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Bronx Strong: Empowering Immigrant Youth Through Soccer In 2009, when Andrew So assembled an afterschool soccer team at the South Bronx school where he taught, he figured his students needed a way to get off the streets and do a safe, prosocial activity with peers. It was an easy sell. As the children of immigrants or newcomers themselves, his students were as passionate about soccer as So, a Stanford graduate who knew firsthand soccer’s power to fuel dreams and cross cultures. Today, South Bronx United (SBU) engages nearly 900 children and youth between the ages of 4 and 19. Its afterschool Academy, with 150 students, combines competitive travel soccer with academic enrichment, college prep, mentoring, leadership development, immigrant legal services, and other social and emotional supports. The culture of soccer, combined with wanting to make a difference, unites everyone at this remarkable program. |
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For seven years, WKCD has compiled and updated a directory of summer programs for high schools students. We've grouped them into three categories. International summer programs that welcome high school students and combine volunteer work, cultural and language immersion. The emphasis here is on programs that put a premium on service. Pre-collegiate programs on college or university campuses that offer special summer programs for high school students (e.g., in the arts, engineering, journalism)—some of which target females, minorities, and low-income students. Summer camps for teens who are looking for an experience with an "edge"—from developing political leadership skills and tackling social justice issues to exploring our National Parks in an RV. |
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Short Workouts for Social-Emotional Learning | April 2016 What is something you believe that most other people don't? What are you willing to try now? What does this quote mean: "We live in the world our questions create." Like previous installments, the April collection of our Short Workouts for Social-Emotional Learning includes quotes, questions, videos, and images with appropriate prompts. Each workout takes 10-15 minutes, making them a suitable bell ringer, warm up, or advisory activity. There is no formula for using them with students (just as there are no right or wrong answers). Mix them up and sprinkle them into your ongoing work, knowing that your students will embrace the chance to flex their social-emotional muscles. April 2016 | March 2016 | February 2016 | January 2016 | December 2015 |
SHOUT OUTS | ARCHIVES
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Where Will Young Voters Impact the 2016 Election? Parties and other political groups often overlook the votes and energy of young people even where youth can have a decisive influence on the outcome of the race. CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement among young Americans) is providing data-driven insights about the states and congressional districts where youth are poised to have a disproportionately high electoral impact in 2016. |
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'Unprecedented' Youth Climate Case Against Government Moves Forward A federal judge in Oregon recently ruled that a lawsuit brought against the U.S. government by a group of youth, ages 8-19, can go to trial—a case climate activists call "the most important lawsuit on the planet right now." The young plaintiffs state that the federal government is violating their right to life, liberty, property, and public resources by enabling continued fossil fuel extraction and use. |
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Too often, when we talk about issues facing girls, the conversation fails to recognize the unique challenges many girls encounter as they deal with systems rooted in racism, sexism, and structural poverty. This report elevates the voices of girls and young women of color, their priorities, and the solutions they suggest to the barriers they face. |
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Student Voices on Identity & Belonging “One of my goals for students this year is to provide writing experiences that encourage young people to identify as writers and thinkers,” writes Philadelphia teacher Joshua Block. Block keeps a blog of his students’ work (and his work with them). Here he shares some of their remarkable essays about identity and belonging. |
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The Mary Jane Mindset: Rookies Report on Marijuana In this podcast from WNYC’s Radio Rookies, youth reporters Temitayo and Gemma speak with nearly three dozen high school students who smoke weed to learn more about what they call "the Mary Jane mindset." They caution parents: “If you see a joint in your kids’ room, slow down. That doesn’t tell you anything right there. It’s the other choices they are making around weed that will tell you what to worry about.” |
RECENT/POPULAR FEATURES
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'Cognitive' vs. 'Noncognitive': Research and Commentary Does it still make sense to use the term “noncognitive” to distinguish emotions, beliefs, and character from content knowledge, the “cognitive"? A mounting body of research points to the mutuality of academic, social, and emotional learning. Here we summarize what the latest research says about the benefits of social-emotional learning—including what’s meant by SEL. We also share some recent commentary about erasing the line between cognitive and noncognitive factors in student achievement. For researchers and educators who value social and emotional learning, the noncognitive label has always been a misnomer. |
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Creating Accountability through Community at East Side Community School School had only been in session for eleven days when Mark Federman, the principal of East Side Community School, got the call from New York City's Department of Education: Get everyone out of your building, and get them out fast. An alert custodian had noticed that the brick facade of the 90-year-old five-story school building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side was threatening collapse. Without a moment to prepare, Mr. Federman and his staff had to evacuate their 650 students in grades 6 through 12, sending them to makeshift shared quarters in widely separated neighborhoods. One year later, that difficult five-month exile had become the stuff of legend in this close-knit school community. "You can take us out of East Side, but you can't take East Side out of us," students proclaimed. |
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Developing Student Agency at Springfield Renaissance School It was one of those days at Springfield Renaissance School when everyone was either crying or laughing. People were pouring through the halls, streaming into the big auditorium Renaissance shares with another district school housed in this sprawling 1990s brick building in Springfield, Massachusetts. It was May 16, the annual Senior Decision Day, and every single twelfth-grade student was about to stand up before this assemblyto announce a postgraduate plan: to each other, to their fellow students in grades 6 through 12, and to the teachers and families whose beaming faces lit the darkened hall. At this grades 6-12 Expeditionary Learning school, based on there's a saying: "We are crew, not passengers." Renaissance takes personal challenge seriously in both academic and developmental contexts. |
Service Learning and Giving Back at Quest Early College High School It’s a Friday morning in early October and instead of lugging backpacks to class, students at Quest Early College High School in Humble (pronounced “umble”), Texas are traveling light. As they do every Friday throughout the school year, the students jump into buses that will take them to the “service sites” where they will spend the next four hours.The school’s 300 plus students fan out across their suburban community, 25 miles north of downtown Houston—to elementary schools, a center for disabled young adults, an animal shelter, a hospital clinic, a nursing home, and more. For almost two decades, this small progressive high school has made service learning core, and its students say they can't imagine attending a regular high school where the chance to give back wasn't prized. |
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Harlem Lacrosse: Lessons About Learning, On and Off the Field Jessica, a sixth grader at Harlem's Sojourner Truth School, was in tears. Her English teacher had just rejected the essay she'd turned in because she hadn't followed the assignment. Seeking consolation, Jessica turned to an unlikely source: her lacrosse coach, Alyssa Palomba. "Of course she got mad at you," said Palomba, as she huddled with Jessica in a room stacked with lacrosse gear on the school's third floor. "She told you to do A and you did B. That's like when I ask you to play attack and you play goalie instead." For five years, the school-based Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership (HLL) has supported and challenged struggling middle school students, on and off the field, and helped them win high school and college scholarships as student athletes. |
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Forty-Cent Tip: Stories of New York City's Immigrant Workers Ten years ago, WKCD/Next Generation Press published a remarkable book by students at three NYC international high schools. Like their subjects, the youth were all newcomers to America. Coached by their teachers and equipped with voice recorders and digital cameras, they documented—-over the span of one year—the lives of immigrant workers in their own neighborhoods. An Afghani taxi driver, a Chinese manicurist, a laundromat worker from Indonesia, a hospital clerk from Cameroon—-these were among the immigrant workers who told their stories of struggle to Forty-Cent Tip's teenaged authors. Looking back neither we, nor our young contributors and teachers, ever imagined that our national discourse around immigrants would become as bitter, divisive, and hate filled as it is today. The stories gathered here seem more important than ever. Flip through book online | Buy a copy (write us at info@wkcd.org) | Learn more about WKCD's Great American Dreaming project |
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Ten years ago, the photo essay book WKCD's Barbara Cervone created with youth in the Tanzanian village of Kambi ya Simba made its debut, sparking an international movement of youth telling their own 'village's' stories. Profits from the sale of In Our Village: Kambi ya Simba Through the Eyes of Its Youth have sent more than two dozen village youth to advanced secondary schools. U.S teachers and students have visited the village and donated money for various projectss. Last May, Cervone traveled to Tanzania to catch up with the book's young authors. All are college graduates now. Still, their struggle to make their way in one of the world's poorest countries is at times heartbreaking. In this powerful story (with video interviews), Cervone shares their journey.
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