C-D-A-E-S...We are the best!

This year I have had the amazing opportunity to work at Community Day Arlington Elementary School (CDAES).  Having worked as a classroom assistant, social studies teacher, and after-school program coordinator at an elementary school through AmeriCorps my first two years out of college, I wanted to continue my work in education before I committed to law school.  So far, it's been a wonderful experience and I feel so privileged to be part of CDAES' first year staff.
 

CDAES is a special kind of hybrid.  Although the school is part of the Lawrence public system and is considered a regular public school (serving students from the neighborhood), our classrooms operate in a very charter-school-like manner.  Currently, the school serves K-1st, but will be serving up to 4th grade next year.  We have 8 classes total and the majority of our students are English Language Learners.
 

As a generalist, I get to do a little bit of everything.  I help administer tests (specifically any kind of ELL/ESL tests), assist teachers when their co-teacher is out or, if both teachers are out, serve as a substitute.  When I am not doing either of these things, I am working in specific classrooms that have specific needs.  Classroom instruction at our school is data driven and similarly, so is my schedule.  After a cycle of testing (MAP or STEP), we look at what classrooms might benefit from extra assistance.  K-1st grades spend a lot of time building and strengthening literacy skills, so naturally a lot of the assistance I provide is in that area.  I typically take a small group of students (2-6) and work with them on skills they are having trouble mastering or skills they need to practice.  This can include basics like working on letter sounds, to building words, to rhyming, to guided reading.

Most of my previous classroom experience was with 2nd-5th graders, so working with K-1st grades has been a new adventure!  Academically, the school year moves a lot more slowly, as much of our time is spent on reinforcing basic skills, but behaviorally and socially, you see so much more progress than with older grades.  Most of our kindergarteners came to us never having attended preschool and even some of our first graders had limited schooling in the US, so naturally there was a period of adjusting to the classroom structure.  It really is amazing to see how much each student has grown and I look forward to challenging our little ones and seeing them continue to learn, grow, and succeed.

Notes from the Field…Office

Greetings from Washington, D.C.  I began as a fellow at Character Education Partnership (CEP) on Monday, 16 July.  I had a week before my fellow fellow, Sweta, arrived at CEP to figure out the office environment.  In the last two weeks, either out loud or to myself, I’ve been that kid who says “at my old school we did this…” since to what else can I compare new work experience but old work experience?  Of course, I don’t make those comparisons to criticise.  Arriving at CEP and not knowing who my supervisor was and what precisely I would be doing was at once freeing and disorienting.  Not having a defined set of tasks meant I could suggest what I would like to do.  Not having someone to report to meant I could direct my own pace of work. 

As the organisation continues to change—hiring new staff, revising the vision and mission statements—what I do as a fellow will change as well.  For now, to give you an idea of what CEP is about, Character Education Partnership creates curriculum and trains teachers and administrators how to implement character education.  Character education is education that takes into account a person’s social and emotional development, promoting values of kindness, trustworthiness, and good citizenship.  The “character education” part of this is the constant, but what CEP does to promulgate it is going to change.   As “they” say, the only constant thing in the universe is change!

Why EdTech Innovation Matters!

In my previous entry, I introduced Digital Promise - my Princeton Project 55 organization. Our mission is to “to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.” Here’s another way to think about our mission: ultimately, we would like to help facilitate and develop new breakthroughs in education technology. Digital Promise’s mission – innovation in education technology and education-at-large – is an important one. The world is becoming more and more innovative everyday day and American public schools must keep pace.

How is the world becoming increasingly innovative? Here are some questions to ask yourself: When was the last time you brought an actual CD as supposed to downloading an album on Amazon or iTunes? How many Apple (iPhones, iPads, or iPods) products do you own? And finally, do you read your news in a print format or digital format such as on your computer, mobile device, or Kindle? It may be difficult to imagine, but technology is now more integrated into our lives than it was five years ago, but unfortunately education is not keeping pace. There are many reasons why schools are lagging in regards to adopting the latest technology, but one of the big reasons is that often times it takes school districts years to evaluate what really works. By the time many districts are able to assess a particular innovation that application or device is outdated.

Digital Promise, and in particular Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools, is working to help our public schools rapidly “demonstrate, evaluate, and scale” innovative technologies so that students are able to utilize them now instead of five years down the line. To this end, many of our League member school districts and local education agencies are active participants in our two working groups: The Procurement Working Group and Research Working Group. Furthermore, we are fortunate to have dynamic research partners at BYU, Harvard, the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington – we collaborate with researchers at each of these institutions to collect data and analyze results from “demonstration sites” ( an initial implementation of a particular application or device) among our League member districts. At the moment, we have three active demonstrations sites including an entire school district in Michigan that will introduce iPads into all of their kindergarten classes beginning in the fall.

Next fall, all of the incoming kindergarten students attending Utica Community Schools – the second largest school district in Michigan – will be using iPads in their class. Sounds amazing doesn’t it? But then again, why not? If we’re using the most sophisticated technology to entertain, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be using it to educate as well.

Next Time: Making the Transition to Educating in the Digital Age!

Introducing Digital Promise

“Created by Republicans and Democrats and championed by a coalition of educators and business leaders, Digital Promise is an independent nonprofit that will help spur breakthrough learning technologies.... By harnessing the extraordinary work being done by educators, innovators, and citizens across this country, Digital Promise can help prepare Americans – and America – to succeed in the 21st Century,” - Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
 

They say that you have only one chance to make a good first impression; as the first Princeton Project 55 Fellow with Digital Promise that fact is important to me. 

Digital Promise, or the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, is a bipartisan, independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation authorized by Congress under President George W. Bush (in 2008) and launched by President Barack Obama (in 2011) “to support a comprehensive research and development program to harness the increasing capacity of advanced information and digital technologies to improve all levels of learning and education, formal and informal, in order to provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy.” 

As a Project 55 Fellow and the assistant to Digital Promise’s Executive Director, Adam Frankel, I feel privileged to have an opportunity to contribute to the effort of closing America’s “Digital Divide.” Although technology and innovation is never a “silver bullet” to any issue, it has the potential to serve a powerful role in our nation’s classrooms. Just like any other tool, if used correctly, education technology has the capacity to help our students learn more efficiently and our teachers teach more efficiently. More specifically, imagine a classroom in which students are able to have personalized lessons tailored to his or her own interests, strengths and weaknesses, and learning style by employing the most advanced, sophisticated technology available: it’s already here and we just need to work hard to make sure every student, in every state has access to it. And that’s where Digital Promise comes in. 

In this first entry, I just wanted to provide a basic idea of what I contribute to at Digital Promise. If you would like more information, please click here.

Next Time: “Why Innovation in America’s classrooms is important and what you can do to help!”

National Schools of Character

CEP's National Schools of Character program, commonly referred to as our "flagship" program, is designed to help schools improve in many ways through comprehensive character education.  We evaluate schools on how well they implement our 11 Principles of Effective Character Education, and those who do so in an exemplary way are recognized as National Schools of Character (NSOC).  (For more detail about the program, you can check out CEP's website for more information.)

On Thursday, I was lucky enough to go on a site-visit to Lyles-Crouch Traditional Academy, a school in Alexandria, VA that's applying to be a 2012 NSOC.  I hadn't been in an elementary school for years before visiting Lyles-Crouch, but it was still clear to me that it's a great school.  This school, which had been the city's school for black children during segregation, has come so far and is now a high-performing school that parents, teachers, and students (of all races) love.  It was great to see, in person, the impact that CEP is having on schools like Lyles-Crouch throughout the country.  While I know I don't want to stay in the education sector forever, I do feel like I'm a part of something great.     

A Shocking Statistic

Anyone who walks into Achievement Prep for a tour (enthusiastically led by yours truly) will be immediately directed to the data and graphs board outside our main office, which shows that Achievement Prep has eliminated the achievement gap between African American children in DC and their white peers in math, and closed most of the gap in reading. 

While only 41% and 42% of DC African Americans scored proficient or advanced on the 2011 DC CAS in Reading and Math, respectively, DC White students scored 88% proficient or advanced in both subjects.  In 2011, Achievement Prep scholars scored 87% and 60% proficient or advanced in Reading and Math respectively.  We still have a lot of work to do, especially in reading, but we've come a long way since we opened our doors in 2008, and we're doing a lot for this historically under served community in Ward 8.

What provoked me to share those surprising numbers above was something I read on the internet earlier today.  I stumbled across an interesting Room for Debate segment from the NY Times which debates the merits of ending the War on Drugs that disproportionately affects young, black males in America, who comprise a large portion of marijuana-related arrests.  Not to mention the fact that according to Michelle Alexander's new book, The New Jim Crow, nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison during their lifetimes.  The Debate includes several short opinion pieces from a variety of authorities who all have different perspectives on the issue.  Link here:

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/12/young-black-and-male-in-america

A lot of things that were said by the authors reflect realities of the community I work in.  One of the writers makes a compelling case for valorizing the father and encouraging two parent family structure.  She noted that 73% of black children in 2009 were born to unwed mothers, something that I frequently see among the mothers of Achievement Prep scholars.

However, I was specifically blown away by a statistic mentioned in Craig DeRoche's piece that stated the following (by low-level law breakers he means people who are arrested on drug charges):

Statistically, trolling for low-level law breakers has distracted the public from demanding justice where it is most needed. For example, Chicago solved only 30 percent of the murders committed in 2011 (down from 80 percent in 1991). Comparing this to a Brookings employment study for 2011, getting away with murder was easier than finding a job for the unemployed in Chicago.

That is INSANE!!  I'd like to hear what my fellow fellow at the North Lawndale Employment Network, Michael Collins '11 has to say about this.

I work on Saturdays and I kinda really like it...

The first 6 weeks of 2012 have been BUMPIN here at Achievement Prep.  As I said in my last post, we're now in the thick of our recruiting season for new students for the 2012-2013.  We worked with an outside company to develop an online application this year (it's always been paper in the past) and the applications are flowing in!  It's my job to reach out to these families to schedule tours of the building so that they can see classes in action and ask questions about the school.  I've been giving tours in tandem with our new Families and Community Coordinator (who actually was FCC last year and returned after Winter Break) but yesterday I had to suddenly give my first tour flying solo.  I was literally terrified, even though I know tons of information about APA and can probably answer every question a parent might have or easily snag someone in the hallways who does, but I just felt super super nervous, knowing that a prospective parent's opinion and perspective of the school could be so heavily shaped by my tour.  But actually, it went really really well and the mom liked the school a lot.  And then I gave another tour by myself today and it went even better, so I'm feeling really good about that.  I've got eight more tours scheduled through the end of next week and a lot more parents to follow up with.  (I hate phone tag.)  What an exciting time!

Additionally, I spent a big chunk of last week working on a grant proposal that is due on Friday.  Right now, the head of school is looking it over and then is going to send it back to me for final copy editing.  It was actually really stressful and I kind of had thesis flashbacks, but I felt so good after I submitted what I had written to her, and she said it was good!  So I'm happy.

And of course, dear reader, you must be dying to know why on EARTH I am working on Saturdays.  In addition to our long school day and long school year at Achievement Prep, we also run sessions of Saturday Academy (9am - 12pm, two 1.5 hour classes) for "cuspers," students who just need a little extra push on a certain subject to achieve solid proficiency.  The Director of Academic Achievement needed someone to teach 6th and 7th grade reading & writing on Saturdays for the next 8 weeks (now only 6 left) and I agreed.  I've taught lessons in my art class and done small group tutoring but I've never really taught a class before, and it's really exciting that I get to be a classroom teacher for some of the time and then do all this behind the scenes administrative stuff with the External Affairs office.  Last Saturday I subbed for 4th grade math (money word problems), but it's back to ELA next Saturday.  I'm looking forward to it.  It's actually nice to get up early on a Saturday and then have the rest of the day after 12:30pm  free to do whatever.  If I wasn't doing Saturday Academy I'd probably sleep past 12:30pm anyway.

I really am incredibly thankful that my job has given me so much flexibility and opportunities to be creative and try new things.  PP55 is awesome!  And good luck to everyone who has interviews coming up for next year's crop of fellows.  What an exciting time!

Also, sidenote:  I really really love DC.  I love the size, I love the way the buildings are so short but wide, it makes me think of Paris.  It's so much more open and clean than NYC.  I love all the museums, all the culture and history and the way that I have totally mastered the grid (NW, NE, SW, SE).  I love that Arlington, where I live, is so nice, but it's so easy to get into the city.  I always was SURE I would end up in NYC but right now I can't picture myself anywhere but here.

New Year, New Projects, Same Old Stereotypes

The new year has gotten off to a great start here in Southeast DC at Achievement Preparatory Academy.  Our brand new online application went live on January 2^nd and we’ve already got 10 applications for the 2012-2013 school year.  My old supervisor decided to leave the school, but my new boss is actually someone that worked here before and has just come back.  We’re already forming a great working partnership and I’m shadowing her on school tours for prospective parents so that pretty soon I can start giving the tours myself.  Tomorrow (yes, work on Saturday) we’re going to the DC Charter School Expo at the Washington Convention Center, so hopefully we’ll drum up a lot of interest and get some new applications in.  Exciting!  Recruitment is a huge task that lasts basically the entire first half of the calendar year (while enrollment / registration / paper work follow up / residency verification is the second half) and I’ll be playing a crucial role.  If my APA recruitment is anything like my recruiting new freshman for the Princeton University Band we’ll be sitting pretty for the next school year.

I want to share a story with you, avid readers of our blog, that my boss shared with us yesterday at staff close-out.  A man from an organization that might be giving a grant to our school was here visiting yesterday from California.  He was trying to catch an early morning cab from Dupont Circle, which is a super-ritzy fancy part of NW DC to our school, which is located in notorious Ward 8 of SE DC.  To be blunt, and describe the difference between NW and SE in black and white terms, NW is white, SE is black.  Three different cab drivers turned down the man when he asked to be taken over to Wahler Place SE.  One cabby even told him, “Why would you want to go there?  Nothing good ever comes out of that place.”  And this man, who hasn’t been to our school before but has talked extensively to our leader and founder, and read the press releases, defended our school and said, well let me tell you about this amazing school in this not-so-great neighborhood.  Clearly, you must not have heard of them if you’re going to say things like that.  So maybe nothing else good comes out of our seedy, run-down neighborhood in SE, but WE are a good thing.  A great thing.  Our DC CAS scores show that we have completely eliminated the achievement gap between our students and white students in DC, and gone most of the way towards eliminating that disparity in reading.  I feel like I constantly have to defend where I work to new people I meet, those who are shocked or worried about me for being a young white female working in this community.  And yes, I’ve endured shocking cat calls and harassment at the local gas station and Burger King, but the things that we do within the walls of this school make it all worth it.  I am so proud to be a part of this school and I’m excited to play such a role in the future of the school.  Because truly, the school would not exist without its students, so we need to get butts in those seats!

p.s.  Not to be outdone by Subha, check out my advisory’s entry into APA’s Holiday door decorating contest.  We got second place, but only because 1^st place used a Christmas card that plays music to enhance their door.

Complete Creative Control!

I am endlessly amazed at the variety of different tasks that fall onto my plate here at Achievement Prep.  I will admit that not all of them are intellectually challenging, but those that aren’t still require creative thought and approaching problems from several different angles.  And I most certainly get to be way more creative at this job than I would at a different office job.

Case in point, my most recent “baby,” our High School Placement Bulletin Board.  The task:  create a board that showcases our eighth graders, what high schools they are applying to and what their favorite schools are.  Creative control: complete.  (These sorts of tasks are great for me because I love being totally in control of the execution of my own artistic vision.)  And wow, did I have to be resourceful and make letters out of other letters for the banner because we didn't have enough.  Darn straight those h's are made out of m's and l's.

My list of other tasks in recent days have included:

• Behavioral data tracking for the whole school
• Organizing game bins for use during indoor recess (I LOVE ORGANIZING)
• Online research for potential APA merchandise
• Data entry for updated DC Health and Oral Exams for our scholars
• Data entry to our online disciplinary database
• Updating the school library with loads of new books
• Assisting our Office Coordinator who broke her foot!
• Teaching Art Club
• Helping my supervisor plan, prepare, and execute last week’s Family Night

Today, the teachers are upstairs working with data from our most recent Achievement Network assessment.  I’m down at my desk brainstorming ways to increase attendance at our Family Night Events (last week we had Family Health and Wellness Night, which was awesome!) and trying to decide upon best practices to get the staff and scholars involved at future events.  But as you can see from my list above, I am the go-to person for getting random stuff done that needs to be done.  It’s great to feel that my coworkers know that I am dependable and responsible and always ready to lend a hand!

p.s.  Shout out to Schuyler, fellow DC P55 Fellow working in Education, for telling me about Young Education Professionals DC (YEP-DC) which is a group that organizes events and has a great list serv with lots of event announcements and job postings, all having to do with education in DC.  Anyone who is interested can check out their website here: http://www.yepdc.org/  and join their Google or LinkedIn Group here:  http://www.yepdc.org/join.html

p.p.s.  Related:  for any prospective P55 applications who want to work in education – DC is the place to be!

I Am Really Into Reading

Since I last posted I’ve added some more “hats” to my repertoire.  I’m now the Box Tops Coordinator and the Giant A+ Rewards Czar, not to mention the school librarian.  Another teacher and I have put together a mobile library cart that allows us to check out books to scholars using an online library database called Library World.  That was fairly easy to put together.  We used a program called Accelerated Reader from Renaissance Learning to make a very straight-forward leveled library and instruct scholars to pick books from specific bins that are appropriate for their reading level as determined by a STAR Reading assessment that all of them took earlier in the year.  The way we originally envisioned the system was that each scholar would take out one book each week at a designated time for his advisory during lunch or breakfast.  We’ve already come up against the (very happy) problem that some scholars are blasting through books in a day or two and want another one right away.  We will definitely be able to accommodate that number of voracious readers.  My long term assignment is to try to organize the library in an accessible way while keeping in mind that they are existing in a temporary space and may be moved some time in the future.

This year we’re focusing on a big push towards cultivating a culture of reading.  Towards this end, we’ve been instructed to wear these cute little purple buttons that say “I Am Really Into Reading” and give them out to scholars who are exemplifying that message.  I somehow always manage to forget to take my button off after work and wear it out into the real world.  Shantelle, the Head of School, called me out in front of everyone at a staff meeting because I said that it was a dragon on the pin when it is, in fact, a dinosaur.  I just got excited because I like dragons but I guess it doesn’t have wings so I can’t have been right.

Note my sweet Princeton Tigers keychain on my lanyard.

This week has been strange for me because I found out last week that my boss / PP55 mentor (Director of Strategy and Operations) will be transitioning to a new position elsewhere at the end of the month.  My other direct boss, who is now a more formal report, (Families and Community Coordinator) is in Cancun.  So I’ve been feeling a bit adrift this week, but my current big project is to compile proof of residency binders for our upcoming DCPCSB audit which will take me quite a while.

We have a mentor-mentee happy hour tonight in Dupont Circle, I’m looking forward to it a lot.  I wonder when our first seminar will be…

I Wear Many Hats

Over the past two months at Achievement Prep here in DC I have already done an unbelievable number of different things for the school.  I’ve done basic administrative things from filing and alphabetizing to consulting student files to answering the phone and making phone calls to parents about upcoming events.  I’m also self-titled queen of our Enrollment Records database (which is really just an enormous Google Document) in which I keep meticulous track of whose DC Residency is updated and which schools have sent us their scholars’ cumulative academic records.

On Wednesday last week I had my first taste, so to speak, of what it’s like to be a lunch lady.  Our Cafeteria Coordinator was out for the day so I stepped in to make sure our scholars got their breakfast and lunch.  I also did the grossest part of cleanup, which is dumping all of the half-drunk milks into a big bucket and dumping that down the sink.  I find myself appalled at the way some children mutilate their food.

Starting this week, I am now a key person in our dismissal process, in charge of using my walkie-talkie to get children from inside the building to their parents waiting outside.  We can’t just open the doors and let the children out into the world, we want to make sure we know who is picking up every scholar.

Also starting this week, I’m an art teacher!  A 5^th grade math teacher, Ms. Arellano, and I are now the co-leaders of the APA Art Club, which is basically a mixed media art class for 4 through 6 graders, planned and executed by the two of us.  Last week, in my sometimes role as school ambassador, I attended an orientation for the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative’s Arts for Every Student program.  AFES sponsors schools to send students on field trips to a variety of art-related shows, exhibits and programs to make sure that art is included in their education.  Not only that, but this week happens to be Arts in Education Week and the DC Collaborative is holding a sidewalk chalking contest for art classes.  Whoever makes the best chalk drawing in the theme of butterflies or the arts gets at $50 gift certificate to the Utrecht store (aka fancy art supplies), so I’m having the scholars plan their ideas and then tomorrow or Friday we’ll head outside and chalk it up so I can send in our contest submissions before the 18^th.  What I like about art class through the enrichment system is that since each scholar can only be in one enrichment program, he chooses which one he wants.  This means that the vast majority of our Art Club scholars really wanted to be in the art enrichment.  When asked on the first day why they choose art, the scholars gave us some really advanced and impressive answers about outlets for creativity and the ability to express emotion through art.  It’s going really well so far!

My other ambassadorial role is to the community at large.  This job is a combination between that and being an event planner.  Yesterday, my boss and I went to meet with two local property managers about the series of community engagement workshops I am developing.  It’s actually going to happen, ahh!  The first one will be on October 11^th.

I’m also a cheerleader in the sense that I am on our pep rally committee, planning activities for our weekly community gatherings called Preppy and Proud, which take place at the end of our early dismissal Wednesdays.  (Remember, we’re Achievement Prep.)  We’re developing ideas for how to fit 204 scholars into our limited indoor space and do something fun and meaningful as a community.  We want this to make those scholars who earned Wednesday extension and therefore miss Preppy and Proud jealous.  As our Head of School would say, we want to “spur them on with envy.”  This is fun, and you’re missing it because of your behavior over the past week.  Get it together for next time.

I am also basically a general school go-fer.  Whenever people see me they know that they can count on me to quickly and competently do whatever small but important task they suddenly need completed right this very second or else!  I make copies, I use the paper cutter, I hand out announcements to go home with the scholars.  I man a post in the stairwell during transitions to make sure they are silent and respectful.  I share an advisory in the morning with a 5^th grade English Teacher and the Scholar Support Coordinator named after SUNY Cortland, which two of our Platinum Teachers attended.

I do a little bit of everything, some things more than others, but even though I feel fairly certain that I’m working the longest hours of any PP55 Fellow (6:45am to about 6:00pm every day, and much later if we have a night time event), the days go quickly.  They are filled to the max and there’s always something to do.  I’m never bored.  This is going to be a very intense year.