Thursday, May 6, 2010

“Students team up with tutoring” plus 2 more

“Students team up with tutoring” plus 2 more

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Students team up with tutoring

Posted: 06 May 2010 02:02 AM PDT

Laurel High School senior Jorge Carranza, 18, knows what it's like to begin school without knowing how to speak any English.

"The hardest thing is just making friends," he said. "You don't know anyone and you're just afraid."

Carranza is one of 12 Laurel High School students who hope to make the language transition smoother for a group of students at Deerfield Run Elementary in Laurel. The teens all belong to the Spanish Club at the high school and have decided to tutor students one afternoon each week as a way to give back to their community.

Andrea Vincent, the head ESOL teacher at Deerfield Run, selected about 15 students she thought would benefit from extra one-on-one attention to participate in the program.

Senior Eduardo Reyes, 17, collaborated with his Spanish teacher Henrique Vissotto to come up with the idea for the tutoring program. The group formed last month and meets for about an hour every Thursday at Deerfield Run, where many of the older students — including Eduardo — attended elementary school.

Although several of the tutors will graduate next month, Vissotto said the Spanish Club plans to continue the partnership with Deerfield Run during the next school year. The tutoring program, he said, benefits the high school students as much as the younger children.

"I think [it] gives them their own sense of wanting to do well [in school] ... because certainly they are role models to the little kids," Vissotto said.

Aside from going over academic skills, Eduardo said the tutors speak to their younger counterparts about the importance of education and having a good attitude in the classroom.

"I think if they learn to respect their teachers in elementary school, they will continue to respect them throughout the years," he said.

Most of the younger students speak a language other than English, such as Spanish, at home and participate in Deerfield Run's English Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, program during the school day. But almost all the conversation between the tutors and the younger students is in English.

During the April 29 session, each high school student paired with one or two elementary students to assist with math and reading homework. Vincent said the background of the older students makes them better able to relate to the younger students in some cases.

"I don't think [their background is] necessary, but it gives them insight into what they might be struggling with or need extra help with," she said.

Vincent said it is too soon to tell whether the extra tutoring has had an impact on students' classroom performance, but she said the children — especially the youngest ones — are all excited about the program.

"Every day, they say to their teacher, 'Is today the day? Is today the day?'" she said.

One of Eduardo's students, sixth-grader Kevin Valdez, 11, said he regularly gives him positive messages like "never give up."

"He really cares about our education. He wants us to show him our report cards," Kevin said.

The teens plan to continue volunteering through the end of the school year, and Deerfield Run is hoping to re-launch the partnership in the fall.

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

School offers new take on tutoring

Posted: 05 May 2010 10:32 PM PDT

ROCKLEDGE — Once a week at 7 p.m., Carolyn Phillips, a Kennedy Middle eighth-grader, logs on to her home computer, and her Spanish teacher's face pops up on the screen.

"How many of you remember what tener means?" Leonardo Nicaragua asks Carolyn and about a dozen of her classmates who participate in an after-school online tutoring session.

Some students use microphones attached to their computers to answer their teacher. Carolyn types the correct response "to have," which pops up on the screen for everyone in the session to see.

"This is much more fun than being at school, because I'm home, and I can take breaks or get a snack," the 14-year-old said while her 2-year-old sister played behind her and her mom peeked in from time to time.

Four days a week, Kennedy Middle offers two different online tutoring sessions each evening. Students, at no cost to them, can take part in the hourlong sessions with teachers from their school for extra help in such subjects as math, science, language arts and Spanish.

Officials with Brevard Public Schools were so impressed with the program, they want to expand it countywide.

"This is one of the most exciting things I think I've seen since I've been on the board," said school board member Barbara Murray, who was elected in 2006.

Since its launch in February, the program has taken off at Kennedy Middle.

Previously, about 10 percent of the school's more than 700 students attended traditional tutoring sessions held after school on campus. About 37 percent of the school's students have taken part in the online tutoring. "It brings out the students who are afraid to ask questions in the classroom," said Kennedy teacher Amanda Van Ess, who came up with the idea and organized it at her school. "The kids are really loving the interaction not only with their teacher, but also with their peers. It allows them to learn in a way they are comfortable, using the computer."

Money is the main holdup to expanding the program districtwide. With budget cuts around the corner and no extra money to spare, the program may be on hold.

Five Filters featured article: The Art of Looking Prime Ministerial - The 2010 UK General Election. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Mother's Day brings college degree for some single moms

Posted: 06 May 2010 09:57 AM PDT

That's when Osborne would look at her four kids and remind herself, yet again, that giving up on college would be a little like giving up on them.

"I knew in my heart why I couldn't just quit," says Osborne, who on Sunday will celebrate Mother's Day with a brand-new bachelor's degree. Her kids — Ashley, 26, Tyler, 25, Casey, 16, and Madison, 4 — plan to be her cheering section Saturday when she graduates from Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.

Osborne, 48, says she might never have made it without Champlain's Single Parents Program, founded in 1988 on the premise that higher education is the surest ticket out of poverty.

Rising out of poverty

It seems to have made a difference. More than 500 students have earned a degree through the program. A study for the state found that, of 4,007 households that left Vermont welfare rolls in 2003, those who then pursued a college education earned more on average and were less likely to have returned to welfare a year later than those who didn't go on to school.

No one tracks that kind of progress on a national level. But federal data suggest more single parents are entering college. In 2008, they represented 13.4% of the nation's 18 million college students. Most were women (74%). About one-third attended for-profit institutions. They were more than twice as likely as other students (54% vs. 23%) to be eligible for Pell Grants for needy students, says the non-profit Institute for Women's Policy Research. And, as Osborne's experience suggests, low-income parents face challenges far different from their childless peers:

•About 1,700 colleges have day care centers for students, parents and faculty, and many also provide academic and financial support. Yet child care sometimes costs more than tuition, and federal funding for campus centers for low-income families has dropped from $25 million in 2002 to about $16 million last year.

• Family Care Solutions, a non-profit in Philadelphia, has awarded nearly $2 million in child care grants to low-income students since 1998 but has made no new awards recently. "The lack of funding has seriously threatened our programs," says president Sherrill Mosee. Demand is high: About 435,000 parents (most of them mothers) applied for scholarships offered since 2008 by eLearners.com, which links students to online programs. It has given 150 awards so far and wants to give 280 this year.

•Federal welfare laws since 1996 have emphasized jobs more than education, says Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield, a policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a non-profit advocacy group. A few states, including Maine and Kentucky, have created incentives for college-going welfare recipients. But, she says, many states are cutting services, such as tutoring and transportation, that are often critical to single parents.

Help for parents is eroding

Champlain's program, funded by state, federal and campus dollars, is no exception. Vermont recently halved its contribution; director Carol Moran-Brown says services will continue, with some changes.

Professionals in the field would like to see programs on more campuses but aren't optimistic. "I have not seen a growing interest in supporting student parents," says Karen Alsbrooks of Ohio State University, which has a program and has hosted conferences on the topic in recent years. She also is co-founder, in 2005, of Higher Education Alliance of Advocates for Students with Children.

About 25 colleges, including Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Berea College in Kentucky, are members. Each program has unique features. Some offer housing, for example, or child care. All aim to help single-parents juggle multiple responsibilities.

When her daughter's illness kept Osborne at home, for example, case manager Felicia Messuri arranged extensions on her homework. When Osborne's washer was damaged, Messuri tapped an emergency fund to replace it. Many times, Osborne says, Messuri was her "go-to person." And Single Parents Program "is the glue that holds everything together."
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