I just finished reading William Bridges‘s Creating You & Co. for my own personal purposes, but it ended up being useful for my Finding Your Calling workshop because the author’s description of how to work effectively in an increasingly “dejobbed” world resonates surprisingly well with the premise of my Coming Read more…
I’ve been doing some research on the teenage brain lately. Frontline’s program on the teen brain is a particularly informative and entertaining look at why teenagers behave in ways that are maddening to the adults around them and confounding even to themselves. So what’s the scientific explanation for the mood Read more…
One of the most exciting aspects of working in the field of youth development is running across some really innovative ideas on how to help at-risk youth start their adult lives on solid footing. More than Words bookstore—employing, advising, and training teenagers in foster care—is one such venture. It began Read more…
My previous post gave an overview of two community centers that cater to at-risk youth, the Next Generation Center and the Academy. I really should have also mentioned The Door, which has welcomed New York City’s youth (ages of 12 to 21) to take advantage of its comprehensive services since Read more…
There are two community centers in New York City specifically designed to help at-risk youth (ages 14 to 24) make the transition to adulthood. One is the Next Generation Center (NGC), founded in 2005 by Lynne Echenberg with the Children’s Aid Society, and the other is The Academy, which opened Read more…
One way of letting my students know that I had high expectations of them was by requiring them to send in two discussion questions based on their reading assignments the day before class. I was a bit hesitant to implement this policy because it forces students to get their reading done almost a day earlier (so that I could review their questions and plan my class around their discussion questions), and of course it adds to their workload. But as both an undergrad and a grad student I found this exercise very worthwhile because it forced me to be an active reader. It required that I not only take notes, but formulate thoughtful questions based on whatever I was reading. (more…)
One of the most important messages conveyed in Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff’s Beyond the Foster Care System is that we can and should alter our expectations (and the policies that reflect those preconceptions) of the intellectual abilities of youth in foster care. This conviction is consonant with my belief Read more…
Toward the end of my last post I scrambled on top of a soap box on the topic of college readiness and education, but I want to return to Darla Cooper’s report to address the three elements she identifies as boosting the educational success rates of students emerging from foster care. They are:
1) “basic skills” coursework (remedial classes in the three Rs);
2) “student success” courses (classes that build student skills in things like test-taking, note-taking, and time management), and
3) “career pathway” programs that allow students to advance in a specific occupation or industry via a series of connected courses and training opportunities. (6-7)
I am particularly interested in instruction in basic skills and student success. As i mention in my post on teaching students how to write, I think that many of these skills are the sort of things that should not be taught in isolation, but rather in context. (more…)
Darla M. Cooper’s report on how California’s community colleges serve former foster youth repeats a lot of the findings and recommendations that I’ve reviewed in some of my previous posts. But one of the points it brings up that is worth elaborating is the unique role that community colleges play in educating foster youth, for whom four year colleges are often out of reach for a whole host of reasons. Comparatively, community colleges are more easily accessible—especially in terms of affordability—and their focus on technical training and career placement is attractive to students seeking to establish financial stability sooner rather than later.
In the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the the type of advice we should be dispensing to young people regarding their post high school plans. (more…)
As a high school student I remember learning to recognize figurative language in poetry by memorizing a long list of figures of speech—an exercise I repeated years later in graduate school but with all the terms in Spanish. It’s a tedious process that pays off when you finally have all the definitions memorized, not only because it can heighten your experience of literature, but also because you will inevitably realize the great extent to which figurative language permeates our everyday speech. Getting there, however, is not much fun.
I want to take a different approach to teaching figurative language by making students more active in the learning process. The strategy is simple: instead of working off a handout or textbook that lists figures of speech with accompanying definitions and examples, my handout will omit the definitions entirely. Students will be asked to craft their own definitions for various figures of speech by examining the examples given (with the pertinent words/phrases highlighted), hazarding a tentative definition, and then sharing and refining their guesses in class discussion.
Here is what I’ve selected for the term simile: (more…)