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January 2008
Letter from the Editor
The new year is here again – a time for reflection. Like many of you, I went to a New Year’s Eve party. It was a low key event at our neighbor’s home. Since many of the guests were in the single digit age bracket, our hosts posted a list of major cities in each time zone so that no matter the bedtime, everyone could ring in the new year with champagne – well, make that sparkling cider. So, at 7:00 p.m. Mountain Time we counted down and cheered, and at 8:00 p.m. MT we counted down and cheered, and at 8:30 p.m. MT we counted down and cheered, and at… wait, 8:30 p.m.?? Yes! At 8:30 p.m. we rang in the new year for folks on the island of Newfoundland where the mean solar time is 3 ½ hours behind the Coordinated Universal Time. (Did you know that there are many places in the world that use “offset time zones” that don’t stick to the hour, including India, Iran, Nepal and parts of Australia? I didn’t, so here’s a toast to lifelong learning!) The residents of Newfoundland chose to follow the average time for their island rather than divide themselves into two time zones. It was a creative option, a compromise, designed to preserve unity within their community. As I write to you now, I am reminded of the many ways in which successful communities make compromises, both implicitly and explicitly, in order to function smoothly. Classrooms, schools, districts, neighborhoods – what compromises are your communities making to support the emotional and academic growth of your young people? Unless you have taken an inventory recently, perhaps more than you give them credit for!
Our kind hosts, in their forgiving spirit, asked for no new year’s resolutions. But they did offer an opportunity reflect. On small pieces of paper we wrote down all the things we were ready to leave behind from 2007, and we dropped our contributions into the kitchen blender to shred them for good! And then we wrote down all the things we were hoping for or looking forward to in the new year, and put them in the teapot to steep and come to full flavor. What about you? What old ways or memories would you like to put in your blender and leave behind as you move on ahead? Here’s a suggestion. How about blaming… blaming students for rebellion as we try to teach them critical thinking skills; blaming teachers for inadequate attention to each of their 150 students; blaming parents for not teaching their children to behave better in our classrooms. Here’s another. How about our competitive nature, or perhaps it’s really just our timidity, that challenge our joint ability to agree on that middle time zone so necessary to making each of our community members feel needed and respected.
So here’s a challenge… At your next staff meeting, hold a bring-a-blender-to-work day and see what you can shred for everyone’s good! And, of course, don’t forget the teapot.
Jodi Heilbrunn, NCSE-News Editor
Do you have feedback regarding our feature article or strategy of the month? Would you like to submit a feature article on a topic of your choice? Send your commentary or ideas to info@schoolengagement.com for possible publication in our next issue. Please make the subject of your message “Newsletter commentary.” I would love to hear from you!
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The ABC’s of Youth Mentoring
By
Jodi Heilbrunn, NCSE-News Editor
When I think back to my childhood about all the people who helped me grow up and learn to make good choices, who comes to mind? Certainly my parents, again and again. And teachers – especially my 7th grade teacher, Mr. Debok. (Yup, I’m dating myself – that was way back in the days when kids had only one homeroom teacher in middle school. And yes, I still remember his name.) There were other people, too. My friends’ parents, adults I knew from church… Oh, and the ballet teacher with whom Mom forced me to study was a perfect model of patience, always forgiving of my incurable lack of grace and my Tom Sawyer-like resentment over the entire process of my civilization. Did I have a mentor? Sure! I had many mentors.
Every kid needs a mentor – as many positive influences as possible. Research shows that a good mentoring relationship sustained over a period of time can have measurable benefits in terms of a child’s school attendance and achievement. Being no expert on mentoring myself, I set out to do some research and discovered a wealth of mentoring resources online. Here is a sampling of what’s out there. Start with these sites, but don’t end with them or you’ll miss a lot!
If you want to start a new mentoring program, or beef up an old one, you’ll appreciate the research results posted on the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's National Mentoring Center. They have an extensive publication list, sorted by topic including a section on school-based mentoring. In addition, they provide training and technical assistance for youth mentoring programs, run the Mentoring Resource Center, and sponsor a mentoring listserv. Another good how-to source is simply called Mentor. They post detailed, step-by-step best practices for launching a successful program, guidance on how to be a good mentor, and a search function for locating local mentoring programs and resources in your area. They have a list of electronic newsletters and alerts for which you may sign up.
If you want to start a program, you’ll need funding. Two good sources are the Safe and Drug Free Schools Mentoring Program within the US Department of Education and Mentoring Children of Prisoners, run out of the Health and Human Services Administration. According to their websites, Safe and Drug Free Schools makes grants to “support school-based mentoring programs and activities to serve children with the greatest need in one or more of grades 4 through 8 living in rural areas, high-crime areas, or troubled-home environments, or who attend schools with violence problems.” Mentoring Children of Prisoners “makes competitive grants to applicants serving urban, suburban, rural, or tribal populations with substantial numbers of children of incarcerated parents and to support the establishment and operation of mentoring programs.”
Probably the best known mentoring organization in the country is Big Brothers Big Sisters. They run programs across the country that match children ages 6 through 18 with mentors in professionally supported one-to-one relationships. BBBS also organizes School-Based Mentoring Programs. See the SBMP evaluation report by Carla Herrera, linked in the research section below.
A number of mentoring organizations have additional foci. For example, The Mentor Foundation is “an international non-government not for profit organization with a focus on the prevention of drug misuse and the promotion of health and well-being of young people. Mentor seeks to identify, support and share information on effective practice that will protect young people from the harm that drugs can cause.” MentorYouth.com is a faith-based referral service for Christian adults seeking to be youth mentors. And some organizations focus on a geographic area. One example is the Youth Mentoring Connection in California. Their primary focus is “to generate innovative new mentoring programs that are site-based and have a group dynamic.”
Good luck as you make mentoring a part of your students’ lives!
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Strategy Spotlight
Online Mentoring Program for
Kentucky Middle Schoolers
One of the challenges faced by educators is helping young students understand the relevance of what they learn in the classroom to their future lives. The task is especially difficult when students have not been taught to think of college as a likely option. A GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs) mentoring project in Kentucky is designed to help at-risk middle school students seriously consider the possibility of college attendance in order to keep them engaged throughout middle and high school.
An electronic mentoring project matches 20 trained Eastern Kentucky University students with about 150 at-risk students at five Kentucky middle schools. Once a week throughout the school year, the kids log in to a BlackBoard virtual classroom to interact with the 20 EKU student mentors. The mentors are trained to discuss each of the themes dealt with during the "class" - themes which include college preparation, college applications, paying for college, and the importance of setting educational and career goals. The hope is that the young mentors will be able to relate to the kids in a way that adult teachers generally cannot. Although the program is run by the EKU College of Education, the mentors have a variety of academic majors; they undergo a thorough background check and confidentiality training.
GEAR UP Kentucky is administered by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and supported from a $21 million grant from the federal Department Of Education. Dr. Carol Gabbard is the EKU Program Director. Click here for an article in the EKU News.
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Teachers, go to www.DonorsChoose.org to make requests for classroom supplies!
Find and apply online for competitive grant opportunities from all Federal grant-making agencies.
RGK Foundation - The Foundation's programmatic areas of interest include Health, Education, Human Services, and Community Affairs. The Foundation's primary interests within education include formal K-12 education, literacy, and higher education.
The Dollar General offers annual or bi-annual grants in five literacy areas:
· Adult Literacy Grants
· Back-To-School Grants
· Beyond Words: The Dollar General School Library Relief Program
· Family Literacy Grants
· Youth Literacy Initiatives (February 5 application submission deadline)
Here’s a wonderful webpage that lists endless grant opportunities for K-12 schools, and has a page on grant writing tips! They also offer a subscription to Schoolgrants Biweekly Newsletter for $45 a year.
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The Education Alliance. Fall 2007. Positive Youth Development: Policy Implications and Best Practices. This 16-page article summarizes current knowledge concerning the field of youth development and includes a chart of best practice recommendations and a summary of the research on challenges faced by youth. The report can be found on The Education Alliance website.
Fernandes, Adrienne L. January 4, 2008. Vulnerable Youth: Federal Mentoring Programs and Issues. Congressional Research Service Report for Congress. This report begins with an overview of the purpose of mentoring, including a brief discussion on research of structured mentoring programs. The report then describes the evolution of federal policies on mentoring since the early 1990s. The report provides an overview of the components and funding for each of the three major federal mentoring programs, as well as a discussion of other federal mentoring initiatives that are currently funded.
Herrera, Carla, et al. August 2007. Making A Difference: The Big Brothers Big Sisters School-Based Mentoring Impact Study. Public/Private Ventures. This study answered the following research questions regarding ten participating programs. What are the characteristics of the participating BBBS SBM programs? Who are the youth and volunteers involved in these programs? What benefits does BBBS SBM provide to youth socially, behaviorally, attitudinally and academically? What kinds of mentoring experiences help to ensure benefits? How much do these programs cost? Look before you print this 142-page report!
Kennelly, Louise, and Monrad, Maggie. October 2007. Approaches to Dropout Prevention: Heeding Early Warning Signs with Appropriate Interventions. National High School Center, American Institutes for Research. This is an easily readable summary of the research on the characteristics of children who eventually drop out of high school. It includes a review of several effective dropout prevention programs and a list of effective program components.
Research in Action Series, funded by the MetLife Foundation includes 10 issues focusing on different aspects of youth mentoring. Each issue is based on a research article written by a leading scholar who summarizes the latest research and offers insight into the implications of that research on mentoring practice. Those implications are then expanded into tools, activities, resources, or training exercises in the action section, providing practitioners with a concrete application of the research findings in their everyday operations. Each issue is linked from this page: Click here!
The Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement maintains a School Reform and Improvement Database. Search on “School Engagement” in the keyword field, limit your search to 2000 through 2007, and you will find 65 articles, many of which are available online.
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Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder
Blueprints Conference 2008
Denver, Colorado
March 17-19, 2008
International Mentoring Association’s 21st Annual Conference
April 23-25, 2008
Las Vegas, Nevada
National Forum for the Coalition for Community Schools
April 30 - May 2, 2008
Portland, Oregon
The International Center for Leadership in Education
16th Annual Model Schools Conference
Orlando, Florida
June 22 – 25, 2008
Showcases, among other topics, student engagement strategies used by high performing schools
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NCSE is an initiative of the
Colorado Foundation for
Families and Children
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