The Creative Coalition at Sundance Film Festival Honors Teachers

Become a tutor mentor.

The Creative Coalition, the foremost nonpartisan social and public advocacy organization of the arts and entertainment community is dedicated to educating its members on issues of public importance. During the Sundance Film Festival, it hosted a lunch featuring teachers making a difference which was sponsored by the ING Foundation. In light of the message of the Sundance Audience Award winning documentary Waiting For Superman about the state of education in the United States today, this lunch provided much needed inspiration and hope.

Actor and Co-President of The Creative Coalition, Tim Daly along with actor Wilmer Valderrama, reunited with the teachers who made a difference in their lives. This annual event, held at the Film Festival since 2007, spotlights the “unsung” heroes of education who have made a lasting impact on generations of students and calls attention to the significance and need for outstanding school teachers who can mentor students to achieve their greatest potential.

Tim honored Joyce Devlin, his drama teacher from Putman School in Vermont, who discussed the value of actors working together in generating a collective energy to create value.

Her advice to new teachers in arts education, and to my mind to anyone listening or reading this blog is to be honest, be political, have good ideas of what you want to accomplish and know that you must work through a system. Patience, diplomacy and continuing education are the values teachers must maintain in teaching students to work naturally with their own impulses.

Wilmer Valderrama, who at the age of 14 moved to Woodland Hills California from Venezuela took up acting as a way of teaching himself English by being forced to read, speak out loud and to speak in sentences. That eventually led to a love of acting. Valderrama loves to work with youth, does keynote speaking for kids and tells them that they can get so much more from life and can enjoy life so much more when they are self-made. He advises kids to invest in themselves, that they are not missing anything by staying in school, to take advantage of making mistakes in school now rather than later in life when the mistakes will count so much more. He advises teachers and every one older to tell kids Yes They Can! They do not hear that enough.

The teacher he honored was Mr. Edward Tucker of Taft High School in Woodland Hills California who taught him to always excel. Mr. Tucker, born in Texas, announced that first impressions are a big deal. Seeing him the first time does make a big impression and it did on Valderamma as much as Valderamma made a first impression on Mr. Tucker.

Mr. Tucker’s advise is that teachers (and anyone) should remember that they were students themselves once and it should be shared with the students. Be yourself! If the kids like you, they’ll do your work. You have to almost teach the students when they’re not looking…You can sometimes get their attention to focus for one minute, but it’s difficult.

Mr. Tucker lays out three rules to students in his first class:
1. When I speak, Look At Me.
2. When I write, Write It In Your Notebook.
3. When you take a test, Give Me An A, or don’t take the test.

Valderrama remembers that Mr. Tucker gave a pop quiz, and they were allowed to use their notes. Because he had followed the three rules, his notes, which he had not read but had written carefully, contained every answer to the quiz exactly as it had been written. Success was sweet to this 14 year old immigrant and he never will forget the teacher that gave him the understanding of how to achieve it in the most outstanding of ways.

ABOUT THE CREATIVE COALITION
The Creative Coalition (www.thecreativecoalition.org) is the premiere 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan social and public advocacy organization of the arts and entertainment community. Founded in 1989 by prominent members of the creative community, The Creative Coalition is dedicated to educating its members on issues of public importance. Headquartered in New York City, The Creative Coalition also has offices in Washington, DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

About the ING Foundation
The ING Foundation’s mission is to improve the quality of life in communities where ING operates and its employees and customers live. Through charitable giving and employee volunteerism, the foundation focuses on programs in the areas of financial literacy, children’s education, diversity, and environmental sustainability.
For more information, visit http://www.ing-usafoundation.com/.

2010 Sundance Film Festival : WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Sundance title Waiting For Superman by Davis Guggenheim who brought us An Inconvenient Truth has a new film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival : WAITING FOR SUPERMAN: "For a nation that proudly declared it would leave no child behind, America continues to do so at alarming rates. Despite increased spending and politicians’ promises, our buckling public-education system, once the best in the world, routinely forsakes the education of millions of children.

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim reminds us that education “statistics” have names: Anthony, Francisco, Bianca, Daisy, and Emily, whose stories make up the engrossing foundation of WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. As he follows a handful of promising kids through a system that inhibits, rather than encourages, academic growth, Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying “drop-out factories” and “academic sinkholes,” methodically dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems.

However, embracing the belief that good teachers make good schools, and ultimately questioning the role of unions in maintaining the status quo, Guggenheim offers hope by exploring innovative approaches taken by education reformers and charter schools that have—in reshaping the culture—refused to leave their students behind."

The picture will be distributed by Paramount Vantage.

Become a Tutor

Become a tutor mentor.

THE LITERACY PROJECT

Reasons: We have all the reasons, so look for the reasons that empower you and make a difference.



The reason we are inviting people to volunteer their time and attention to this pilot project is that our society is in great need of help and this is a simple, briefly time consuming and very personal way to make a huge difference in the life of someone who needs help to become a valuable member of our society. If you can’t commit to volunteering for six months but can help in other resources we will put you in a supporting group.



Statement of purpose: Teaching literacy (reading and writing) to the working poor via its children who will teach it to their parents . The ability to read with understanding and to love reading is the aim of this volunteer program which will unite kids and mentors for one hour a week (minimum) with a homework assignment of teaching to parents what was learned that day.



Ultimate goal: Finding the voice to tell one’s own story.



There will also be a monthly film component, where one evening a month an entertaining and socially interesting film will be shown with the filmmaker or a community expert on the subject attending for questions and answers after the film is made.



The final goal is that the student will learn to read and write with pleasure and understanding. Evaluation will be through teachers’ reporting back to the center and, later perhaps through some volunteer evaluation professionals. It will begin in March 2010 and will go through August.



Volunteers will give one hour a week for six months to develop a one on one relationship as a tutor/ mentor with a middle school student needing to learn to read and write. This pilot project's students are all clients (with their families) of El Centro del Pueblo, a not for profit community service agency founded in 1974 by Sandra Figueroa-Villa for the purpose of alleviating and mitigating negative effects of poverty and gang violence and of improving the quality of life for youth and families for prevention, intervention and education. Tutors will have support from interns and from one of the three departments which will select the students: L.A.’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development, L.A. City Department of Children and Family Services, L.A. County Department of Mental Health, Children and Family Services.









Goal setting and progress will be supervised initially by Sydney Levine , a volunteer who earned her Masters in Education at USC and has taught and volunteered as a student of University of California’s Tutorial Project, interned for two years in Willowbrook School District of Los Angeles County and taught five years in the Oakwood, Venice area of LAUSD. (However, she did this a long time ago and has been in the film business for most of her adult life.) Film will have a component with a monthly screening for all the Center’s constituency.



Tutors will take the child where he or she is at, initiate conversations to ascertain interests which will lead to what relevant materials will be used. We will have many books to choose from; a limited number of computers is also available. Perhaps sheet music will be available, or cook books with pictures. The choice of materials will be made by the students and from their choices, the tutors will be both assessing the student and helping develop the skill of discernment which is crucial to reading and many other activities but is rarely recognized as an actual academic skill. This is the sort of activity which develops through communicating and interest in the student. Tutors have many interests to share from creating telenovelas, to dancing, singing, physical activities, cooking, and all special interests are most welcome.



Experience in teaching is not a requirement because the program provides that teachers learn as much as the students. What is required is love, creativity and commitment for 6 months. The homework assigned to students is that the student must teach the parent what has been learned that day. Lessons will be designed as progress is made and will be based on a loose version of Ruth Schoenbach’s Strategic Literacy Network’s Reading for Understanding which everyone is invited to order through Amazon and read if interested.

DROPOUTS - PRISON - UNEMPLOYMENT

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts

New York Times: October 8, 2009 by Sam Dillon

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.



Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.



“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.”

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.



The new report, in its analysis of 2008 unemployment rates, found that 54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent for those with a college degree.



Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate among young Hispanics was lower, the report said, because included in that category were many illegal immigrants, who compete successfully for jobs with native-born youths.

READ MORE !

The Consequences of Dropping Out of High School:

Joblessness and Jailing for High School Dropouts and the High Cost for Taxpayers

Center for Labor Market Studies - October 2009

http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/The_Consequences_of_Dropping_Out_of_High_School.pdf



Northeastern University - Boston, Massachusetts

THE HARD FACTS OF THE NEED FOR TEACHING LITERACY

Between 21 and 23 percent of Americans (40 million) are functioning at Level 1 literacy rating, defined simply as "not having adequate reading skills for daily life." The rate for California is 24 %. These are people who cannot read, must struggle to read, or cannot cope with unfamiliar or complex information.

Richard Riley Former Secretary of Education says "54 percent of all teachers have limited English proficient (LEP) students in their classrooms, yet only one-fifth of teachers feel very prepared to serve them.”



 2006 More than 8 million U.S. students in grades 4-12 struggle to read, write, and comprehend adequately.

 2004 Three out of ten eighth graders read at or above grade level, National Assessment of Educational Progress.

 2003, only three-fourths of high school students graduated in four years, the National Center for Education Statistics reports;

 2002 just over half of African American and Hispanic students graduated at all. Source

 The cost of failing to teach enriches the wealthy and impoverishes the poor.

 EXTENSIVE RESEARCH LOCATED IN THE LINGUISTICS AREA ABOUT AMERICAN ENGLISH CREOLE AND DIALECT SPEAKERS

Business contracts with the prison system underpay inmates for jobs like answering the company phone. It is very very cheap labor. For the first time ever, in five states, more is spent on prisons than on colleges, according to a new report from the Pew Project on the States. Last year alone, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion spent 20 years earlier. However, the recidivism rate remains virtually unchanged, with about half of released inmates returning to jail or prison within three years. A close examination of the most recent U.S. Department of Justice data found that while one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is incarcerated, the figure is one in nine for black males. For black women in their mid- to late-30s, the incarceration rate has hit the one-in-100 mark. Pew also found that in the last 20 years, inflation-adjusted general fund spending on corrections rose 127 percent while higher education expenditures rose just 21 percent. Most Unusual Prisons.

Improving Education for Every Child

by Nina Shokraii Rees [http://www.heritage.org/mandate/priorities/chap3.html link no longer works]

"The need for action is desperate. Today, a stunning 40 percent of America's 4th graders continue to read below the basic level on national reading assessments. On international tests, America's 12th graders rank last in advanced physics compared with students in 18 other countries. And one-third of all incoming college freshmen enroll in a remedial reading, writing, or mathematics class. These numbers are even bleaker in the inner cities and poor rural areas, where 68 percent of low-income 4th graders cannot read at a basic level. In fact, despite $120 billion in federal spending since 1965 to raise the achievement of poor children, a wide educational attainment gap remains between rich and poor students.

The deepest down turn in the educational process occurs in the fourth grade. There the student must learn to read by the time they are 8 or 9 years old. It seems that without this being accomplished, the child will never grasp reading for content in the ways required later. However, there is a way to recapture students and this is what this program wants to achieve.

Perspective:

Parents and educators only have a relatively few days - a fraction of the child's whole life to get them set up for success. A school year is approximately 30 weeks and that equals around 150 days in a year, minus about 10 days for holidays or sickness and all that is left is 140. Kindergarten through the end of third grade is 4 years x 140 days = 560 days total. Your average life span is around 70 years = 25,550 days.



All we have is .02% of a child's lifetime to give reading skills that will have an impact for the remaining 98% of his or her life.

What is the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI)?

As Co-Director of WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI), Schoenbach has worked closely with Co-Director Cynthia Greenleaf and other staff since 1995 to increase access to higher-level literacy learning for adolescents, particularly those who have not yet met their academic potential.

Building on prior research and locally based research, Schoenbach and Greenleaf developed the Reading Apprenticeship® instructional framework, which they describe in their best-selling WestEd book, Reading for Understanding: A Guide to Improving Reading in Middle and High School Classrooms. This book has become the catalyst for an international movement of educators who use the Reading Apprenticeship framework in their local schools — from elementary schools to community colleges to teacher education courses.

In response to requests for training related to the book, SLI has developed national training institutes, regional (continued on next page) professional development services, a growing cadre of certified consultants, and numerous publications and tools for classroom and professional development use. Literacy coaches, middle and high school teachers, district and site administrators, community college teachers and teacher educators from more than 28 states and Germany have participated in SLI-led professional development, impacting an estimated 170,000 students nationally and several thousand more in Germany, where Reading for Understanding has been translated into German. Numerous local studies in schools and districts reflect promising outcomes for students whose teachers are implementing Reading Apprenticeship. SLI's Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course was chosen in 2005 as one of only two adolescent literacy programs in the nation designated by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences for further study and evaluation. Schoenbach directs SLI's participation in this Enhanced Reading Opportunities study. The program was chosen by an independent panel of experts on adolescent literacy, which evaluated the extent to which an adolescent reading program is high quality, including issues of how to motivate adolescents to read, whether there is research-based evidence of the program's effectiveness, and whether the program is comprehensive and linked to content-area reading.



Schoenbach has co-edited two more books — Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship, and Building Academic Literacy: Lessons from Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, Grades 6-12 — and has co-authored numerous articles appearing in such publications as the Harvard Educational Review and the Phi Delta Kappan. The Reading Apprenticeship framework is cited as one of four programs in Reading Next, a document on adolescent literacy published by the Alliance for Excellent Education. View more articles about Reading Apprenticeship.



Schoenbach received a BA in social sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, a Bilingual Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential from San Francisco State University, and an EdM in teaching, curriculum, and learning environments from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.



SLI's Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy course was chosen in 2005 as one of only two adolescent literacy programs in the nation designated by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences for further study and evaluation. Schoenbach directs SLI's participation in this Enhanced Reading Opportunities study. The program was chosen by an independent panel of experts on adolescent literacy, which evaluated the extent to which an adolescent reading program is high quality, including issues of how to motivate adolescents to read, whether there is research-based evidence of the program's effectiveness, and whether the program is comprehensive and linked to content-area reading.



Schoenbach has co-edited two more books — Building Academic Literacy: An Anthology for Reading Apprenticeship, and Building Academic Literacy: Lessons from Reading Apprenticeship Classrooms, Grades 6-12 — and has co-authored numerous articles appearing in such publications as the Harvard Educational Review and the Phi Delta Kappan. The Reading Apprenticeship framework is cited as one of four programs in Reading Next, a document on adolescent literacy published by the Alliance for Excellent Education. View more articles about Reading Apprenticeship.



Schoenbach received a BA in social sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, a Bilingual Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential from San Francisco State University, and an EdM in teaching, curriculum, and learning environments from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.