We are in the final stretch of October (can you believe it?)! See what these great nonprofits are doing to help October go out with a bang! Continue reading
Around Town 10/25-10/31
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Tag Archives: Schools
Guest Post: Playworks
October is Bullying Prevention Month. Today we’re excited to welcome Susan Comfort, Executive Director of Playworks, DC to share how their program’s strategies help create a safe, healthy environment for kids to play and be active every day!
by Susan Comfort
October is the time of year that Playworks DC Coaches at our 15 schools choose the 4th and 5th graders who are going to serve as “Junior Coaches” for the rest of the year. And we don’t always choose the star students. We purposely choose the shy kids, too, and even the bullies, who use their leadership talents in the wrong direction. Continue reading
Around Town: 10/11-10/17
No matter what type of event you are looking to head to this weekend, the events featured below will all help you make a difference in your community. See what you can do to give back to great nonprofits in your own backyard. Continue reading
In the News…
It’s Mental Illness Awareness Week, and DC’s Mayor Gray is hosting a city-wide conversation on mental health on Saturday October 12th. The forum, entitled “Creating Community Solutions DC,” aims to engage hundreds of residents to “develop strategies to reduce the stigma associated with, and increase openness to, mental-health care,” according to the City’s website. This conversation will be the starting point for a community action plan to be developed by government officials, nonprofit and private sector leaders.
Continue reading
Stimulating Change: LearnServe International’s 4th Annual Panels and Venture Fair
The Figuring Out College Success team after their big win at LearnServe's 4th Annual Panels and Venture Fair
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead
This past Thursday, I had the pleasure of being a judge at LearnServe International’s 4th Annual Panels and Venture Fair at the School Without Walls. LearnServe International empowers high-school students from around the DC area who have the motivation (but perhaps not the means) to make a difference. Through their Fellows Program, LearnServe helps guide students through the creation of their own “social venture.” This year’s Venture Fair featured 60 young entrepreneurs who represented 30 high schools in 4 different counties. What do all of these young entrepreneurial minds have in common? They all helped to design 45 different social ventures with the goal of serving their schools and their communities.
In the cafeteria of the School Without Walls, LearnServe fellows set up their presentation boards and prepared to discuss their ideas with leaders from both the business and community worlds. Students were split into 4 groups: DC Public and Charter Schools/PG County Public Schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, and Independent Schools. Students were judged based on three different categories: innovative ideas, presentation boards, and their venture pitch. Awards were presented to the one group from each category that received the overall high score from the judges. Winners won a certificate, a book, and a pro-bono consulting service session with business leaders from different companies in the area.
As a judge, I reviewed five different ventures, each one as impressive as the next. It was extremely inspiring to see high school students who were all so motivated to make changes within their communities and beyond. Of all the ventures, one group that I judged not only caught my eye, but had the highest score in their geographic region, and therefore, won. Figuring Out College Success (FOCS) is a venture started by Nancy, Zora, Yousef, and Spencer, all sophomore students, with a goal of making the college preparation and application process easier for students. Whether they are students from international backgrounds, working class families, or first-generation college goers, the mission of FOCS is to help effectively transform the frustration and discouragement of the unknown into motivation to pursue the college path. As four young students who have not yet been through the college preparation or application process yet, their goals proved to be one of the most impressive portions of their venture proposal.
- increase enrollment in Honors, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes by 10%
- ensure participants, by mid freshman year, have a developed relationship with their counselor and have a plethora of extracurricular activities under their belt
- have participants by mid sophomore year create a pool of teachers for recommendations
- have junior year participants who by their second semester have a full resume and have visited multiple 4-year institutions up the East Coast
- ensure that by senior year participants have applied to multiple colleges and have set up permanent financial plans for the school they’ll be attending
As a first time judge for the LearnServe Venture Fair, I was blown away by the original and transformative ideas that these young people had come up with. It’s refreshing to see so many young people willing (and able) to change the world, and LearnServe provides them with a great platform to do so. Congratulations to all of the winners, the participants, and everyone at LearnServe who helped to put on an extremely stimulating event. To learn more about LearnServe International and all of the programs that they provide, click here.
In The News …
In Maryland, forecast calls for more hires (Gazette): “About 22 percent of companies in Maryland plan to hire more employees in the first quarter this year, up from 17 percent in 2012’s first quarter, according to a recent survey by employment services company Manpower Group.” Nationwide, that number is five percentage points lower and the best prospects, reportedly, are in professional and business services. One reason? Many “employers that have been piling up profitable quarters say factors such as the fiscal cliff and a lack of qualified employees put a damper on their hiring plans last year.”
Chancellor Kaya Henderson names 15 DC schools on closure list (Washington Post): “More than one in 10 DC public schools will close as part of a plan Chancellor Kaya Henderson put forth Thursday, a retrenchment amid budget pressures, low enrollment and growing competition from public charter schools […] Closing half-empty schools will allow her to use resources more efficiently, she said, redirecting dollars from administration and maintenance to teaching and learning.” Community feedback persuaded the Chancellor to keep open five schools originally slated for closure. You can read the detailed Consolidation and Reorganization Plan on the DCPS website.
Graduation Rate Hits Record High For High School Students: Government Report (Huffington Post): “More US high school students than ever are graduating on time, according to new information released by the research arm of the US Education Department. The percentage of students who graduated from high school within four years of starting ninth grade in the 2006-2007 school year hit a record high.” In that year, 4 million students began high school and, four years later, just over 78% have graduated — a 2% increase overall. But while more students are completing high school, “fewer than half of those in the class of 2012 were “college ready” as determined by the College Board last fall.”
Essential Parts
From “Under new principal, Savoy Elementary shows what art can teach” in this weekend’s Washington Post:
“ Ma and Damian Woetzel, a former principal with the New York City Ballet, spent more than an hour in a classroom with students, dancing, playing music and rehearsing pieces that they later performed on stage for the whole school.
It was one small part of Principal Patrick Pope’s broader effort to use the arts to transform Savoy, where poverty is pervasive and fewer than one-fifth of students are proficient in math and reading.
As Pope sees it, song, dance, theater and visual arts aren’t tacked-on extras — they’re essential parts of creating a school where students and teachers thrive. Students agree.”
Students in grades three through five now have “twice as much art and music time” as they did previously. But Rachel Goslins, executive director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, explains, “We are having a national conversation about how to fix our schools, and the arts were not in that conversation.”
Needless to say, the prevailing question is: how can we expand that conversation?
Learn more about Catalogue’s Performing, Literary, and Visual Arts nonprofits, many of which work directly with our schools, right here.
From the Field: Beautification Day 2012
By Marie LeBlanc, Community Partnerships Coordinator
As yesterday’s blog post reported, this week marks the beginning of a new school year for Washington, DC students. The first day of school is a moment that stands out in most children’s and parent’s lives — one filled with excitement and eagerness, anxiety and nervousness. Since 2005, DCPS Beautification Day has aspired to make that moment a bit more … beautiful for DC’s public school students. For the past seven years, thousands of Washington residents have shown up at their local schools to “spruce up” the facilities in preparation for a new school year. The 2012 Beautification Day took place last week, on August 25, and saw a great turn out of volunteers at 115 different schools. This year, Catalogue nonprofit Hands on DC coordinated 75 volunteers at three schools to “beautify” in a variety of ways — from painting and gardening outside to cleaning and organizing inside.
Back to School Days
As we know, this marks the first week of classes for the District’s public schools. And as Frazier O’Leary (a long-time English teacher at Cardozo Senior High) explained in the Washington Post: “The first week of school is probably the most important. It sets a tone.” Moreover:
To kids, this day might seem like a rapid-fire series of introductions and ice-breakers. But really, it’s about teaching routines — for entering the classroom, storing backpacks, going to the bathroom, moving around the room, turning in homework, joining in group discussions, using shared markers and glue sticks — that the kids will soon do automatically, as if breathing.
“These systems are not meant to limit them — they’re just to help them understand how to navigate their world, navigate the classroom,” Harrod said. “This way all they have to focus on is learning …”
And as we discussed a year ago at this time, this first day of routines (from packing a backpack to planning homework) can pose particular challenges for low-income students and their families. So do check out our 2011 list of Catalogue nonprofits that assist local students with their essential back-to-school needs! That list can be found right here, plus we have some important 2012 “wish list” additions:
In The News …
DC police measure up-and-coming neighborhoods (Washington Post): “As residential and retail development pushes more people and businesses into new areas, economic development data can be as important in shaping police staffing decisions as armed-robbery statistics. Discussing “up and coming” hubs, such as the Waterfront and H Street NE, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier says that “my primary goal, as these areas roll out, is that not only are they safe, but that they feel safe.” As neighborhoods change, “there is also friction between law enforcement and community leaders who say police are not moving quickly enough or deploying officers smartly enough in some areas.” What is your experience?
Poverty and Schools: Finally, Some Lights Go On (Huffington Post): Peter Meyer of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute discusses the “seemingly interminable battle between those who believe that you have to cure the poor before you can educate them and those who believe that educating the poor will help cure poverty.” His opinion? “The pendulum might be swinging, ever-so-slightly, toward the believers (in school).” He cites several projects that he hopes “will motivate more school leaders to believe that they can and must face poverty squarely, in the classroom.” Do you agree with the findings, and are they replicable?
Language instruction for immigrants in the DC region (WMAU: Community Minute): Profiled at the beginning of this month, Catalogue nonprofit “Language ETC (LETC) offers English and literacy training to low-income adult immigrants in the greater Washington area using volunteer teachers and tutors educates more immigrants annually than any other non-governmental organization in the area — and no willing student is turned away.” Most recently listed in the 2009/2010 Catalogue, LETC also provides a Multimedia Language Lab, conversation classes, book clubs, and individual job counseling to Washington area students.