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Closing the Digital Divide: The 2012 STEM Summit
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“The key problem we have to solve in STEM education is one of perspective. It’s about making those small leaps, making those connections, to close the digital divide,” Navarrow Wright, Chief Technology Officer at Interactive One.
On Wednesday, April 18, tri-state leaders from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) organizations came together to address this digital divide. Convened by Citizen Schools, the 2012 STEM Summit gave corporate, nonprofit, and education professionals the chance to connect, spotlight high quality STEM programs, and commit to take action to scale up those efforts for underserved communities.
The Summit was held at a critical time for education. “Education is the sustainability issue of our time,” noted Mark Greenlaw, Cognizant’s VP of Sustainability and Community Affairs, during the opening panel discussion. In order to prepare students for the increasing number of STEM jobs and the competitive international market, high quality programs are needed to increase STEM literacy for underrepresented groups, including female and minority students.
Citizen Schools and Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation hosted the event to foster communication, connectivity, and action. As expressed by Dr. Ismael Calderon, Newark Museum’s Director of Science, the action that results from collaborative, innovative programs is imperative for urban communities. “Newark needs to undergo a renaissance”, he said, “and STEM programs are key to making it happen.”
At the Summit, individuals participated in workshops and explored how the gap can be addressed at a local level. Many guest speakers also spoke to the issue of preparing students for STEM opportunities with resources that are already available in STEM companies. “We need to understand where our resources are. Our people are our biggest resource,” stated Meghan Groome, the New York Academy of Science Director of K-12 Education Initiatives and Program Liaison for the Infosys USA Foundation. Justina Nixon-Saintil, the Verizon Foundation’s Acting Director of Education, echoed this, saying “You see an increase in student engagement and participation when you integrate technology.”
At the event, other featured guest speakers and presenters included individuals from Cisco, Citizen Schools, Cognizant, Google, IBM, Infosys, Pfizer, Saint Philips Academy, and Verizon. Kevin Aspell, Cisco’s Business Development Manager for Education, reflected on Cisco’s commitment to transforming education to prepare students for the future in his opening remarks. He highlighted the alarming fact that Cisco currently has 5,000 job openings in the engineering sector, but also expressed hope through the lens of Cisco’s many initiatives in education, including their partnership with Citizen Schools.
Though the event is based on the benefits of STEM education and experiences for students, individuals also reflected on the benefits that volunteering has on employees and organizations as a whole. “Employees are more likely to stay with companies and be more engaged if they are given the opportunity to volunteer,” said Doug Rohde, Engineering Manager at Google. By working with students and connecting the dots between academic lessons and real-world experiences, volunteers can transform lives and inspire career paths into high-tech careers for middle school students.
By bringing together two of the essential factors to successful STEM programs, educators and STEM professionals, the conversation around the quality of STEM education was brought to another level. Upon conclusion of the event, the attendees translated their knowledge and energy into commitments. Their commitments ranged in topic, from building new partnerships to reapplying lessons from STEM corporations to refocusing philanthropic and volunteer efforts on STEM initiatives. The uniting factor was a desire to meet the urgent crisis in STEM education with collaboration and action.
Volunteering: A Learning Experience for Student and Teacher
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Darakshan Mir is a Graduate Student at Rutgers University and a volunteer Citizen Teacher with Citizen Schools through the New York Academy of Sciences.
Looking back at the Coloring Outside of the Lines apprenticeship that I taught this past fall, I really feel lucky that I had the opportunity to get involved in something as meaningful as this. The apprenticeship taught me a lot about teaching, learning and empathy.
Example of a tessellation
Coloring Outside the Lines was designed for students to explore and learn math concepts while applying them to creating tessellations – two-dimensional planes that feature the repetition of a geometric shape with no overlaps and no gaps (like a honeycomb). The apprenticeship focused on building innovation capabilities in students as they were tasked with using the design process to create their own unique tessellations. I was amazed how my students got involved in the WOW! and how well some of them performed in the WOW!. I had many students, who were constantly involved and invested in the work, who connected to it, and it wasn’t surprising to see them shine through at the end of the apprenticeship. But, I personally found the trajectory of two other students very interesting.
One of the students was in special education and both me and my Citizen Schools staff partner had assumed that it was going to be difficult coaching her to do what the rest of the class was doing, so we had set different goals for her. Until, one day after showing a video of how tessellations could be made, she was hooked. We figured out that instead of telling her, and demonstrating to her, what needs to be done, if we just showed her a video about what the end-product would be, and the steps that led to it, she could instantly understand it— very intuitively. Thereafter, she really got into making tessellations. She was far ahead of most other students in the class, many times helping others. She made three wonderful tessellation projects, when most others did just one! She really knew what to do. It was very inspiring and humbling for me. I learnt not to make assumptions about how people learn, I learnt that different people have different ways of learning, and some ways work far better than others for individuals. At the end, she even presented her work to adult experts in the field, though she was very shy!
Another student really surprised me on the day of the WOW!. Throughout the apprenticeship, he wasn’t really invested in the work, even though it was clear that he was capable of doing it and much more. Still, he completed his tessellation project and put it up for the WOW!. When people came around and asked him questions, I was really surprised by how well he did. He answered experts in a very professional manner. Even when they asked him hard questions, he was able to answer demonstrating a mastery of the subject. He had really internalized many concepts, even when he didn’t seem to be completely engaged! I think, at the end of the apprenticeship, he was encouraged by the expert audience (rightly so). He really felt like he had been successful!
It wasn’t until the WOW!, that I realized how profound a learning experience it was, for both the students and the teachers.
The Science of Making Ice Cream
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Jennifer Sandidge is a Volunteer Citizen Teacher from Merck & Co., Inc.
In President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, he challenged young people who were contemplating the direction of their career by saying, “If you want to make a difference in the life of a nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child – become a teacher.” Although I am not the target demographic for President Obama’s challenge, I was moved by his words. Making a difference in a child’s life has always been a goal I hoped to accomplish. I just needed to figure out how I would achieve that goal. I didn’t want to make a career change – after all, I like being a scientist at a pharmaceutical company - but I did want to make a difference. When the opportunity to enter the classroom without leaving my profession by becoming a Citizen Teacher presented itself, I jumped at the chance.
The Citizen Schools staff helped me to select an apprenticeship from their curriculum catalog that I felt comfortable and excited to teach. The apprenticeship I chose was called Ice Cream, You Scream. Each week, Denarra, my co-teacher, and I would teach the students concepts related to food science and ultimately how to make ice cream. Read more…
Apprenticeships: Life-Changing for Students and Volunteers
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Why are we called Citizen Schools? Because we transform the volunteer experience by bringing everyday citizens into high-need classrooms to teach ten-week courses (called apprenticeships) on a topic they’re passionate about. Our dedicated volunteers are called Citizen Teachers, and they change countless lives by sharing their passion with kids. Apprenticeships open students’ eyes to new career opportunities, like becoming future investment managers or amusement park engineers. However, our kids aren’t the only ones who benefit from apprenticeships. The volunteers constantly tell us about their life-changing experience as well.
Want to become a Citizen Teacher and have your own life-changing experience? Click here to learn more.
It’s WOW Season!
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When was the last time you said “WOW”?
This semester in Newark, 550 Citizen Schools students have built real-world knowledge and learned critical leadership skills from experts of all backgrounds.
Teaching what they know and love, volunteer Citizen Teachers have led apprentices on a journey of discovery that culminates in a public showcase called a WOW!: students sharing their final products and presentations with parents, teachers, friends, professionals, and community members at their respective schools.
These projects fall into categories including:
Arts and Culture
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math
Law and Government
Business and Finance
Media and Journalism
Food and Healthy Living
To make their experience complete, they need you there! Please join the celebration of what is possible when schools, communities, and dedicated leaders unite to make learning exciting.
Click here to say “WOW” at Ivy Hill Elementary.
Thursday, December 15, 6:00-8:30 p.m.
107 Ivy Street | Newark, NJ 07106
Click here to say “WOW” at Louise A. Spencer Elementary.
Tuesday, December 20, 6:00-8:30 p.m.
66 Muhammad Ali Avenue | Newark, NJ 07108
Click here to say “WOW” at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary.
Wednesday, December 21, 6:00-8:30 p.m.
108 S. 9th Street | Newark, NJ 07107
Cognizant: Serious About Service
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Most people know Cognizant as a leading provider of information technology, consulting and business process outsourcing services. Here at Citizen Schools, the company is that and a whole lot more. Why? Cognizant has set a new record for volunteer engagement in the first semester of a partnership, committing to teach twenty fall apprenticeships nationwide so far, with more signing up every day!
Since announcing our new national partnership just one month ago, dozens of Cognizant employees have flocked to sign up as volunteer Citizen Teachers, and hundreds more have participated in sessions to learn more.
This is a significant increase in Cognizant’s presence from the 2010-2011 school year, when 10 of their volunteers taught a human resources apprenticeship called “You’re Hired!” at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary Campus. This year, 27 Cognizant volunteers will be at all three of our campuses teaching “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” (financial literacy), “Ivy Hill Sun Grand Prix” (a solar car race at our Ivy Hill campus), “Robotics,” “Transformers,” and more.
“We’re thrilled to have many corporate partners whose employees sign up as Citizen Teachers every semester, but the outpouring of interest in volunteerism from Cognizant employees across the country is unprecedented, especially at the inception of a new partnership, “ said Eric Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Schools. “It’s clear that Cognizant is deeply committed to education, and the company’s employees are ready to roll up their sleeves to help our students succeed.”
Through the company’s signature “Making the Future” initiative, Cognizant supports Citizen Schools’ continued impact on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning and educational practice, as well as our expansion plans across the country. This partnership is well aligned with Cognizant’s involvement in Change the Equation, a national CEO-led call to arms for private and philanthropic involvement in STEM education and the development of a future workforce fluent in science and math.
“By supporting organizations like Citizen Schools, Cognizant seeks to encourage exploration, invention, and the joy of learning,” explained Mark Greenlaw, Vice President, Sustainability and Educational Affairs, Cognizant. “Partnering with Citizen Schools will help us identify project-based learning programs that will excite young learners in the STEM areas while, at the same time, improve 21st century skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and innovation that will redefine the future of work.”
“To have so many volunteers from Cognizant teaching 7 apprenticeships is unprecedented for the first semester into a National Partnership with any company,” said Citizen Schools New Jersey Civic Engagement Officer Jessica Fick. ”Overall they have the second-most volunteers of any company across the country. We are looking forward to even more great things from Cognizant in the coming years.”
2010-2011: A Look Back
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With 52 apprenticeships across our three ELT campuses–Martin Luther King, Ivy Hill, and Spencer–including support from 88 volunteers from partnering organizations like Cognizant, the New York Academy of Science, and Drew University, we could not be more excited to kick off the 2011-2012 school year. But last year will be hard to top. Let’s take a retrospective look at some of our favorite moments from some of our most exciting apprenticeships of the 2010-2011 school year – straight from the lips of our Citizen Teachers and Teaching Fellows!
“The highlight of last year was planning for the WOW. Our students got to throw out all their own ideas about how they wanted to present all their hard work to their school, families, and community. As we finalized our product for the WOW, it was apparent how much our students had learned and accomplished throughout the previous weeks, and although I felt proud of their work, I was also sad that the apprenticeship was coming to an end. This year, I’m most looking forward to already knowing the ins and outs of being a Citizen Teacher. With the experience of last year behind me, I know I’ll be an even more effective teacher, and more easily continue to refine my skills!”
–Adrienne Ganoe, Drew University
Teen Magazine apprenticeship
“My spring apprenticeship about rockets was by far my favorite apprentiship so far. Launch days were definitely the highlight of the apprenticeship. It was exciting to watch the soda-bottle rockets that the students had built fly higher than the MLK building. The students were so excited by the success that it did not matter who’s rocket did better. They cheered each other on each time a rocket launched successfully. This semester I am looking forward to getting to know a new group of students. I am teaching an apprenticeship about Roller Coasters. Since this is a new apprenticeship for me, I am excited to see what kind of creativity the students bring to designing their own amusement park ride. ”
–Megan Cox, Colgate-Palmolive
Toy Engineering, Robotics, It IS Rocket Science, and Roller Coaster Design apprenticeships
“Solar Cars was a fantastic apprenticeship. Students learned all about engineering and about the engineering process of designing, building, and testing their cars. One student in particular, Nazer, was committed to WOW! excellence by testing and re-testing his solar car so that he could showcase a model. It validated his goal of becoming an engineer and it challenged his creativity. Nazer once said, ‘Before this apprenticeship, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an engineer.’ Afterwards, he expressed his strong interest in engineering by joining all engineering related apprenticeships.”
–Stephanie Cheng, Teaching Fellow
Solar Cars apprenticeship
“Go with the Flow was an Apprenticeship that taught students about a form of exercise they had never had the opportunity to try: yoga. When I heard Rasheed Williams say, ‘when you are sitting all day, yoga helps me stretch my body and makes me feel better,’ I knew that this was a dynamite experience for the Apprentices. Hearing the students not only show their yoga expertise, but explain the reason why it was beneficial, opened the eyes of the community members around us and the impact it has on our students.”
–Yasmin Schwartz, Teaching Fellow
Go With the Flow apprenticeship
ELT Thrives in New Jersey
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As back-to-school season kicks into gear, more and more schools across the country are preparing to keep their doors open for a longer school day to improve results for students. In fact, a recent paper by the National Center on Time & Learning reported that more than 1,000 schools across the country have implemented longer school days.
Here at Citizen Schools New Jersey, we have launched expanded learning time (ELT) programs in our three middle school campuses in Newark. Our ELT programs represent various stages of the ELT implementation process: our Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary Campus has entered its second year of ELT; our Ivy Hill Elementary campus has been transformed from an Out-of-School-Time program (OST) to ELT; finally, our newest campus, Louise A. Spencer, has begun its first year of ELT programming with Citizen Schools.
Based on the available national data from five schools that have piloted ELT with Citizen Schools, for one to four years, average annual proficiency gains have been much larger than previous years’ gains. Prior to instituting ELT, on average, our partner schools made no or minimal progress in building student proficiency and performed slightly worse than district averages. After partnering with Citizen Schools on ELT, scores began to increase in both math and English Language Arts (on average, just over 9 percentage points per year gained in math and nearly 7 percentage points per year gained in English Language Arts).
Read an Education Week Op-Ed by Eric Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Schools, and Fred Frelow of the Ford Foundation on how quality ELT programs can help narrow the achievement gap.
Sign up for an archived version of an ELT webinar hosted by Education Week. Emily McCann, president of Citizen Schools, and Jennifer Davis, president of the National Center on Time & Learning, co-presented on national trends in ELT and the Citizen Schools “partner-dependent” ELT model.
Read more about Citizen Schools and ELT.
Letter from the Executive Director
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Welcome to a new school year, everyone!
My name is Lucy Castillo and I am the Executive Director of Citizen Schools New Jersey (CSNJ). My passion for learning and volunteerism brought me to this remarkable organization, where the expectations and stakes are high. As an educator, I set high expectations for my students and for myself, and relentlessly sought to bring that standard of excellence to life. Although the expectations were high, they manifested themselves in simple ways: students treated each other with respect and appreciated every opportunity to learn. Today, “my students” make up more than a classroom – they are hundreds of middle schoolers in Newark. Still, these expectations hold true. I feel privileged to have found Citizen Schools New Jersey, an organization whose heart beats to the same rhythm as mine. Together, we are marching to the beat of a better education for the students of Newark.
This year, our path begins with a partnership at three schools all sharing our belief in Newark’s students: Louise A. Spencer Elementary, Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary, and Ivy Hill Elementary. By the end of the year, we will have reached 580 students. To put the magnitude of this undertaking in perspective, that figure represents twice as many students as we served last year. This means our day-to-day challenges as educators will be compounded by the sheer volume of students we now serve. We embrace this challenge with confidence and humility, as our team of more than 50 committed individuals reflects diversity, creativity, a strong work ethic, and a desire to consistently improve. We are leaders who are united by our desire to maximize the potential of all 580 students. Above all, we believe our students and that our success will place CSNJ as the partner of choice for low-performing schools in New Jersey.
In order to succeed, it is important that we successfully deliver CSNJ’s top three priorities.
Number 1: Prove that Expanded Learning Time (ELT) gets results. We will make ELT a viable strategy to turn low-performing schools around and close the achievement gap. Our staff is ready, willing, and able to explain the practicality of our students’ curriculum. Our volunteers (“Citizen Teachers”) are eager to discuss the historical and cultural significance of their diverse fields of study and engage students in meaningful, hands-on learning experiences. I believe their passion and expertise will create a more dynamic learning environment in the classroom, and Citizen Schools’ program will be there to tap into our students’ burgeoning intellectual curiosity.
Number 2: Partner with more schools in Newark. Ultimately, CSNJ envisions servicing a large number of underperforming middle schools, not just a select few. There are currently about 10,300 middle-school students enrolled in Newark Public Schools – a figure that grows each year – but Citizen Schools only enriches the lives of 580 of them, or just under 6%. Vocal support from administrators, parents, alumni, and others who can attest to the immediate and long-term impact of CSNJ will prove to be a crucial element of our expansion strategy. Our flourishing ELT model will give us the credibility we need to approach and partner with new schools in Newark and key philanthropic leaders in the private and public sectors.
Number 3: Develop the culture and systems that will allow us to be as effective as possible. Some of our key strategies include increased collaboration between office and campus staff, offering high quality professional development to our program staff on a weekly basis, and reapplying best practices from other regions, non-profits, and corporations in areas from programmatic development to marketing.
The biggest challenge facing our community today is that the genius of our children is largely unnoticed and unappreciated. Too often, people fail to realize that our children are the future of our city’s and country’s viability. They deserve our very best, because they will hold the torch for decades to come. Sometimes I try to imagine what the world would be like had Albert Einstein been deprived of a physics and mathematics education. CSNJ can potentially unlock the treasures of minds like Einstein’s that might otherwise remain unknown to the world. We have the power to deliver confidence into the hearts and minds of our children. I look forward to doing this work with you.
Before I close, I would like to thank Jarrad Toussant and Bing Howell, who have shepherded Citizen Schools New Jersey well and who have passed an awesome privilege onto me. I am excited to be here, as I truly believe in this organization and all its potential. I welcome your input with great enthusiasm and look forward to working together. Here’s to our best year yet!
CSNJ- WOW Everyday!
Lucy Castillo
Executive Director, Citizen Schools New Jersey
AmeriCorps Program Spared from Elimination
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