Category Archives: National

National, Research

Mind Shift: Are We Taking Our Students' Work Seriously Enough?

Story by Luba Vangelova

studentsworkseriouslyIn the course of studying different aspects of children’s environments, Dr. Roger Hart noticed that “a lot of supposedly participatory projects had a distinct air of tokenism. Children were being put on display, so to speak, as though they were actively participating, but they were not taken seriously.”

To get people talking about this issue, Hart, who serves as director of the Children’s Environments Research Group at the City University of New York and helps lead the Article 15 Project, a children’s rights organization, adapted a colleague’s ladder metaphor. He labeled the rungs:

1. Manipulation

2. Decoration

3. Tokenism

4. Assigned but informed

5. Consulted and informed

6. Adult-initiated, share decisions with children

7. Child-initiated and directed

8. Child-initiated, share decisions with adults

Read more.

Local, National

KRON 4: Oakland Middle School Teacher Honored at White House

oaklandteacher1
April 23, 2013
By Sylvia Ramirez

An Oakland teacher was honored by President Obama at a White House ceremony on Tuesday.

I’Asha Warfield is a 7th grade English teacher at Oakland’s Frick Middle School. She is California’s only nominee for the 2013 National Teacher of the Year Award.

“It is my aim that students are able to use their life experiences and connect them to the world through analysis and evaluation. Simultaneously, I hope that with the skills they develop they are able to look beyond their own experience to critically and creatively engage in this world,” Warfield wrote in her application.

Warfield has taught English and reading intervention, and world history at Frick Middle School since 2000. She also works as a coach in the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment program to help guide new teachers through their self-assessment process in order to clear their California credential.

Warfield serves as a representative in Frick’s Instructional Leadership Team to help assess the instructional needs of the school through data analysis and teacher feedback. She also works as a consultant to the Bay Area Writing Project that presents teacher trainings on secondary literacy with an emphasis on writing.

Prior experience for Warfield includes working as a consultant with the California Reading and Literature Project; a corps member advisor at Teach for America Summer Institute; a collaborating teacher at the University of California, Berkeley and Mills College; and an assistant language teacher with the Japanese Exchange Teaching Programme, Miyagi, Japan.

The Oakland teacher and other nominated teachers from around the country applauded when Jeff Charbonneau, a high school science teacher from Zillah, Washington, was awarded the National Teacher of the Year by the president.

Charbonneau teaches chemistry, physics and engineering at Zillah High School, all subjects he knows many students look at as the “hard” science classes. He is also founder and director of the award-winning Zillah Robot Challenge, which is open to students and schools across the state and is designed to help students gain confidence in addressing science and engineering concepts.

A National Board Certified teacher, Charbonneau has been teaching for 12 years. He has a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in education from Central Washington University.

He is the 63rd National Teacher of the Year, a contest sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers. The winner, chosen by a committee of representatives from 15 education organizations, is pulled from the cohort of State Teachers of the Year, who themselves are selected through different processes in various states.

National

This American Life: Harper High

488_lg_replaceFebruary 15/22, 2013

This American Life spent five months at Harper High School in Chicago, where last year alone 29 current and recent students were shot. 29. They went to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances. We found so many incredible and surprising stories, this show is a two-parter.

Part One.

Part Two.

National, Youth Media

180 Days: A Year In An American School

180 Days: A Year In An American School

Following the day-to-day stories of students, parents, teachers and staff at the Washington Metropolitan High School (DC MET), “180 Days: Inside An American High School” is an intimate portrait of a public school that attempts to make a difference in the lives of students each and every day.
Whether they are preparing for college or becoming teen moms, the students at DC Met face many challenges with spirit and resilience and welcome us to challenge many of our own assumptions as we travel with the first graduating class to commencement. Led by a charismatic and outspoken young principal, DC Met invites us in for an unprecedented first-hand account of life inside of the school reform movement.

Airs 3/25 10pm and 3/26 4am KQED
Airs 3/26 9pm and 3/27 3am Life

Watch a Clip: 180 Days: A Year In An American School

Local, National

American Graduate Student Film Festival

Deadline for Entries: March 1st, 2013

What is the American Graduate Student Film Festival?

The American Graduate Student Film Festival (AGFF) is an online video competition for students ages 10 to 19 to engage youth about the high student dropout crisis. AGFF is a program of the National Black Programming Consortium and the American Graduate initiative supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). You can learn more about the drop out issue atamericangraduate.org.

Are there prizes?

Yes! Members of each winning team can win up cool prizes like an iPad, iPod Touch or $100 gift certificate. Prizes are awarded to individuals and teams consisting of a maximum of five members. The winning team will be flown with a chaperone to Washington, DC to receive their prize.

Who can enter the competition?

Submissions can come from students currently enrolled in middle or high school. Individuals or a group with a maximum of five team members are also eligible to submit a project.

What can I do to win?

You can create your own original short form video, PSA, music video, or animation (including animated graphic novel). The maximum length is five minutes (including 60 seconds max credits).
You will be competing with students from around the country, so be creative and innovative. Give us something we haven’t seen before on the subject.

What must be the themes of videos submitted to the festival?

Any of the following themes will be acceptable when judging for official selections into AGFF 2013.

  • Vulnerable Students: Why are some students more vulnerable to dropping out? What are their stories and how have some overcome these challenges? What are the external forces that keep students from succeeding and how can young people over come them?
  • The Role of Youth in Dropout Prevention: Young people can play an important role in saving themselves and/or helping each other.
  • Not so Old School: How can schools, parents and communities be more effective in helping students facing academic or social challenges succeed in school?

As you can see, we want your videos to challenge us with exciting stories, new ways of addressing the issues, and bring new solutions to bear from a youth perspective.

For more info.

National

Good: How We Can Curb America's Staggering Dropout Rate

jasoncityyear

December 21, 2012
By Jason Bateman

Most people would agree that starting a family is a major game changer. The second a child comes in to your life you are no longer the priority. Every bit of focus is about what’s best for your family, and you will do anything to provide them with the best possible opportunities in life.

I am no exception to this rule. I want my two young daughters to have everything they need to be successful—and I believe that education is the key to their success.

About three years ago I joined the board of City Year Los Angeles, an education-focused nonprofit organization that partners with public schools to help keep students in school and on track to succeed. In that time, I’ve seen cities across the country make great strides to improving education, but we still have a long way to go.

More than a million students give up on high school every year—that’s one every 26 seconds. This is a pretty jarring statistic made even more staggering when we recognize the consequences these dropout rates are having on our economy. Low graduation rates mean a significant loss to our workforce. Unless we’re able to graduate students at higher rates, nearly 12 million students will likely drop out over the next 10 years, resulting in a loss to the nation of $1.5 trillion. Cutting the dropout rate of a single high school class in half would likely support as many as 54,000 new jobs.

Thankfully, City Year has a solution. We know what the problem is, where it is, and how to identify and intervene with the students who are falling off the path to graduation.

City Year takes teams of young AmeriCorps members between the ages of 17-24 and places them in our city’s highest-need schools to help students stay on track to graduation. Corps members work side-by-side with students and teachers, acting as tutors, mentors and role models, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. This year, 2,500 City Year corps members in schools and communities across the country will complete over 4 million hours of service.

As if their commitment to changing the trajectory of students in-need wasn’t enough, what really makes City Year stand out is their impact. Last year, 85 percent of all students in grades 3-5 tutored by City Year improved their literacy scores, and 88 percent of teachers believe corps members have helped foster a positive environment for learning.

City Year provides results, and it’s for the future of my daughters—and the future of all of our children—that I’m asking you to support City Year this holiday season. I’ve joined the Mozilla Firefox Challenge on Crowdrise with a goal of raising $50,000 for this amazing organization that will help make a brighter future for our families. Donate at least $27 to the fundraiser before Jan 11 and you will not only be helping our kids, but you will also be entered for a chance to win two tickets to the premiere of my new movie Identity Thief. This could mean you will be able to avoid having to actually pay to see me in a movie, while at the same time, wear that special outfit for a red carpet stroll!

Please join me and give the gift of a donation to City Year for the holiday and help us win the Mozilla Firefox Challenge!

View Story.

Local, National

Huffington Post: Oakland Schools To Allow Federal Monitoring Of Black Student Discipline

December 10, 2012

The Oakland Unified School District and the U.S. Department of Education agreed last week to allow for at least five years of federal monitoring as the district attempts to reduce the disproportionately high black student suspension rate, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The resolution, of which the Oakland school board voted 6-0 in favor, concludes an investigation by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights into whether discipline of black students was harsher and more frequent and harshly than for their white peers.

Data released by the Department of Education in March showed that black students are three-and-a-half times as likely to be suspended or expelled as their white classmates.

Under last week’s agreement, federal officials will keep watch on 38 Oakland schools and oversee the district’s five-year plan to address students’ needs by offering mentoring services to at-risk students, providing training for teachers and staff and combatting disciplinary issues without resorting to suspensions.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, almost 20 percent of Oakland’s black males were suspended at least once last year — six times the rate of white students. In middle school, one out of every three black students was suspended at least once. Furthermore, research conducted during the 2010-11 school year found that more than half of African American male students in the Oakland Unified School District are at risk of dropping out.

Russlynn Ali, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, told theLA Times that last school year, African American students comprised about 39 percent of the district’s total enrollment but accounted for 63 percent of students with at least one suspension and 61 percent of those who were expelled.

“Historically, they have been the whipping boys in our district,” Chris Chatmon, executive director of the district’s African-American Male Achievement Office, told the Oakland school board. “We are here today to ante up and reclaim our children.”

Federal education officials say they are hopeful Oakland can serve as a model for other districts that are seeking to address disproportionately high rates of suspensions of minority students, the AP reports.

“Disparities in disciplinary procedures are inherently wrong and all too common,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. “I commend Oakland for being the first district to directly confront this challenge.”