I Am Not Your Enemy

I was a first year teacher

A place holder of five sections of Sophomore English

A foot soldier,

Doing the bidding of Chicago Public Schools
I thought I had all the tools

To win the war against ignorance and apathy

Because I was told repeatedly

That I would be teaching students who didn’t want to learn,

That you would fight me every step of the way.

My sidearms were state standards and skills

Group work and grades were my grenades

Assessments, student-centered activities, and objectives were my automatic weapons

Steinbeck, Shakespeare, and Harriet Beecher-Stowe were my armor

I attacked with a barrage of handouts and homework

My blasters set on stun

I took aim

At your brain.

Resistance wasn’t an option.

I would get the knowledge in

At all costs, I would win.

But Lashaun proved a formidable foe                            

There he sat, in the last seat, in the last row

No assignments turned in

No participation given

Except for his journal

He sucker-punched me with drawings instead of words

Guns and gang signs,

Tattoo art and nicknames

Most of which I dismissed with a ‘No credit’

Written at the top of the page

Not much attention was paid

Occasionally I would launch a surprise strike.

“Lashaun, where are your vocab assignments and your essay?”

“Lashaun, see me after class – don’t you want to pass?”

He was always ready with a sturdy, yet cool defense.

“I’m working on it,” he would say with confidence.

“I’ll turn it in tomorrow.  But you do have my journal.”

By March, we were two tired fighters

Locked and leaning

Waiting for the other to surrender

He walked out of class, forgettably, on a Friday

His chair was empty on Monday

No official word was given, except that he had died.

But the halls whispered words:

Gang affiliation, known associations, retaliation

Two days later I found his journal

My eyes fell across the images

I lay on the floor

His death had landed a fatal blow to my enemy mentality

Amidst the scrawl, there was a beauty

A 15 year old boy trying to figure it all out

A broken family, an unstable home, a life on the streets

A life that ended over bad decisions

And worse situations.

He lost the battle, and I knew I hadn’t won the war.

Lashaun was not my enemy

You are not my enemy

I was a first year teacher

No longer a foot soldier,

Blindly following barked orders

Yet I still fight

My sidearms are truth and compassion

Standing with me an army of students and teachers ready to wage war.

We fight against all of the things that are trying to bring you down and take you prisoner

The gang bangers and the guys with gats

The racists, cynics, the indifferent

All the people who tell you, you can’t

All the people who tell you, you won’t

Every time you walk in school doors

Sit down in class

Put your ideas on paper

Read a book

Raise your voice in discussion

You are fighting – we are fighting

To make sense of this nonsense

We stand and fight together

Because I am not your enemy.

Students from Innovations preparing for their performance at Columbia College

It’s not often you will find teens from various racial and socioeconomic backgrounds in one room mingling and supporting each other in a positive manner. Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB) is the nation’s largest teen poetry festival. LTAB gathers high school students across the  Chicagoland area, rural Illinois, and Northwest Indiana to perform original poetry. In its tenth year, it continues to grow with over 60 high schools participating. This year included 11 YCCS Campuses.

The 11 YCCS campuses competed in the two week festival held at Columbia College. The weeks coming up to the event, YCCS teams put in extra hours before and after school. Many teams came together on the weekends to prepare. For many, this was the first time they have stood before a large crowd to tell their stories. The topics the students spoke about included their neighborhoods they live in, their relationships and even humorous high school experiences.

YCCS students were gleaming with pride and overwhelmed with a feeling of accomplishment.  Chanel Strains from Innovations High School of Arts Integration was part of the top 16 poets that made it to the semi-finals held at the Steppenwolf Theater. Although, YCCS didn’t come out on top of the competition, the made a big impression on the audience .YCCS poets left with new friends and a boast of self-confidence.

To view pictures from the Louder Than A Bomb Click Here

YCCS rallied with other Chicago charter schools to maintain state funding for schools

Youth Connection Charter School was one of many Chicago charter schools that participated in the March 24, 2010 Charter School Rally. The rally was sponsored by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS).  The purpose of the rally was to let Illinois State Legislators know how important educational funding is to all Chicago Public Schools especially charter schools. “The Illinois charter sector has created high quality public schools for students across Illinois and is on the front lines serving students every day,” said Andrew Broy, President of INCS. “The proposed 18% cut to the CPS per-pupil funding formula, if enacted, will have a dire impact on our charter schools next year. Because charter school funding is more likely to be spent directly in the classroom, cuts to central office programs and administrative funding will affect charter schools’ core operations—the delivery of student instruction.”

Marquette Green, a Youth Connection Leadership Academy Student, represented YCCS students hold the YCCS banner along with other YCCS staff members. YCCS stood with students, parents and staff from other charter schools including Urban Prep Academy, Perspectives Charter Schools, and Chicago International Charter School.  Everyone was united shouting, “Support our Schools”. Speakers at the rally included Sylvia Ewing, Interim Executive Director of INCS and Ron Huberman, CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Mr. Huberman stressed that charter schools are public schools and need to be supported to succeed. The rally goers boarded the bus after the spirited rally heading to Springfield to talk with State Legislators.

To view the television news story click here

To view pictures of the event click here

Rice has the responsibility for the CYDI “Aquaponics” program. That is the combination of aqua culture and hydroponics, a method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating system. More than 100 Tilapia provide the main nutrients for a grow bed with four dozen basil plants. In the integrated system, gravity circulates water which creates nitrogen to feed the plants. Students working with Ms. Rice are literally learning “hands on”. “On day, a student had to crawl into the tank to move fish,” she said. Maintaining proper temperatures, lighting, clean environment as well as all the science of growing plants and fish are a few of the project-based opportunities.

Principal Aaron Royster Jr. is the driving force behind this new program. “I’ve been looking for sustainable programming that can help the community, possibly create jobs,” he said. “I read about aquaponics in a business magazine and realized it might fit our strategy of community development, to use technology and green science.” With support from YCCS and a partnership with Myles Harston from Aqua Ranch in Flanagan, Illinois, the aquaponics plan got off the ground.

Only two months into her first real teaching position, Ms. Rice says, “I learned that I have a lot to learn. I have to learn more about the kids, their culture and their lives. The dedication of some students is amazing. I have one who travels almost 2 hours to get to school every day. When I went to high school, I lived 10 minutes from school and I got a ride daily”. The experience with the kids taking responsibility for the aquaponics lab has encouraged Ms. Rice to think bigger. She has plans for increased fish and basil as well as an urban garden in the spring. “Even though sometimes I feel overwhelmed, I know I can figure it out with the kids”.

Will she eat some tilapia? “I’m a vegetarian, but I will eat this fish. The kids and I are going through this together”!

YCCS GYO Coordinator, Jeneen Whitenhill and YCCS GYO Candidate, Rosie Jones speak to legislators about the importance of GYO

YCCS participated in The Grow Your Own Teachers rally held on Tuesday, February 23 in the Capitol Rotunda.  There were a total of 200 GYO teacher candidates from around the state, along with higher education and community partners, there to celebrate Grow Your Own Teachers Day.

 The purpose of the rally was to give GYO candidates from around the state a chance to celebrate together while thanking the legislature for their support of Grow Your Own. GYO candidates got the opportunity to make the case for continuing funds needed for 2011 Fiscal Year. Statewide, there are 16 GYO partnerships and 8 in Chicago. The partnership includes 16 community organizations, 8 public universities, 4 private colleges or universities, 12 community colleges, 23 school districts, and 2 unions.

 GYO was established as a community-based answer to the challenge of finding and retaining a qualified teaching pool for high-need schools. Recognizing that many schools face high teacher turnover, the program looked to those within the neighborhood of the schools with experience and expertise in reaching at-risk students, targeting parents, volunteers and support staff and giving them a chance to become certified instructors.  Jeneen Whitenhill, YCCS Professional Development Coordinator and coordinator for the YCCS GYO Cohort, believes GYO allows teachers to live and work in the same neighborhood which benefits everyone. “GYO candidates have a deep knowledge and understanding of the students, their families, language and culture. While other teachers go home at the end of the day, our teachers are already “home”.

 The budget crisis that Illinois is currently under threatens the continuation of GYO. Without the state funding, GYO will not be able to support the admission of nearly 200 teacher candidates who are now on a waiting list nor continuing supporting over 500 candidates already in college. YCCS teacher candidates along with others from Rockford, Peoria and other areas of Illinois brought a bright light to the importance of sustaining GYO funding in the upcoming fiscal year.  Stephen Andrew, Resources Coordinator for Grow Your Own Illinois, thinks the GYO Day left a lasting impression on State Legislators. “This was a strong start for our campaign to save GYO. We had the best representation ever from around the state. We gained great legislative support with the inspiring speeches from all the GYO candidates.” The GYO partnership will continue to garner support for continuing funding and growth of the GYO Program with online campaign and media attention to the issue. For more information regarding Grow Your Own, please contact Jeneen Whitenhill, 312-328-0799. Also click here to see a news story about GYO Day in Springfield.

West Town Academy student performing during Latin American Festival

Youth Connection Charter School (YCCS) students from ten campuses will be flexing their poetic skills at the YCCS Open Mic Academy, February 18, 2010. The event will be held at the historic Hull House Museum. The students are part of the YCCS Louder Than A Bomb Poetry (LTAB) Spoken Word program. Students have been working with teaching artist from Young Chicago Authors since the beginning of the school year. The YCCS LTAB program gives students a voice to express themselves creatively. Students have been working on pieces to perform at the Louder Than A Bomb Poetry festival that will begin February 20, 2010. The Open Mic Academy will give students the opportunity to test out their works with their peers and get pointers and tips from nationally recognized spoken word artist. The events start a 1pm, light refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Will Caref or Tarneka Manning at 312-328-0799.

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]]> http://www.yccs.us/2009/12/applytoyccs/feed 0 http://www.yccs.us/2009/11/executive-director-sheila-vensons-perspective-on-alternative-education http://www.yccs.us/2009/11/executive-director-sheila-vensons-perspective-on-alternative-education#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:11:53 +0000 crallins http://www.yccs.us/?p=1083

For twelve years, YCCS, the collective YCCS, has worked to create quality education options for Chicago’s at-risk students. We are the only charter in Chicago to take on the toughest challenge in urban education – students who have failed in or have been failed by the current educational system. We have worked relentlessly to not only take on a tough “job” but to close the achievement gap and graduation gap for this vulnerable student population. Alternative schools under YCCS have worked to change the perception and the reality of alternative schools being viewed as a place for “bad kids”, to one in which alternative education, in perception and in reality, represent a quality option for students who have the resiliency to overcome the odds and complete their education.

YCCS is succeeding in this mission, and we have the data to prove it. Catalyst’s use and interpretation of YCCS’ data is wrong. The author’s definitive statement that there is a lack of quality in alternative schools seems to be based on the number of students who enrolled in and graduated from all alternative schools in the last 10 years. While Catalyst references all alternative schools – YCCS and others – YCCS’ is the only data used to construct the claim that only 23% of the students graduate.

However, here are the facts. YCCS enrolled a total of 21,965 students during this period (nowhere near the 31,861 reported). Of those 21,965 students enrolled 3,395 transferred and 1849 continued into the next year, leaving an unduplicated enrollment base of 16,721. There were 8126 graduates (this figure would be 8285, but 159 were “graduates pending ACT Test completion” – students who had completed the course/credit work, but had not completed the ISBE-required ACT Test, within the timeframe for that year’s data snapshot). This would give us a graduation percentage of 49%, computing 8126/16,721. (It would be 50%., counting the additional 159 students who completed the ACT requirement later in the fall, computing 8285/16,721).  Hence, it is not 1 in 4 students who have graduated from YCCS alternative schools in Chicago. It is 2 in 4 students who have graduated from YCCS alternative schools, putting YCCS at the national norm (approximating CPS’ graduation rate) and competitive with other cities, including New York (even though YCCS’ population consists of 100% dropouts).

This alone makes the entire article along with its conclusions, not only suspect, but lacking credibility.

The writer points to another indicator signaling YCCS’ supposed lack of quality – that of the mobility of our student population “being a stunning 166%.”There is nothing stunning about this figure, as YCCS has had an open entry/open exit policy for 10 years of our 12 year history. Mobility is defined by CPS as “the number of enrollments in and transfers out of a school after October 1^st, divided by the October 1^st membership.” In an agreement with the District, we allow students to enroll whenever there is a vacancy due to student withdrawal, transfer, or graduation. Under these conditions, it is expected that our mobility rate would be higher.

The writer made her judgment about the quality of Chicago’s alternative schools based primarily on a flawed analysis of YCCS data.  It appears that the writer was quick to come to this conclusion without researching and substantiating the information. The writer was also quick to draw this conclusion without a thorough reporting on other indicators of performance which were available through the public record and through interviews with YCCS.

For instance, YCCS’ attendance rate average for the time period was 79%, an accomplishment for students who were chronically truant in their former school (by and large, they were not attending school). The writer references the low skills of students entering YCCS, but fails to note that YCCS students on average increase 2 levels in reading and math for every year of attendance. Had the writer chosen to look deeper into PSAE data, she would have found that, while YCCS did not meet or exceed state standards on the PSAE in 2008, we did compare favorably to other schools with rankings in the upper 37% of all high schools and the upper 15% of all neighborhood schools. We ranked number two when compared with vocational schools; number one when compared with other district alternative schools; number three when compared with small schools; and at 50% when ranked with other charter schools.

Had the writer been thorough in her review of the quality issue, they would have noted YCCS’ 85% teacher certification rate and our efforts to recruit and retain good teachers, or our 98% parent satisfaction rate, or our 79% college and/or employment postsecondary placement rate, the author would have discovered that YCCS has students from several campus schools currently enrolled in dual credit programs at the City Colleges of Chicago and has an aggressive agenda to increase  that participation significantly in the future.

While the article references the SchoolWorks (a third-party evaluator contracted by CPS to assess school quality) report done on YCCS in 2007, it fails to report the main conclusion of the SchoolWorks evaluators (individuals who actually spent time in the schools and classrooms) that YCCS has “created the conditions for student achievement to occur at high levels”.  The claim the “YCCS does not have a standard curriculum for all schools” is not true. YCCS has instituted a curriculum framework (the YCCS Essential Skills Framework) that organizes instruction around the skills development, and we are moving towards a skills-based graduation requirement to ensure that a student who graduates from YCCS can be competitive in post-secondary endeavors. All YCCS campuses have aligned their courses to the YCCS Essential Skills Framework which is on file at CPS.

The author of these articles spends a considerable number of words describing the difficult student population in alternative schools and references Ron Huberman’s report citing that the 30 percent of students who are most at-risk of being involved in violence are enrolled in alternative schools. A deeper analysis of this issue will show that while YCCS had a large percentage of these students, only .04% were actually victims of violence and no students were the perpetrators of the violence. Further, while we have a very high-risk population with approximately 25%-35% of the students being gang-involved and 53% of our students having some contact with the justice system, there have been no shootings or major incidents in alternative schools in 12 years. Walk into any YCCS alternative school, and take note that the “Culture of Calm” that Ron Huberman talks about is prevalent and common in YCCS campuses.

This is the real story—the story of how alternative schools in Chicago under YCCS have not only stepped up to the challenge of working with students who have been disenfranchised from the public education system but are succeeding where others have failed.

The deficit model framing of the issues surrounding these students put forth by the writer has failed to tell a story of resilient students and dedicated schools that are succeeding. Had the author chosen to fully engage YCCS in the research and preparation of the Alternate Route, the framing might have been different. Perhaps the author would have written a piece on our (YCCS) conceptualization and evolution of a diversified portfolio of quality alternative education campuses that provide multiple pathways to graduation similar to New York City’s, as well as other solution driven strategies around changing the paradigm of urban education for these students. YCCS is doing innovative work in this area and is ahead of the curve compared to other cities.

Why Catalyst chose to ignore these and other indicators, are only known by its writer and editors. Why Catalyst chose to declare with certainty that Chicago alternative schools have failed to meet quality standards is another unknown, because the facts do not support their conclusion. However, what is clear is that Catalyst has missed an opportunity to tell a more compelling and nuanced story of an issue that is germane to urban school reform The real story and lessons in urban school reform can be gleaned from what we in the alternative school community have learned and are doing to educate off-track and re-enrolled young people. Thankfully, this story is written every day in every YCCS alternative education classroom where we are changing the odds, graduating students who otherwise would not have graduated, and saving lives in the process.

GYO was established as a community-based answer to the challenge of finding and retaining a qualified teaching pool for high-need schools with a focus on teachers of color. Recognizing that many schools face high teacher turnover, the program looked to those with experience and expertise in reaching at-risk students. YCCS is the only charter school to participate in the GYO program. Jeneen Whitenhill, Professional Development Coordinator for YCCS states, “At YCCS, we believe that improving teaching and learning comes from developing capacity within the school community.  We are investing in our teachers’ professional growth and realizing the potential of paraprofessionals as future educators for our students”. GYO is designed to cultivate teachers using a pool of engaged individuals from within the school community. Research proves that teachers with knowledge and background in the community are more likely to produce high student achievement, and to remain working in hard-to-staff schools. Larry Vaughn, Assistant Director of YCCS makes note “many GYO participants have been involved with YCCS since its existence. GYO allows them to develop professionally which is a large investment to YCCS students and their community”.

YCCS partners with Chicago State University to provide rigorous preparation to become certified classroom teachers.  Through the GYO program YCCS has 15 teachers earning Master’s Degrees and Type 9 Certificates. Along with 15 teacher aides, registrars, mentors, and security guards working toward undergraduate degrees and teachers certification.

YCCS will serve as a model for other in-district charter schools through INCS Roadmap to Innovation. The Roadmap to Innovation is a portfolio of program models that are shared with teachers and school leaders across the district. The goal is to create a ripple effect prompting educators across the state to implement successful programs featured in the Roadmap portfolio so that more students, teachers, and families can benefit from innovative practices. For more information about the GYO program, contact Jeneen Whitenhill, jwhitenhill@yccs.org.