Nine-hour school day is the norm – and a national model – at Oakland middle school
Andres McDade, an 8th grader at Elmhurst Community Prep in Oakland, plays a drum in the schoolhouse's expanded learning programme. Credit: Citizen Schools.
On a recent Th afternoon in Ashur Bratt'south class in Oakland, almost 20 centre school students stood tall on chairs and tables and flung their arms out from their sides, looking very pleased with themselves.
"How do y'all feel?" Bratt asked as students raised their arms, competing to be called on. "Ecstatic!" one male child answered. Information technology turns out, Bratt told his form, if y'all aggrandize your body for a couple of minutes, information technology helps you experience meliorate and remember bigger.
Thinking bigger is office of the culture at Elmhurst Community Prep, a middle school in East Oakland that has expanded the school day to five p.one thousand. with a diversity of afterwards-schoolhouse offerings, such equally Bratt'due south course on building self-confidence. Students can choose robotics, music or trip the light fantastic toe. They tin can make collages, dissect fetal pigs or create apps. They visit well-known companies such as Google and Pandora.
"We're not simply cookies and basketballs," said Principal Kilian Betlach, who keeps tabs on his students every bit he roams the halls with a baseball bat ("It's a prop") and a sense of sense of humor. "We accept a real moral imperative to provide kids from depression-income backgrounds with the services and opportunities that middle-class kids go. We don't do only hard academics. We offering access and opportunities."
The school of 375 students – in the center of a tough Oakland neighborhood where the shooting of a 13-yr-old boy on New Year's Day was the metropolis's commencement homicide – has been promoted every bit a national model for how to create and finance an after-schoolhouse programme that supports both enrichment activities and bookish success.
Unique success
Every student at Elmhurst, in the Oakland Unified school district, attends the expanded learning programme, making information technology function of their normal schoolhouse mean solar day. Classes begin at eight a.g. and end at v p.m., at least two hours after most other Oakland students are done for the day.
Rodzhaney Sledge, dressed in the light-blue school uniform, is new to the school as a 6th grader, only she already understands how the after-schoolhouse part of the program supports her academic work. For example, she took a course called Tools for Peace, where she learned to meditate. Meditation, she said, has helped calm her so she can focus on academics. She too appreciates the assistance with her homework she receives for at least an hour each twenty-four hours.
"I don't understand the students who have problems staying after school until v p.one thousand.," she said. "You can do your homework and don't take to practice it when you get home. You're gratis."
Betlach and community partners – primarily Citizen Schools, a national nonprofit that focuses on providing quality expanded learning programs for centre school students in low-income communities – have cobbled together federal, state, local and individual funding to support the unique program. The schoolhouse was i of five featured in a national report by the National Center on Time & Learning about financing infrequent expanded learning programs.
Building on partnerships
What makes the expanded school twenty-four hours economically possible is the school's reliance on AmeriCorps teaching fellows like Bratt. The fellows are funded past the federal government and receive special training from Citizen Schools staff on how to teach in an urban environs. They are involved in both the bookish morning program and the after-school classes from 2 to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, helping to provide a seamless transition for students. The schedule also allows the regular bookish teachers an hr each afternoon, from two to 3 p.m., to work collaboratively and programme.
In exchange, the AmeriCorps fellows will have earned their intern teaching credential at the end of their two years at Elmhurst.
Edgard Vidrio, a sixth grade history teacher who joined the Elmhurst staff this year, said he appreciates the variety of opportunities the program is offering his students.
"I have kids in my classroom who have never been on the beach," he said. "Many are suffering farthermost hardships."
Vidrio says the young, dynamic AmeriCorps teachers develop deep relationships with their students. If a educatee in his class is upset, he or she will often inquire to talk to ane of the teaching fellows, Vidrio said.
The fellows as well come into the classroom to work with individual students who are behind and teach intensive intervention sessions – called Rise Up! – in the morning that last nearly half an hour and group students based on their abilities in the discipline area.
AmeriCorps teaching fellow Jeannette Aames, who is finishing her 2nd year and hopes to teach loftier school math in Oakland Unified in the fall, said teaching a math intervention class was her nearly rewarding experience at Elmhurst. The class of 3 girls and nine "rowdy boys" could not grasp the concept of negative numbers.
"Direct instruction didn't piece of work with them," Aames said, requiring her to develop more than hands-on approaches to teach the concept.
Aames also has learned how hard information technology is to teach children facing poverty and violence in their customs.
The first homicide of the year was a student from Alliance University, a middle school that shares a building with Elmhurst.
"We knew him," she said. "It feels similar he was one of our students."
Terminal December, the 2-year-erstwhile younger brother of one pupil – and cousin of some other – was shot.
"Information technology makes it difficult to figure out what motivates each kid," Aames said. "Many of them accept a lot bigger things than learning math to have care of, like their parents or their siblings. But I believe there is a style to help every kid feel successful and exist successful."
A fighting chance
Just about a third of the 6th graders come to Elmhurst at grade level, Betlach said. The school has had the greatest success at raising the academic accomplishment of the lowest tertiary, who enter sixth course three or more grade levels behind. Most of those lowest-achieving students volition improve and graduate from Elmhurst at a sixth or 7th grade level, giving them a fighting take a chance to succeed in high schoolhouse, Betlach said.
The students too go opportunities through Denizen Schools to participate in apprenticeships with "denizen teachers," whatever developed from the broader Bay Area community who has a passion, such as robotics or radio reporting, to share with the students. The citizen teachers receive basic training on how to teach from Citizen Schools staff earlier they begin the after-school class.
The citizen teacher is partnered with an AmeriCorps fellow who assists the instructor with handling classroom management. At the end of the apprenticeship, the students make a presentation (called a "WOW") to their parents and business and community leaders, showcasing what they have learned.
In addition, local companies invite students to their offices for apprenticeship experiences.
Claudia Borquez, left, and Alexis Trejo participate in a robotics "apprenticeship" at Elmhurst Community Prep in Oakland. Credit: Citizen Schools.
At Pandora, students learned how to make an app. "It was a video game where you contrivance fireballs," Betlach recalled.
The school also works with nonprofits such every bit Waterside Workshops in Berkeley, where the students built a boat.
Students are encouraged to effort a number of apprenticeships with the citizen teachers. Merely in 8th class they are expected to focus on one later-school activity, sort of like picking a major in higher.
Andres McDade, who tried robotics, skateboarding and pic, chose to major in music this year every bit an 8th grader. He plays the saxophone and percussion drum.
"I like the joy of playing music," he said, adding that the AmeriCorps teachers have showed him how music can help him get a scholarship to college.
McDade hopes to nourish UC Berkeley. "I hear it'due south a good schoolhouse academically," he said.
Susan Frey covers expanded learning. Contact her. Sign upward here for a no-cost online subscription to EdSource Today for reports from the largest education reporting team in California.
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Source: https://edsource.org/2014/oakland-middle-schools-9-hour-school-day-is-model-program/57269
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