Reflections on DCPNI Retreat: Tierra Evans

This past Saturday, I got the opportunity to attend a community retreat through the D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative, or DCPNI, which won one of the $500,000 grants from the federal government to launch the promise neighborhood in the District of Columbia. Residents from the targeted area were given the chance to participate in the planning stages of the process and  discuss the things that they feel deserve attention in the schools, homes, and communities where they live. I can absolutely say that I left with a new sense of hope, commitment, and knowledge about the true purpose and meaning of education. During the discussion sessions, words like "family", "community", "unity", and "responsibility" resonated in the air from students, parents, seniors citizens, and various community leaders. One could sense the urgency, the gratefulness, and the  determination in the air. They taught me that education is not just going to school, getting good grades, and going to college. Yes, it has these kind of manifest functions but it also signifies awareness. Awareness of what is going on around you and the recognition that what you do should benefit yourself as well as others. When I think about the major lesson that I learned, I'm reminded of a quote from Cornel West which says,"You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people." To me, that means taking the "I" out of certain sentences and replacing it with "We" and being the change that you want to see. It only takes one person to speak up, go that extra mile, and inspire others to do the same.  That type of mentality has the power to change neighborhoods, cities, states, countries, and the entire world that we live in. 

--
Tierra Evans

COL 2014

Back in Action

DC Reads is back, in more ways than one.  For starters, we're back from a spring break that saw many of our dedicated tutors and coordinators participate in alternative spring break trips helping to build and further communities here in DC and around the country.  On a greater level, we're back from a two-month hiatus from blogging that has been filled with a lot of exciting action that we can't wait to fill you in on. 

Tutoring is off to another good start this semester, with young learners across all of our different programs continuing to make strong progress in literacy decoding, reading comprehension, and writing skills.  We're putting an unprecedented emphasis on the comprehension portion of our curriculum, insuring that our students are not only reading words correctly but also understanding them at an appropriate level.  In the 4th and 5th grade program, we've moved into a unit centered around the many different future careers potentially associated with our students' emerging interests, and the skills and hard work it takes to get to those careers.  On Saturdays, we've continued to see solid and growing attendance for the free tutoring we offer at the Deanwood Community Recreation Center in Northeast. 

One of the more exciting partnerships we've forged throughout the year and that continues to be cultivated this semester is with the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI), the comprehensive plan to improve educational outcomes for students in the Kenilworth-Parkside neighborhood in Northeast by building the community on a broader level and insuring that its children have all of the out-of-school resources and services they need to succeed in school.  We blogged about DCPNI earlier in the year when some DC Reads coordinators attended a celebration barbeque after the plan was chosen to receive federal grant money -- it is modeled after Geoffrey Canada's success with the Harlem Children's Zone in New York City, and people in Kenilworth-Parkside are really excited about it.  Recently our coordinating staff volunteered on a Saturday at an all-day planning retreat for DCPNI with the residents of Kenilworth-Parkside, serving as notetakers for breakout discussions among residents and facilitators and generally serving as a helpful presence at this event.  Our partnership with DCPNI continues to grow, and it has been a great way to build our profile in a community that includes Kenilworth Elementary School, where we tutor students in all five grades. 

(For more on the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative, check out this recent feature in the Huffington Post!)

In the waning weeks of the semester, we'll certainly keep you posted on these developments and more, but we also envision our blog becoming more of a forum for more opinions and discussion on current events in the world of education, so we will be posting articles and continuing to follow up on that promise accordingly.  

We're excited to get back to tutoring this week, and we look forward to having you along for the ride!

Report: US only average at educating students

By Matt Buccelli

A recent sample of test score data from around the world is causing significant concern among American education observers and public officials.  The report, which tallied the math, science, and reading scores of 15 year-olds in each of the 34 countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], demonstrates mediocre results for the United States, and shows us lagging behind many other Asian and European countries.  On the 1,000 point scale of the International Student Assessment, we scored a 500 in reading, 502 in science, and 487 in math. 

The results sounded alarm bells for many public officials.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan referred to the results as "a massive wake-up call."  Added Duncan: "Have we ever been satisfied as Americans being average in anything? Is that our aspiration? Our goal should be absolutely to lead the world in education."

Representative George Miller [D-CA], the outgoing chairman of the House Education Committee, expressed similar distress. "Average won't help us regain our global role as a leader in education. Average won't help our students get the jobs of tomorrow. Average is the status quo and it's failing our country."

Thanksgiving Break

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading out there -- if you're helping us tutor right now, we're thankful for you!  If not, we've had an awesome semester so far in DC Reads, and we'll continue to keep you updated on all aspects of our tutoring and community involvement as the year progresses.


For now, we'll post another great sentence about education from Joanna Peiser, senior in the college and another member of our Advocacy Committee:


"To me, education means creating a better tomorrow for myself and others."


Agreed.  Have a great break!

Program Snapshot: Afternoons in the 3rd grade

We have four different tutoring programs within DC READS: our traditional one-to-one after-school tutoring for third graders; Saturday tutoring at libraries and community centers; morning tutoring, where we serve as de-facto teachers' assistants in classrooms for all the different elementary school grades; and then our 4th and 5th grade program, which functions as an after-school classroom run by a group of tutors and coordinators and focuses on personal development goals, writing, vocabulary, and other forms of student enrichment. Over the course of this year, we'll be posting a mixture of tutor and coordinator reflections to allow us to convey our experience as educators and mentors, while also filling our readers in on exciting developments within each of our programs.

****

The following post was written by Justine Achille, a sophomore in the NHS who is currently tutoring at Kenilworth Elementary School:

The session was going to go great. I knew it. I had printed out a vocabulary activity that I made up that I knew my tutee would enjoy, and I was bringing the white board. I didn’t really have a plan as to what to do with it, but that didn’t matter. As a rule, all tutees love using white dry-erase boards, and mine is no exception. So in my mind, the day was going to be a hit, without a doubt, and at first, everything was going just as planned. We ambled through a book about a nice woman who owned “The Strawberry Inn,” and then we began to tackle my vocab worksheet.

Outside of Kenilworth Elementary

First, I should probably back-track and explain that my tutee has been obsessed with the idea of “creating a community.” When I first heard this I was completely blown away. My tutee, this little third grader, is thinking of ways to build a good community! So I asked her how she would go about doing this, excited about what kind of insight she might have about the workings of a community or town. Her reply was something along the lines of: well… we could use milk cartons…and construction paper….and…Of course. She means literally, let’s build a community. I have to say, I should have probably expected this. But nonetheless, I decided to try to work with the idea. 

To me, education...

We're starting a new feature here on the DC Reads blog.  It's an idea born out of our excellent tutor advocacy committee, which is currently doing a yeoman's job helping to advocate for just education throughout Washington, DC.  More on that as the year progresses.

Anyway, in our last meeting we were sitting around talking about things we can include on the blog, and one of our members came up with a very simple concept: one sentence, from everyone on the committee, describing what education means to them.  Brilliant!

So from now on, throughout the year, we'll be posting one of these sentences each week.  Our inaugural sentence comes from Hannah Hill:

"To me, education is the only national tool that ubiquitously provides a forum for reform and development."

Well put.  Stay tuned for more -- and as always, happy reading!

Vincent Gray Ward 8 Town Hall Meeting

By: Hannah Klusendorf

Last week, in a crowded Ward 8 church, fifteen DC Reads coordinators and tutors gathered with nearly a thousand Ward 8-ers to hear future DC mayor, Vince Gray, overview his proposed agenda. A waning sound system and a delayed start aside, the town hall meeting provided me with some illuminating, though vague, information in regards to education. After promising to unite the Wards together to form one DC, Gray turned his attention to creating one DCPS.

Gray claimed that rumblings alleging he would “turn the clock back on education” were “ridiculous.” He spoke of his positive voting record within the Council for education reform measures – a point he brought up many times while on the campaign trail. But that night, he seemed to directly speak out against Rhee and her supporters. Following the primary election results, she did call Gray’s victory “devastating to the children of Washington, DC.” Gray reassured all that there is “only one thing that matters: improving the educational outcome for the children of the District of Columbia.” Duh.