empowerment model that helps people build financial stability and create opportunities for themselves.”
The unique approach seems to be working. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides grants for programs running IDAs — $20 million worth in 2013. According to the HHS, since 1999, 84,000 people have participated in IDAs, saving more than $76 million in income.
One success story is Rick Noland, who used his matching funds to expand his bike rental business. He started The BikeSmith in 2010 with 16 bicycles. Now, he has his own 800-square-foot shop near Old Town Albuquerque and recently hired his first employee. Noland said that the Prosperity Works program was a life-changer. “It forced me to take a comprehensive look at all my finances, put things into perspective and create a new plan for the future. It helped me better control and manage things, and now, several years later, I’ve become essentially debt free.”
MORE: These Programs for the Poor Preserve Dignity and Demand Accountability–and They’re Working
In New Mexico, High Schools That Inspire Would-Be Dropouts
When Principal Tori Stephens-Shauger describes her students at ACE Leadership High School in Albuquerque, N.M., she avoids the labels that have dogged most of these kids for years. “We don’t call them dropouts, troubled kids or ditchers,” says the school’s co-founder. Having grown up in a ranching family and teaching everything from science to special education, Stephens-Shauger understands that there’s a difference between “raising cattle and raising people.” Branding a child doesn’t do any good.
Students who have struggled to make it in other schools find out fast that this principal wants to know them as individuals, not labels. Her blue eyes widen with genuine curiosity when she says, “What I want to know is, what’s their story? And how can we build off what’s amazing about them?”
The reference to building is no coincidence. ACE Leadership, a public charter school, opened in 2010 in partnership with the Associated General Contractors of New Mexico, a commercial construction industry group. ACE’s bold aim is to recruit young people who have either quit high school or are heading in that direction and guide them into promising careers in the fields of architecture, construction and engineering (hence, ACE). The school is more than a job-training program — many such programs exist in other cities, helping to shepherd students from technical schools into the construction-industry workforce. ACE reimagines the traditional educational model, teaching students core subject matter like math, science and communication by having them work on real-world-inspired projects, rather than in workbooks in a classroom. Students demonstrate what they’ve learned not by taking exams, but by presenting their projects publicly and getting critiques from industry professionals. Teachers learn to be skillful project managers who find the learning opportunities in real-life situations. Upon graduating from ACE, some students begin apprenticeships; others go on to college.
MORE: Bringing It Home: The International Org Now Helping U.S. College Students
Most students at ACE are male, Latino and growing up in poverty. Many are bilingual. Nearly all were unsuccessful in traditional school. Tony Monfiletto, the school’s 49-year-old co-founder, doesn’t soft-pedal the challenge of reinventing public education to work better, especially for poor kids. He’s been at it since 1991 as a teacher, principal, parent and education policy analyst, struggling to find innovation in “a system that alienates 40 percent of our kids” (i.e., the dropouts). “What are we doing for the 40 percent who don’t adapt to this [traditional school] model?” he asks.
Five years ago, looking for answers to that question, Monfiletto sat down with the Associated General Contractors of New Mexico, leaders from the construction industry. They told him that they no longer had room on their payroll for young people with only “strong backs and low ambition.” Commercial construction had become increasingly technical work, and yesterday’s trade schools hadn’t kept pace. Contractors, engineering firms and architects now require employees who can solve sophisticated problems, often on multimillion-dollar projects. Monfiletto realized that instead of dropouts who can swing a hammer, “they need[ed] adaptive, dynamic problem-solvers — people who can think.”
So, he set about designing his new school “backward,” by asking first what local industries and disenfranchised kids need from it and then creating a model that served the mutual interests of both. The year ACE Leadership opened, New Mexico had the worst dropout rate in the country, with barely 60 percent of students earning high school diplomas. Leaving school is a costly decision, foreshadowing a lifetime of low wages and missed opportunities. High school dropouts not only earn less, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, but they are also at higher risk to become teen parents, more likely to commit crimes, are less engaged in civic life and die sooner than those with diplomas. Disproportionately, it’s poor kids of color who fail to finish high school. To build “ladders of opportunity” for boys and young men of color, President Obama launched an initiative in February called My Brother’s Keeper that involves business partnerships and mentoring for youth.
ACE pulls kids on the margins back into school by offering them hands-on, active learning that has a clear connection to their future. Students don’t sit in classes organized by subject area. Instead, they learn academics and everything else — including a professional work ethic — by designing and building real things. On a typical day at ACE, student teams might be designing an interpretive center for a wildlife sanctuary, developing a marketing pitch for a commercial builder, or advising the city on how to celebrate the legacy of Route 66.
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That’s a departure from most vocational schools, where kids take the usual subjects plus hands-on electives. “Here, it’s not math, science, English and then carpentry. It’s a morning project and an afternoon project,” Monfiletto says, “and all the core academics are embedded into the projects.” Kids get individualized help if they struggle with basics like reading or math, but they don’t spend time on remedial worksheets. For instance, in a project last year called Our Albuquerque, students analyzed a novel that dealt with cultural identity, created topographic maps to reflect the city’s geology and geography, studied poetry and produced spoken word videos that were projected onto their maps as a visual art installation. They presented their work to the mayor’s office to contribute to the city’s redesign efforts.
Industry experts partner with teachers to plan realistic projects and give students constructive feedback. They also act as role models, showing by example how to give a firm handshake or ask for a visitor’s business card. One industry old-timer fills a unique role as “construction coach,” ushering students toward success the way he used to break in newcomers on the job site. “Build your reputation,” a motto displayed on posters (in English and Spanish) and repeated at morning meetings, is a value that kids take seriously. They wrote it.
Tim Kubik, an educational consultant who has helped the ACE team develop its project-based curriculum, says the instructional design is a good fit for students “who need a different kind of education than what most public schools offer. Some kids need to be active. What if you didn’t design a school that assumes kids will be sitting? What if you assume they will be moving?”
Stephens-Shauger, ACE’s principal, brings that start-from-scratch thinking into every aspect of her work, from how she handles discipline to how she hires teachers. Her bottom-line question: “What does this young person need from adults?” That translates to a philosophy of positive youth development, building on kids’ strengths rather than trying to fix what’s broken. It also means that the school provides a 360-degree support system to prevent crises that can interrupt learning. Those challenges — from mental-health issues to family troubles — don’t stop at the school doors. That’s why ACE employs a team of social workers, has lawyers at the ready to navigate immigration issues, makes home visits and runs an on-site health clinic in partnership with the University of New Mexico.
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Finding teachers to work in this environment, Stephens-Shauger says, “is not about years of experience or what’s on their resume. We need to know, are they comfortable here? Are they confident, flexible thinkers?” She observes candidates closely when they come for an initial visit. How do they react when they see power tools in the hands of teenagers? What if students want to bring in their skateboards to test the design of a half-pipe they just built? How do visitors react to the boisterous learning that happens in public? “We find out fast,” she says, “whether people can hang.”
Not content with one innovative school, Monfiletto also directs a professional development organization, the New Mexico Center for School Leadership, which aims to take good ideas to scale. Last fall, he helped to launch ACE’s first sister school: Health Leadership High School leverages similar learning strategies and industry partnerships to prepare students for careers in medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health. So far, girls outnumber boys in this setting. Plans are in the works to partner with New Mexico’s technology sector for the next school, expected to open in 2015.
ACE, now in its fifth year, enrolls 320 young people, ages 14-24, in programs that run from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Students enroll by choice. Day students typically start as ninth-graders and stay for four years. The evening program is more accelerated, geared for young adults who have some high school credits already. This spring, more than 60 students are expected to graduate, which should contribute to New Mexico’s improving graduation rates. Last year, 70 percent of New Mexico students completed high school within four years. Nationally, the high-school graduation rate is holding steady at about 78 percent, a 6.5 percent improvement since 2001, which may put the country on track to meet the 90-percent goal that the White House has set for 2020.
Meanwhile, Monfiletto and the team are working with the state to develop alternative ways of measuring school performance. Standardized tests don’t assess whether students can work on a team, solve complex problems, or apply the trouble-shooting strategies they learn at ACE. “I’ve never heard an employer say, ‘we need to see a kid’s reading score,’ ” Monfiletto says. “They want to know, what kind of kid is this? What can they do?”
MORE: Teaching Low-Income Youth These Skills May Just Solve the Tech Job Hiring Gap
This Senator Has a Plan to Fight America’s Looming Physician Shortage
New Mexico, like many states, is seeing signs of the looming nationwide physician shortage. All but one county is facing a serious gap between the need for primary care physicians and available local doctors. Experts estimate that more than 1,400 doctors are currently practicing in the state, more than 200 short of what they need, and obstacles like the cost of med school are in the way. Especially with New Mexico’s expansive rural population, it’s a major problem. That’s why U.S. Senator Mark Udall is out to fix it, and offer a nationwide solution at the same time. Along with Senator Martin Heinrich, Udall introduced the Increasing Primary Care Access Act, which aims to improve training programs and hold the medical education system more accountable, all the in name of increasing access to healthcare. The goal of the bill is to equip the education system with the tools to serve the demand for newly trained doctors, including five specific programs:
- Centers of excellence that focus on primary care in med schools
- Incentive programs to encourage med students to choose residencies in primary care
- Reauthorization for the Teacher Health Center program, to create community care centers that can host primary care residents
- Committing graduate medical education funds to areas experiencing primary care provider shortages
- Funding workforce analysis centers to improve residencies in underserved areas.
Meanwhile, Senator Dean Heller of Nevada has joined Udall in introducing another bill, focusing specifically on healthcare access for rural veterans. Meaning there’s still hope before America’s physician shortage gets out of hand.