STORY NO.

228

Changing Hearts and Minds

by Ann Colburn

Our plan

I have always been dismayed by the discrepancy between the poor educational opportunities of low-income students in the inner-city in contrast to that of affluent students in private education. After I retired from teaching English and being the principal at a local private school high school, I volunteered with a program (One Voice) that helps 25 high-achieving, low-income students each year gain access to small liberal arts colleges and ample scholarship to make attendance at those colleges possible. It is clear that one of the biggest problems for students in inner-city schools is setting goals for after graduation and making a practical plan for reaching those goals. Far too many students do not make it to graduation and the result is a huge pool of under-educated young people, too many of whom end up stuck in poverty in dead-end jobs or in jail. I wanted to help inner-city students dream a positive future and create a viable plan to achieve their goals.

What we did

The director of the AOF at Manual Arts noticed my work with a few of his students who had been chosen for the One Voice Scholars program. He asked if I would be willing to work with his whole class of seniors to provide them with the same kind of information that would enable them to reach goals similar to those the One Voice scholars achieve. He offered me class time in his block schedule to work with the entire class and encouraged me to meet with students one on one to create a plan tailored to each student's dreams, needs and individual situation. Each year for the seven years I have worked with the program, I have expanded my understanding of how to help these students succeed. I now reach out to students beginning in 9th grade to help them to see that college and a better life is in their future and to understand what they need to do at each step along the way to succeed. I bring them information about summer programs, review their transcripts, and offer them writing skills clinics. In the spring of 11th grade, I make sure they understand the need to prep for and take the SAT or ACT tests and begin to work on the concept of a personal essay. Later, into the senior year I will work with each student as s/he crafts a personal statement for college applications. I make sure applications are filed on time and that students complete their FAFSA forms properly. A friend who is a retired high school college counselor and another English teacher joined me last year to help strengthen the program, as did a One Voice college graduate who wanted to help younger students from her old neighborhood gain access to a better life. Several other agencies and individuals lend support and services to the program. The proof of how it's going is in our numbers. In the larger school, fewer than half of entering freshmen graduate. Of those who do graduate only 15% or so go to college. In the AOF program, 99% graduate and 90% go on to college. The remaining students enroll in trade programs. One or two have gone into the military. We have not had to find much funding for our college program, since it is run by volunteers, but in general the AOF students fund-raise constantly for better classroom equipment, textbooks, desks and even a culminating senior trip to Washington DC. The biggest item for which we must find sponsorship is an annual magazine the students publish which contains their personal statements and creative work - art, photography or writing.

Our results

The One Voice Scholar program, through which I work as a volunteer, can only mentor 25 students a year. Since they work in 8-10 public high schools in Los Angeles, they can only take a few AOF students each year. My satellite program provides the rest of the senior AOF class (20 more students) with access to personal college counseling and information about scholarship and support programs that many of them would have a hard time finding on their own. This program also offers them support for designing and reaching their goals. More of our students go to college or have a viable post-secondary life plan than previous AOF students. These students provide role-modeling for other, non-AOF students at the high school and interest in joining the AOF has risen each year. In the past three years, more male students have joined the program, which had been predominately female. The principal can point to this program as a successful use of small learning communities and the AOF provides a model for best practices of these kinds of educational models.

Discuss this story

Add to the discussion

Your email address won't show up with your comment.

*required fields
  • *
  • *
  • *
Security message (please type the word below)
simple_captcha.jpg
Get Adobe Flash player

Close X

Charles Dickens School
Vancouver, BC, Canada