Recognizing Teachers That Bring Hope into the Classroom

Sapna Iyer
with fellow teachers
and a graduate at SIATech

Most of the time over-age and undercredited students are marginalized, as are the schools that serve them.  Instead of recognizing the incredible courage, grit, and perseverance it takes to re-enroll in school when you know you are way behind, and the incredible dedication, expertise, and big-heartedness it takes to help student learn at rates of 1.5, 2, or even 3 grade levels per year, we tend to treat the students and teachers in alternative schools as after-thoughts.

Which is why we need to celebrate that Sapna Iyer, an English teacher at SIATech San Diego, is one of four finalists for the "Most Hopeful Teacher in America" Award from Gallup. In being a finalist, Ms. Iyer, the only high school teacher among the finalists -- and the only dropout recovery teacher-- is taking center stage. She created SIATech's college-prep program UPath (University Path), which prepares recovered dropouts for the college application process, tasks such as choosing a major/career path, study skills, and applying for financial aid.  The winner will be announced tomorrow, May 24, 2013.   

SIATech is a personalized, competency-based model, which means that teachers need to work as a collaborative team.  SIATech San Diego Principal Sally Cohenour wanted to nominate all her staff. She commented that their team effort to create caring relationships with students coupled with a terrific Job Corps partnership creates the foundation for learning. Sally is extremely proud of Sapna and her entire staff. "It is great to see a prestigious organization like Gallup recognize our teachers' hard work and the difference being made for our students."

Gallup’s award, focusing on individual teachers, may soon be out of date. Perhaps next year we’ll see awards for the Most Hopeful Team of Teachers in America. 

Leaving To Learn

I’ve met so many students in alternative schools that described leaving school in 11^th grade because they just didn’t see how graduating was going to make a difference in their lives or because they felt pressure to start contributing a pay check for their families immediately.  After six months or a year of trying to make it in low-paying jobs (if they were lucky enough to find a job), they returned to school with a fierce determination to graduate and get further education and training.  I’ve always wondered...if leaving school can increase maturity and clarify tough decisions and trade-offs, why not allow students to take a leave of absence and return to school without being labeled a “drop-out”? 

Leaving to Learn, the new book by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski, explores work and the many other ways in which students benefit from not being in school. They state: 

All students need to leave school  – frequently, regularly, and, of course, temporarily –  to stay in school and persist in their learning. To accomplish this, schools must take down the walls that separate the learning that students do, and could do, in school from the learning they do, and could do, outside. 

Decorating their argument with anecdotes and inspiring quotes from leaders in all fields, the authors artfully make the case that our young people disengage from school because of the way we have designed school, as well as the narrowness in what we value as important to learn.  They make the argument that, by designing our education system around real-world engagement, students will own their learning.  

I’m A Boy and I’m A Man: What Should We Do With Young Adults in the Justice System?

by Tracy Velázquez

“I'm in the middle without any plans - I'm a boy and I'm a man
I'm eighteen and I don't know what I want […]
I got a baby's brain and an old man's heart, took eighteen years to get this far
Don't always know what I'm talkin' about, feels like I'm livin' in the middle of doubt  
'cause I'm eighteen, I get confused every day – eighteen, I just don't know what to say…”  
- ‘Eighteen’ by Alice Cooper, 1970

Sometimes it takes a while for science to catch up to rock 'n' roll.

More and more research is piling up substantiating that we humans are still maturing well past the legal age of adulthood. And for young adults who experienced trauma or other significant life challenges during their childhood, the delayed maturity can be even more pronounced. This developmental reality is reflected in the behavior of young adults, particularly those under age 25. Young adults take more risks. They often don’t consider consequences. They still have a tendency, like the teenagers some of them still are, to go along with whatever their friends are doing, no matter what. 

For some, these developmental realities translate into engaging in illegal behavior.  The number of young adults who have incurred justice system involvement is substantial. According to the FBI, there were over 1.7 million arrests of 18-21 year olds and 1 million arrests of 22-24 year olds in 2011. And Department of Justice (DOJ) figures show that over 200,000 18-24 year olds were serving sentences of a year or more in state and federal prisons on December 31, 2011, with another 100,000 or more likely incarcerated in local jails. And while young adults from all backgrounds are impacted, some groups are particularly affected. The DOJ reports that young African American adults are fifteen times more likely to be in prison than their white peers, and studies of those who have aged out of the foster care system show they are over ten times more likely to report having been arrested at age 18-19 than young people in the general population. 

Inclusive: A Brand New Kind of High School

APEX High School

One great disappointment was watching the segmentation analysis by NYC, Boston, and Philly-- which helped us to understand how students were falling off track to graduation--  warp into an early warning system as the idea was adapted in other states. Certainly, an early warning system is helpful, but let’s face it-- schools already know this information.  

The real question is what to do with the information.  How can districts create continuously improving information systems that help them to stay active in responding to students’ needs and re-enrolling students?  For example, once NYC leaders looked at the data, they expanded transfer schools to accommodate more over-age, undercredited students. At the time, it was impossible to imagine schools, even small schools, serving students that were over-age and undercredited or re-entering school after what could be called a “leave of absence”. 

But now we can imagine it because a new type of high school is starting to pop up in local communities by local leaders. Let’s call them inclusive high schools. They enroll students, all kinds of students. Students from 8^th grade with the skills they need to start 9^th grade, reclassified 9^th graders who failed too many courses at other schools, and re-enrollment of students that had been pushed out our dropped out. They don’t tag or label them. They are just students wanting to get the skills they need to go to college and enter the workforce. 

Applying the New Apps

How might this help youth?

It’s a question I pose to myself whenever I read about all the new apps and technologies popping up around the world.  I wonder how we might use these new innovations to strengthen eduployment pathways for vulnerable youth trying to get the education, skills, and jobs they need to Connect by 25. 

Here are a few that have been crossing my mind recently: 

Crowdsourcing Encouragement: The April issue of Fast Company had a funny and slightly disturbing piece about Budist.ru, a Russian website in which absolute strangers can sign up to give you a wake-up call. Turns out that lots of these generous strangers really just want to chat you up. 

However, what if we could sign up to give struggling youth – a young person in a YouthBuild program or a homeless student that is determined to get their diploma from Boston Day and Evening Academy – a wake-up call with a few words of encouragement? What if there was a website where I could sign up to offer congratulations to a student who passed Algebra II or completed an internship? Of course, these students actually need committed ongoing support from someone in their life…but not everyone is so lucky. What if we are passing up on an opportunity for them by not crowdsourcing this support?

The Biggest Design Challenge of Our Time

“The design challenge of our time” – that’s how a leader in the field of new school models described the challenge our high schools face when trying to get students with enormous gaps in elementary and middle school skills all the way to college and career readiness in four years.  Essentially, we are expecting high schools to be able to intensify the rate of learning from one grade level per year to nearly two grade levels per year – while also making sure they accrue all the Carnegie unit credits required for high school graduation.  For alternative schools that usually only have students for a year or two, the rate of learning would have to be closer to three or four times the standard rate of learning.

Do You Live In Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, or Washington?

For all of you that live in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, or Washington, you can start the conversation in your town on opportunity policies for youth (See Eduployment for more information) by building on OpportunityNation gatherings in your state. Heads up – if you live in Atlanta it’s taking place tomorrow!

These gatherings are designed to brief community and state leaders from all sectors on Opportunity Nation, a national campaign to increase economic opportunity with over 500 partners across the country. Opportunity Nation will provide background on our Opportunity Index, a measure of opportunity in communities across 16 dimensions, a Youth and Business Toolkit for employers who want to hire, mentor, and provide internships for young adults, and our national policy and advocacy work. Make sure your efforts to re-connect young adults through education and career pathways are represented. Most importantly, let's make these gatherings a place where young adults can describe the impact of the youth unemployment crisis on their lives and the lives of their families.


GEORGIA
May 7, 2013

3-5pm

Points of Light Headquarters (with Jumpstart)
600 Means Street Northwest #210

Atlanta, GA

RSVP: http://opportunitygeorgia.eventbrite.com

FLORIDA

May 14, 2013

3-5pm 

United Way of Miami Dade (with Young Invincibles)
3250 Southwest 3rd Avenue
Miami, FL

RSVP: http://opportunityflorida.eventbrite.com

Making Sense of Not Making Cents

We all know there is a youth unemployment crisis, but we don’t know what its impact is on their lives and the choices they are making. JobsFirstNYC has taken a deeper look in their report Barriers to Entry: The Increasing Challenges Faced by Young Adults in the New York City Labor Market written by James Parrott of the Fiscal Policy Institute and Lazar Treschan of Community Service Society. The findings aren’t surprising – young people are staying in school longer, but it’s not making a difference in helping them find jobs. 

The positive side of the crisis is reinforcing our nation’s education policy goals – graduation rates are increasing, more students are taking the SAT, more students are enrolling in college. But how long will that continue if the doors are closed to young people who need to work to put food on the table? 

Dreams diminished, discouragement on the rise – how will young people make sense of their lives? Will they just lower their expectations to get out of poverty? Will they start to find ways to earn income in the shadow economy? Will they drown their sorrows in drugs and drinking? We need to understand a lot more about how young people are making sense of not being able to make cents. If we can better understand it, then we can construct strategies that work. As JobsFirstNYC reminds us -- interventions need to be age and stage appropriate.