Blake High School has launched one of its latest Dreams for Teens initiatives for positive “change”. This ambitious youth-driven effort is based on Newberry Medal winner Paul Fleischman's novel Seedfolks1 where a junk-strewn city lot is transformed into an urban garden, a process that transforms the gardeners' lives, as well. At Blake High School, in similar fashion, approximately one hundred high-achieving upper classmen (seniors and juniors) have paired with one hundred underclassmen (sophomores and freshmen) to create a new more academic-focused “culture”—a garden of their own making. This “highly focused 8-month special operation” of student-to-student “relationship tutoring” is the first Principal’s Special Forces Team of its kind created using Earth Force2 methodology to encourage “youth voice” in solving a problem impacting the community at large. This youth-driven investigative initiative dates back to January 2008 when a group of students, parents and teachers (now known as Dreams for Teens”) began identifying a need to actively involve all stakeholders in “changing the culture at Blake High School while focusing on student achievement. In an effort to help address this concern and the concern of Administration to raise the school grade, the 2008-09 mission for the Principal’s Special Forces Team is to increase one hundred FCAT scores from a “level 2 “ to a “level 3 or better” resulting in helping the school raise the overall school grade from a “D” to a “B”.
The PSFTeam Partnerships: The majority of PSFTeams were partnered according to their lunches to give each team the opportunity to use their lunch hour to conduct the special operation “relationship tutoring”. Students were also paired according to their FCAT weaknesses and strengths (e.g., underclassmen weak in math were paired with upper classmen citing math as their strength). The partnerships resulted in a cross-pollination of traditional and magnet students coming together as one cohesive achievement-focused team.
PSFTeam Training & Ongoing Advice: PSFTeams have already attended 2 on-site trainings held during their lunch periods. The trainings were conducted by Nadia Combs, Owner, A+CAT, who volunteered to work with the teams. In addition, Johntha Gillyard (math department) and John Fairweather (English department) serve as internal advisors to PSFTeams needing advice or help finding creative ways to teach the FCAT material. Jeannette Bradley, WWCB Inc. and Diana Kyle, Suncoast EarthForce are also available in the Vespa Room every Friday during the lunch periods to provide on-the-spot PSFTeam coaching/training, to serve as sounding boards as they work through challenges or just to provide ongoing encouragement.
The PSFTeam Tutoring Sessions: The Principal’s special forces operations (i.e., the actual tutoring and relationship building), may be carried out on or off school campus. Times and places to meet are largely left to each PSFTeam to decide (youth empowerment). PSFTeams can choose to meet before or after school. Teams can also meet during their lunch periods in pre-approved areas such as the Vespa Room, Success Lab, Library, or designated classrooms and/or the football stadium bleachers, according to Hakeem Smith one student who met with Principal Haynes early on to get the tutor locations approved. The Bluejacket sticker affixed to their Student IDs is the pass they must present to advance to the front of the lunch line each day (through the end of the school year) and to venture outside of the lunch area specifically for tutoring sessions. PSFTeams also have the option to meet outside of school hours at the public library, book store, coffee shop or at one of their homes. All PSFTeams operate under principles of self-motivation, commitment, honesty, respect, and teamwork. We encourage PSFTeams to take full advantage of weekends and the upcoming Christmas holidays to get ahead in their preparations for the FCAT in March. If teams do not yet have the FCAT Study manuel, they can see Jeannette or Diana on Fridays. Until the books come in teams can begin using FCAT releases (on line) or they can use FCAT Explorer, another on-line study option.
PSFTeam Communications: To date, we have had several meetings to launch the program. To avoid pulling students out of class, all future meetings will be scheduled during all three lunch hours. Mass text messaging is used to communicate important messages to all PSFTeam members during the week. Members can expect 2-3 messages from Adriena Smith each week prior to 7:30 a.m. and/or after 2:50 p.m to comply with the school cell phone policy. In addition to text messaging, PSFTeam messages are emailed, are posted to the newly created PSFTeam MySpace page (Nick Woodward and Raven Raines) as well as are posted on the PSFTeam bulletin board (Adriena Smith) located in the window in the Success Lab.
All “service” hours spent tutoring must be signed off by any one of the following adults – one of the team member’s parents, a PSFTeam coach, a PSFTeam coordinator, or Principal Haynes. All service learning hours must be turned in each Friday to earn “Earth Force Bucks” which can be used weekly to redeem special forces paraphernalia (e.g., Earth Force T-shirts, etc.).
PSFTeam Project Documentation. Smile you just might be on Candid Camera. The current special forces operations effort (relationship tutoring) is also considered the “field research” stage of this project. As such, we ask team members to visit the PSFTeam Myspace page often to “blog” their experiences (what’s working, what’s not working). We will always have a camera on hand to take pictures at various gatherings. In addition, PSFTeams may be interviewed by BK Jackson with a video camera asking for candid updates for footage we may use to create the PSFTeam U-Tube mini-documentary to be presented at the Earth Force Summit in April, 2009.
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