Jamie Plaisance
CI 5410
5/3/10
Swiss
Since the fall of 2006, I have worked as an Educational Instructor for the Quantum Opportunities Program (QOP). This is an after-school program run by Summit Academy OIC in Minneapolis. Our program is housed at Minneapolis North High School. Throughout my three years working with QOP, I have utilized my background as an English teacher. Specifically, I assign freewriting (or “journaling”) every day to start an instructional session. And almost invariably, I have found that routine writing by a student, even unstructured writing, pays off in real, measurable ways. Because of this success, I plan on utilizing this technique in my new position at Summit Academy as an English instructor. And I believe this practice can be successfully expanded to written storytelling.
North High School, by one recent measurement, is approximately 90 percent African-American. It is the epicenter of a predominantly African-American community. Summit Academy’s goal, first and foremost, is to educate and train students from this community so they can be contributing members of society. At North High, the specific goals of Summit Academy’s QOP program are to help students improve their grades, prepare for standardized tests, get exposed to various career paths, meet and network with community leaders and professionals, explore college opportunities, learn to be social in a positive way, and perform community service. In all, we want to help create young people who are better students and citizens.
Specifically, QOP recruits and serves students in grades 9 through 12 who have a grade-point average below 2.0, are failing more than one class, have failed a standardized test, or any combination of the aforementioned. The challenge is to improve the student’s performance in class, on tests, and even outside the classroom. For the large majority of our students, the first obstacle is convincing him or her that these are achievable goals; a lack of academic confidence is often the most glaring barrier.
Of course, in order to get struggling students to want to join the program in the first place, we have to provide a draw beyond the promise of improved academics. And since many of North’s teens come from poverty (close to 85 percent of the school’s students are on “free or reduced-price lunch”) we offer a wide array of snacks as one incentive. For the days that the students are present, they are allowed to choose snacks if they stay focused on their work. In this respect, the students are given an immediate and tangible reward for showing up and doing classwork.
We also have an elementary-style “star chart”, where students can earn stars for things such as getting an A or B on a classroom test, completing two assignments in our room, completing a practice standardized test, and writing a one-page journal entry. I will go into these journal assignments in more detail later.
The accumulation of stars can then be exchanged for prizes. These range from “five star” prizes like pens, notebooks, folders and candy, to “ten star” prizes such as flash drives, graphing calculators, gift cards, movie passes and backpacks, to “fifteen star” prizes like bus passes. We have even given cash to dramatic academic improvements. One such example is Donveyea Watson, a shy student who entered North struggling to maintain a 2.0 grade-point average. She was awarded $100 cash last year after earning straight A’s. She has a perfect 4.0 GPA this year as a sophomore, and has gained enough confidence to join two new sports at North.
Certainly, between the snacks and prizes, we achieve on a small level the goal of providing students with basic needs. Clearly, any student will perform better with a full stomach and a new set of pencils. But in the process, we also show the students that we care about their progress enough to monitor it and reward it.
Of course, the use of snacks in the classroom has another benefit. A granola bar and juice box can become a carrot, so to speak, in the sense that the prospect of losing these snacks can deter a student from misbehaving, bothering another student, or otherwise losing focus. After all, many of our students are in their academic predicament because they simply do not know how to be a successful student.
This leads to the idea of structure in our classroom. The students know exactly when to expect the snacks, because of our consistent schedule each and every day. And our to-the-minute schedule is designed to get the most out of our students. Since it is an after-school program, we give the students 15 minutes to get to our QOP room (after all, it takes time to go to your locker, socialize a bit with your friends, go to bathroom, stop by another classroom, etc.). This allows the students to let off a little steam before they enter our room. Once there, we are very strict about not allowing cell phones, ipods or any other devices. We want the students to respect the space as a learning environment. It takes time -- sometimes months -- for some students to come around, but eventually they all do. And once a student is conditioned, they will see a physical space (like our classroom) as a place they associate with learning and working.
The students must be in the room by 3:15pm, or there are not allowed in (unless they have a pass stating why they are late). Again, this helps create the notion that this place is to be taken seriously, to be respected. The challenge as instructors is to be firm and consistent with this, or any other, rule we have in place. It should go without saying, but any rule we are unwilling to enforce is a rule we should not have in place. Enforcing our rules shows clearly to our students that we take these rules, and by extension their time, very seriously.
We begin the day’s program with announcements, then check their student planners to see what they are working on for that afternoon. It is a simple but effective way to help engage the students in the work they will do in the room that day. If they have their planner filled out, they get to choose their first snack. Again, conditioning is the key: we see that after one or two days of missing their snack, and the students then remember almost unfailingly to bring their planner from then on.
Following their first snack break, precisely at 3:45pm, we begin “Quiet Study Time”. This lasts for 45 minutes, until our next snack break. During this time, students are expected to work on homework, study for a test, or do freewriting on the given journal topic for that day. If they are not focused on their work, their lose the right to pick a snack at the next break. A second “Quiet Study Time” then begins at 4:45pm. We have found that keeping the study periods and breaks at exactly the same time each day helps the students condition themselves. They know when it is acceptable to socialize, and when it is not. They know when they should be focused on their work, and when they can take a breather. And since there are clear and consistent consequences, the QOP staff has to say very little. The actions speak far more loudly than our words.
One of the missions of the QOP program is to create independent students. Ultimately, we want them to be able to be self-motivating and self-monitoring. Of course, nearly all of them lack these skills when they enter the program. But by structuring the time so that there is a specific “Quiet Study Time,” we condition the students to stay focused on their work for a given chunk of time. They eventually get used to the idea that once you get started on your work, you stay on task until it is completed. That means not disrupting others, not using the phone, and limiting breaks as much as possible.
For the large majority of our students, poor grades are simply a matter of short attention span. One of the outcomes we hope to see (and often do see) is a student’s acceptance, through new habits, of a different way of studying; that they must limit distractions after they sit down to work. Our job is to create this environment. From there, the student becomes conditioned to this alternative. After time, the crave it because they have been rewarded for it time and again (and punished for not adhering to it).
There are real numbers to support this. We see that when a student comes to our classroom just six hours per week, his or her grade-point average rises one full point the following quarter on average. Further, he will improve by a full letter grade in at least two classes. This has been true for three consecutive school years. Our students also outperform the school average in standardized testing, despite the prerequisites for joining QOP.
What’s more, the students improve socially almost across the board. This is certainly more difficult to measure, but repeated anecdotal evidence shows that our students are less likely to be suspended, more likely to join another extracurricular activity, and more likely to volunteer for community activities than when they first joined.
One of the keys is gaining confidence. Often, the students at North and in our community as a whole are reminded what they can not do. They are given negative statistics, they fail certain tests and they are reprimanded by staff members. The result is a large percentage of students who are either disenchanted or apathetic about school because they feel they have no place there. They have lost confidence in their academic abilities.
For us, the first step is to build it back up. We try do this in a number of ways. At the end of each quarter, we have a celebration for our entire program, with friends and relatives invited. Before serving a large meal, we acknowledge students who have achieved various goals such as honor roll, attendance and improving their grades. We also reward improving students with dinners, special field trips and cash prizes.
Of course, there are smaller (and less expensive) ways to get a student feeling better about his or her academic potential. We have seen that, nearly across the board, one trait our students share is a weakness in the area of writing. And often, that goes hand-in-hand with the students’ distaste for writing in general. It stands to reason that a young person will enjoy doing something more if he feels he has a knack for it, or at least is improving in that area. And it follows that a student who practices a skill (such as writing) will only get better at it. So one of our goals is to get students to believe they have writing skill, in order to light a fire in them to continue to evolve in that area.
Hilliard (2003) has pointed out, through a case study, that African-American students are far more likely to be engaged in their education if they feel that their opinion matters to the instructor: “The idea is to build students’ confidence and willingness to take a position, even if it is not a popular one. By treating every opinion as worthy of examination, most students do indeed take positions, challenge them, and listen carefully to others. In this type of classroom, it is very difficult for a student to be inactive or not to be engaged” (p. 150).
And it also goes back to conditioning. For each one-page freewriting journal, the student is rewarded in two ways: with a star (which can be accumulated for a later incentive) and an immediate snack of his choice. Thus, over time, the student mentally connects writing with a reward. Ultimately, they have a positive feeling about writing -- at least in our classroom. Some students eventually request new journal topics, and often do their freewriting before class even starts.
Further, the students are not graded on these journals. They know that their spelling, grammar and structure will not be judged. They get their journals back the next day with comments from the instructor. These comments, particularly early in the school year, are always positive. They can range from “Nice writing” to “Interesting ideas” to “This is the best work you’ve done this week!” Again, we want them to feel good about what they have produced. Of course, one key is to be genuine. If they did not do great work, we can always say “Nice handwriting” or “I agree with...” or “I like what you said about...” It is important to find one area of their work to compliment or agree with.
After time, the students invariably write more often (since journaling is optional). They see that there are real rewards and no negative or critical analysis. In the long run, however, as the school year runs along, we will add moderate criticism to the feedback. While the students will still reap the rewards regardless of their output, we begin adding comments such as “How about checking your spelling?” or “What about commas and periods?” Almost without fail, the students will begin to grow self-evaluative on their journaling. We will see better punctuation the next time, for example.
This subtle, but real, analysis and feedback gets the students thinking about making improvements within the context of something they already feel good about. Instead of driving the students to make changes through negativity in an area they already feel bad about, we subtly prod them to make improvements in an area they are feeling better about. Since, by midway through the school year, they associate writing with rewards, the students are more likely to make the minor adjustments we point out to them. Additionally, as Stowell illuminates, “students learn best when they are in a positive relationship with the person from whom they are learning ... allowing students to bring their stories into the classroom can become the foundation of any curriculum” (p. 84).
Stowell also underscores the importance of allowing students to have a voice through their written word, particularly as it applies to finding their place in their community: “students can understand themselves and others better through reading and writing their stories ... when given the opportunity, students will share amazing stories, and when those stories are moved from the margins, they no longer feel the need to put someone else down” (p. 84). She concludes that “the classroom is a very appropriate place for students to become adept not only at academic literacy, but but at reading and writing about our communities as well” (p. 94).
This gets back to the importance of building confidence in the student. Any student needs to believe that he or she is a valuable part of the class, and in turn, is capable of achieving success in that environment.
An analogous example might be a baseball player. When he is greatly struggling at the plate, his confidence is in danger of wavering to the point that he simply can not perform at his best. He may get to the point where he does not think he will get a hit. An alteration in technique may not have its desired effect because of this foundering confidence. But a hitter who is convinced he is improving (whether he is or not) will surely be more likely to confidently apply certain added skills he is picking up along the way. After all, he sees that practice makes perfect. His positive attitude opens up the possibility for even better performance.
Last quarter, the third of the 2008-09 school year, close to 30 percent of QOP students made the A or B honor roll at North. Nearly 60 percent had a GPA of 2.0 or better. And we are expecting at least half (better than the school average) to pass the state’s standardized writing test on the first attempt. Again, all of the QOP students came into the program with a GPA below 2.0.
We see time and again that consistency, conditioning and confidence all lead into each other. Anecdotal and statistic evidence show -- whether in daily journals, standard testing or classroom grades -- that students can change their habits and make real and lasting changes. This is where allowing the students to freely tell their stories is so critical, as it is the first step in this process. And this is why it will always be a key part of my curriculum.
References
Perry, T.; Steele, C.; & Hilliard, A. (2003). Young, Gifted, And Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students. Boston, MA: Beacon Press
Stowell, L. (unknown). Building Alliances, Building Community, Building Bridges through Literacy.
