School may be out for summer, but UrbanFUTURE is still hard at work. What goes on during the hot and humid summer months at UrbanFUTURE? The answer is A LOT!
The beginning of the summer is filled with data. UrbanFUTURE spends the month of June collecting student data from the school year, compiling it and analyzing it. By the end of June, the analyzed data is put into a that we give to the St. Louis Public Schools.
We also hit the recruiting trail hard during the summer months. You may have even seen us at one of the many Kaldi's locations around the area on Saturday mornings. You may see us at various outdoor concert events donning our "I Am" t-shirts, encouraging people to volunteer as tutors and mentors for the upcoming school year.
With so many new people wanting to volunteer, we have a lot of training that needs to get done before school starts in August. Team Leaders have been working hard to refine the mentor and tutor training so volunteers are better prepared for the rigors of being an UrbanFUTURE volunteer. New trainings will start in July. In addition to fine-tuning the training, Team Leaders are busy making modifications to the mentoring and tutoring curriculum based on the feedback of our current tutors and mentors and will unveil the new curriculum to volunteers during training.
UrbanFUTURE's expansion plans have also had us in hiring mode. Over 125 individuals applied for the Team Leader position during the one month window. Staff have been logging long hours conducting phone interviews trying to find the best candidates. The final round of interviews will come over the weekend of July 9th, and final decisions will be made the next week.
Finally, development staff has stayed busy writing and submitting proposals to foundations, meeting with potential donors and working with volunteers for the annual campaign in the fall. Also being planned is an UrbanFUTURE trivia night, "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" style. This will be the first such event for UrbanFUTURE!
So while some might think that things slow down in summer, UrbanFUTURE knows things are speeding along just fine.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Parent Leadership As a Solution
In Wednesday's St. Louis Post Dispatch, this story ran about the plight of under-performing schools in the St. Louis area. While the story has relevance to UrbanFUTURE's work in eliminating the achievement gap in the urban core, it is a string within some of the comments from readers that really resonates with what we are doing. Here a just a few of the comments.
"It does not matter what you do to the school. If education is not valued in the home; these schools will not perform at the level of districts with an educated parent population that stress the importance of lifelong learning." - w. champion
"As others have commented, educational failure is not all on the teachers. If parents* don't care at the original school, why would they suddenly care when their offspring is put in a new "high achieving" school?" - crissyboo
"That's right, champion: the success of the school depends on the commitment of the family....Most of my students NEVER hear the words, "is your homework finished?" or "Have you raised your grade up to a "B" in History?". These and the countless other words of encouragement from PARENTS make the difference in whether I, the student, will re-read the chapter, or re-write the essay, or review my class notes." - LGL
The last comment comes directly from a self-identified, St. Louis Public School teacher. These comments highlight exactly what UrbanFUTURE identifies as the key to helping students in under-resourced communities achieve: engage the parent as a leader.
That's why UrbanFUTURE requires parents and mentors to speak on a weekly basis to discuss goals, achievements, challenges. It's why UrbanFUTURE staff hold meetings for parents to learn the things they can do to help their child by working with them at home. It's why we ask parents to get involved at their child's school and stop by to see their daughter or son's teacher, not just at conferences, but throughout the year.
These things happen where resources are, but in areas where resources are lacking, the family is isolated from the community and the school. The Restoration Model provides a construct for parents to connect with teachers, community volunteers and each other. At UrbanFUTURE, we share in the sentiment of some of these commenters, because we know parent leadership is a major part of the remedy in turning around under-performing schools and re-invigorating neighborhoods.
Note: UrbanFUTURE does not endorse comments made on the highlighted article that are of a divisive nature. We only wish to comment on a common theme around parents' role in solving the issue of failing schools.
"It does not matter what you do to the school. If education is not valued in the home; these schools will not perform at the level of districts with an educated parent population that stress the importance of lifelong learning." - w. champion
"As others have commented, educational failure is not all on the teachers. If parents* don't care at the original school, why would they suddenly care when their offspring is put in a new "high achieving" school?" - crissyboo
"That's right, champion: the success of the school depends on the commitment of the family....Most of my students NEVER hear the words, "is your homework finished?" or "Have you raised your grade up to a "B" in History?". These and the countless other words of encouragement from PARENTS make the difference in whether I, the student, will re-read the chapter, or re-write the essay, or review my class notes." - LGL
The last comment comes directly from a self-identified, St. Louis Public School teacher. These comments highlight exactly what UrbanFUTURE identifies as the key to helping students in under-resourced communities achieve: engage the parent as a leader.
That's why UrbanFUTURE requires parents and mentors to speak on a weekly basis to discuss goals, achievements, challenges. It's why UrbanFUTURE staff hold meetings for parents to learn the things they can do to help their child by working with them at home. It's why we ask parents to get involved at their child's school and stop by to see their daughter or son's teacher, not just at conferences, but throughout the year.
These things happen where resources are, but in areas where resources are lacking, the family is isolated from the community and the school. The Restoration Model provides a construct for parents to connect with teachers, community volunteers and each other. At UrbanFUTURE, we share in the sentiment of some of these commenters, because we know parent leadership is a major part of the remedy in turning around under-performing schools and re-invigorating neighborhoods.
Note: UrbanFUTURE does not endorse comments made on the highlighted article that are of a divisive nature. We only wish to comment on a common theme around parents' role in solving the issue of failing schools.
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