Kristen Thiede

Everyone who teaches middle school is amazing. Those who volunteer to do it are particularly courageous. Those who inspire their companies to support education are remarkable. And then, there’s Yul.

Last week at the annual Clark Foundation gathering for leading youth development organizations, I had the chance to meet and introduce Kristen Thiede, a principal at Google and one of their leading innovators. She is employee number two-hundred-and-something (started in 2001) and has worked all over the world for Google, currently on a project to make home internet service 100 times faster. And she’s worked hard on their social enterprise collaborations with the Harlem Children’s Zone and others. She’s a rock star!

I was gratified to hear that lots of her friends have volunteered at Citizen Schools, and that we have been held up at Google as a best practice for employee engagement. Meeting Kristen prompted me to refresh my memory about how our organizations came to work together so closely. A refreshing, sexy story of youthful innovation and leadership.

Jane Choi - Campus Director (Photo Credit: Ralph Alswang)

I knew the Google relationship started with Citizen Schools Campus Director and later Program Director, the fabulous Jane Choi, who led our then after-school program at McKinley Institute of Technology in Redwood City from 2004-2006. I remembered that the first volunteers from Google were friends of Jane’s, but that’s as much as I knew; so I emailed Jane the night before my introduction of Kristen to get the full scoop.

Yul Kwon - Survivor: Cook Islands

Turns out it was an old boyfriend of Jane’s named Yul Kwon, who was on the Google legal team. Yul and an engineer friend named Beverly Chan decided to teach, and recruit other to teach, a few apprenticeships in robotics, cooking, poetry, and other diverse topics.

By the second year, so many Googlers were volunteering that Google hired a bus to bring kids to Mountain View. For several years they hosted our WOW! events at their amphitheater, where presidents and other world leaders often speak.

A few years later volunteers from Google offices in Cambridge and New York started teaching too (we launched Citizen Schools NY at Google HQ in lower Manhattan). Now we know of 442 Google employees who have taught apprenticeships at Citizen Schools, and we hope the inspiring team at Google in Chicago will join the ranks starting this fall. (Watch Googlers sell you on the idea themselves!)

Our latest data shows that an amazing 80 percent of kids who take Google apprenticeships – many of them in video game design – say they are interested in careers in science or technology.  This compares to just 33 percent of children their age in the country. By sharing their passion for engineering and computing, Google’s people are making a difference for kids that will last their whole lives.

Now, perhaps you recognize the name Yul Kwon. Volunteering at Citizen Schools wasn’t the last brave leap he took: he actually competed on the 2006 season of Survivor.  That was the controversial 13th season of Survivor  that divided participants by their ethnicity. Kwon became the ultimate survivor due to his physical prowess and ability to navigate strategically and morally across the different ethnic tribes, and he became a hero to Survivor buffs.

Yul Kwon - One of 2007's Sexiest Men Alive

That’s a unique resume. But it wasn’t Yul’s peak. In 2007 People Magazine named Yul one of the sexiest men alive.

Oh, and then in 2009 he became a leader of the Federal Communications Commission for Obama. Now he is hosting a new show on PBS called America Revealed.

I told all this to my 10-year-old daughter, Orla, and she asked if he was now married.  “Yes,” I said, “and with one kid.”

“Good,” she said.  “He deserves it.”

I don’t know how much Yul thinks about his experience teaching kids in Redwood City now, or realizes he, Jane, and Beverly helped launch a partnership at Google that is now transforming education. But  someday I hope to meet the top managers at Google to thank them. They have built an incredible culture where hundreds of their people can and do venture out to make the world a better place.

I certainly hope we’re able to build a culture like that at Citizen Schools, and to inspire it in other companies. I don’t know if any of us will be named the sexiest man or woman alive any time soon, but I like to think we have similarly great people making the world a better place.

CITIZEN SCHOOLS TEAMS UP WITH GOOGLE TO TEACH MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS

Students to Showcase New Skills at Google Offices on May 8th 

Mountain View, CA – May 3, 2011 – For a group of lucky Bay Area middle school students, Google’s Mountain View campus has been transformed into their classroom. These students have been working hand in hand with Google employees – “Googlers” – during the afternoon hours to learn about topics ranging from website development to debate. The project is part of a national partnership between Google and Citizen Schools, an education nonprofit that partners with schools to expand the learning day for children in low-income communities through afterschool and expanded learning time programs.

On Tuesday, May 8^th, students will gather at Google to showcase what they’ve learned in “apprenticeships” – ten week mini-courses where students and Googlers have worked together on hands-on projects that help students make the connection between school and future careers. Parents, teachers, Googlers, and community supporters will be in attendance at this science fair style event to see firsthand what new skills the students have mastered. Four groups of students will present on a variety of topics, including website design, debate, healthy cooking and technology innovation.

Since 2006, over four hundred Googlers have been involved in teaching nearly 140 apprenticeships through Citizen Schools in California, New York, and Massachusetts. This spring, there are nearly 100 Googlers teaching twenty-seven apprenticeships nationwide, including thirty-three Googlers teaching seven apprenticeships in California.

According to internal surveys, 80 percent of students taking Google apprenticeships through Citizen Schools this fall expressed interest in pursuing a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) career. This data is especially powerful given the current concerns about STEM education nationally. Just as the STEM field is growing and demanding new talented employees to fill jobs, our education system is struggling to produce enough highly-skilled young people ready for the challenge. Part of the problem, according to MIT, is that our students need more exposure to people who might spark a passion for STEM. According to a 2009 MIT survey, nearly two-thirds of teenagers said that they may be discouraged from pursuing STEM careers because they do not know anyone who works in these fields and they do not understand what people in these fields do.

“Citizen Schools helps Google make a positive contribution in our community by supporting efforts to promote math, science and technology on a local and national scale,” said Claire Hughes Johnson, Vice President, Google. “There’s nothing better than seeing the reward in the faces of students learning at Google. Citizen Schools makes a real difference for those great kids—not to mention the immeasurable benefit to the Google employees volunteering their time to help out.”

Last year, Google announced a $3.25 million grant to support Citizen Schools’ expanded learning programs. The organization partners closely with struggling schools across the country, including six schools in the Bay Area, to increase student achievement through expanded hours and hands-on learning projects. External evaluations have shown that Citizen Schools students have better attendance rates, higher grades, and fewer behavior issues than their peers. Long-term, studies have shown that Citizen Schools participants graduate from high school at significantly higher rates than their peers who did not participate.

“Google and their employees are playing a significant role in setting thousands of students across the country on a path towards educational success,” said Joe Ross, Executive Director of Citizen Schools California. “We are inspired by the work that Googlers have taken on through teaching apprenticeships and sharing their talent and passion with our students.”

About Citizen Schools 

Citizen Schools is a leading national education initiative that partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for children in low-income communities across the country through afterschool and expanded learning time programs. The organization mobilizes a second shift of afternoon educators, who provide academic support, leadership development, and “apprenticeships”—hands-on projects taught by volunteers from business and civic organizations. At partner middle schools in eight states across the country, Citizen Schools students develop the skills they need to succeed in high school, college, the workforce, and civic life.

Learn more about Citizen Schools’ programs and results at www.citizenschools.org. For California specifics, visit http://www.citizenschools.org/california/.

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TRI-STATE BUSINESSES, EDUCATION AND NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS CONVENE TO ADDRESS SCIENCE AND MATH EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES

Event Aimed at Building a Network of Future Employees for the Tri-State Region

April 17, 2012 – Newark, NJ – On Wednesday, April 18^st, local corporations, and education and nonprofit organizations will come together, at the Newark Museum, to address the current state of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education in New Jersey and the greater tri-state region. The 2^nd Annual STEM Summit is a convening of the tri-state STEM coalition, a group committed to ensuring that all youth, including underrepresented minority and female youth, have access to high quality STEM education.

The group is being assembled by Citizen Schools, a national education organization with programs in Newark and New York City, in partnership with Novartis Pharmaceuticals, in response to a growing concern about STEM education. Many educators worry about the growing STEM achievement gap between U.S. students and students from other developed countries, particularly as jobs in STEM areas are increasing in demand. On the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), U.S. 15-year-olds scored 23^rd in science out of 65 countries, lagging far behind powerhouses China, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

At the same time that our students are lagging behind internationally, we are seeing that women and people of color continue to be underrepresented in well-paying, secure STEM jobs here in the U.S. According to a 2011 U.S. Department of Congress report, women fill close to half of all jobs in the U.S. economy, but hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs. African Americans, Latinos, and other underrepresented minorities, who together constitute 24 percent of the U.S. population, represent just 10 percent of science and engineering professionals with a college degree.

At the national level, there are signs of a significant new focus on STEM education. From President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign to the 100Kin10 movement to recruit excellent STEM educators, national leaders are focusing their efforts on solutions to increase STEM literacy among all U.S. students and expand STEM education and career opportunities for underrepresented groups, including female and minority students.

These programs bring STEM to the forefront of the nation’s education conversation and Wednesday’s event will call on tri-state area companies and organizations to explore how they can play a role in addressing the issue locally. Attendees will discover how organizations are already forming partnerships to make STEM learning accessible for young students and how they can help excel and build upon those efforts.

The event will feature opening keynote speaker Kevin Aspell, Cisco’s Business Development Manager for Education, and closing keynote speaker Navarrow Wright, Chief Technology Officer at Interactive One. The summit will also feature guest speakers and presenters from Citizen Schools, New York Science Academy, Google, Cognizant, IBM, Pfizer, Saint Philips Academy, and Verizon.

“Our future depends on providing our youth with access to first-class STEM education,” said Lucy Castillo, Executive Director of Citizen Schools New Jersey. “Citizen Schools is thrilled to be working with partners like Novartis Pharmaceuticals to bring together a distinguished group of leaders from across the tri-state to build the knowledge, inspiration, and action necessary to make that happen.”

Citizen Schools, which operates in seven states including New Jersey and New York, has recruited approximately 25,000 professionals nationwide, including many scientists and other STEM professionals, to teach middle school students over the past seventeen years. The organization helps improve student achievement, with a focus on STEM, through expanded learning days and skill-building hands-on learning projects called apprenticeships. These 10-week apprenticeships are taught by volunteer experts who teach middle schools students about new careers and fields, including a wide variety of STEM careers, through real-world experiences.

About Citizen Schools

Citizen Schools is a national nonprofit organization that partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for low income children across the country. Citizen Schools uniquely mobilizes thousands of adult volunteers to help improve student achievement by teaching skill-building apprenticeships. The organization’s programs blend these real-world learning projects with rigorous academic and leadership development activities, preparing students in the middle grades for success in high school, college, the workforce, and civic life.

Learn more about Citizen Schools’ programs and results at www.citizenschools.org.  For New Jersey specifics, visit http://www.citizenschools.org/newjersey/. For New York specifics, visit http://www.citizenschools.org/newyork/.

Citizen Schools is hosting a STEM Summit with leaders and innovators from the field on Wednesday 4/18. Reserve your seat today.

Here are some things we know:

• By 2014, there are expected to be 2 million jobs created in STEM-related fields (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)

• Forty percent (40%) of all students test at below basic math level; 70% African Americans and 3/5 Latinos test below math level (2005 National Assessment of Education Progress)

• The number of engineering degrees awarded in the United States is down 20% from the peak year of 1985. (Tapping America’s Potential)

• Concern about America’s ability to be competitive in the global economy has led to a number of calls to action to strengthen the pipeline into these fields (National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Science, Engineering & Public Policy, 2007; U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2006; U.S. Department of Education, 2006).

Citizen Schools is taking steps to answer that call to action right now with our 2012 STEM Summit. The event will build the knowledge, inspiration, and action necessary to ensure that underrepresented minority and female youth have access to top class science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.

Listen to what is working from our panel guests featuring expertise from New York Academy of Sciences, Infosys, Google, and Cognizant. Participate in workshops presented by IBM, Pfizer, St. Philip’s Academy, and Verizon. Be inspired by our keynote speakers, Citizen Schools‘ CEO & Co-Founder, Eric Schwarz, Cisco‘s Business Development Manager, Kevin Aspell, and Navarrow Wright, Chief Technology Officer, Interactive One.

We invite you stand up to this call to action and be a part of what works. Space is limited and seats in workshops are filling up quickly. Register today to secure your seat!

Annie Lennox: Artist, Activist

As is often the case at the Skoll World Forum for social entrepreneurs in Oxford, England, which wraps up today, an artist with grit stole the show.  This year it was Annie Lennox.  In her heyday she was Annie Lennox and the Eurythmics.  Then came decades of AIDS and anti-war activism, a family, and ongoing success (four Grammy’s) as a pop star.  Last night at Oxford’s New Theater (one of the few buildings I was in all week less than 600 years old) Lennox performed for 1000 social entrepreneurs and other social change-agents who gather here for a remarkable annual conference that marries indignation at the injustices of the world, wonder at changes underway, and confidence that, on balance, injustice is in retreat.  Man, can she sing.  And, man, what a spirit.

YouthBuild: Empowering Community Growth

I watched Lennox perform while sitting with Dorothy Stoneman,  the veteran social justice leader who built the YouthBuild movement over the last 35 years, transforming hundreds of thousands of lives across now 268 communities. Dorothy’s program works because she has an unshakeable belief in the capacity of young, poor men of color — her core constituency — to lift up their communities and themselves.  This belief has sustained her and YouthBuild as she has built a still-tenuous funding base and continues growing and fighting for opportunity with every fibre of her being.  A few rows in front of us was Cecelia Flores-Oebanda who is working to end human slavery in her native Philippines and across the world.  Taddy Blecher, who sat a few rows away, is creating free universities across Africa — free because class sizes are as large as 500 and because the students also work at a variety of university-run businesses, raising the money needed to eliminate tuition.

All around us were dozens of pioneers, finding new ways to bring education, health, jobs, water, and freedom to the world’s neediest citizens.

Every year I come home from Skoll humbled by the amazing work of others, excited at the insights we are able to share, and inspired to step-up our work to reimagine and reinvent the U.S. education system.  Following, in no particular order, are a few lessons I learned this year, or was reminded of, and are top of mind for me as I prepare to fly home:

• Much of the best social change work in the world is about building social networks and bridges — bridges between  farmers, fishermen and markets, as with FairTrade USA, Root Capital, and the Marine Stewardship Council; between medicine and remote villages, as with Riders for Health and their motorcycling medical delivery drivers across Africa; between different cultures and nationalities, as with Search for Common Ground and Ecopeace; and between children and successful professionals, as with Citizen Schools and INJAZ Al-Arab, which connects business volunteers to schools across the middle east.
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  Taddy Blecher

  Many social entrepreneurs help the “client” become a producer, building ownership, efficacy, and skill at what Citizen Schools calls the top of the triangle.  Taddy Blecher and Dorothy Stoneman blur the line between student and worker as does Bill Strickland at his Pittsburgh-based Manchester Craftsman’s Guild and Martin Burt at Fundacion Paraguaya.

• Social entrepreneurs are skilled at developing financial models that can scale — pushing hard to reduce costs so they can deliver quality services at a price that communities of need can afford. For example, Debbie Aung Ding and her husband Jim Taylor, who met as civil rights foot soldiers in Mississippi, worked for years in her native Myanmar to get the price of a plastic water pump down to $13, allowing them to sell the pump and other income-producing products to 100,000 families.
• The best social entrepreneurs treat the children and families they serve with respect and trust.  I learned of a new school in Chile where the outcasts from other schools learn Yoga and Meditation, eat delicious food, and learn to love their teachers — eventually — and only after the teachers display saintly doses of patience.  The school, Fundacion Origen, has gotten the youth development and ed reform balance right, engaging and building up the youth while also delivering higher test scores and a drop-out-rate of zero, said founder Mary Ann Muller.
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  Hero Rat from APOPO

  Social entrepreneurs are creative and look for solutions in surprising places. Bart Weetjens of Apopo, for instance, has trained rats how to sniff out and defuse land mines, reclaiming hundreds of thousands of acres to use again as farmland. 

• Increasingly, social entrepreneurs are working in close partnership with government.  In California, Roadtrip Nation, is working with the state department of Education to embed its career-exploration curriculum in high schools across the state.  And individual change-makers are migrating between nonprofits and government, whether at the grand scale of Partners In Health co-founder, Jim Kim, going to run the World Bank, or the very local scale of Becky Vogel  leaving Citizen Schools to run expanded learning time partnerships for The Edwards Middle School.
• While many of the flashiest projects involve direct service in remote villages or third-world cities, some of the most meaningful efforts at Skoll involve seemingly dry topics like land title reform and accounting.  Global Footprint Network, for instance, is trying to establish a better accounting system than Gross Domestic Product, because GDP calculates production and consumption and does not take into full account the devaluing of the world’s capital resources such as its land and water.
• I learned as well, that the world’s largest companies see the world changing fast and want to be part of the change.  With millions leaving poverty each year, even as great disparities remain,  they see new markets opening, and they see new combinations of talent, technology, and program combining together to make change where change did not happen before. The companies want in on the action and want to help, which is why Cisco, and HP, and Google, and Twitter, and more were at the conference, eager to use their talent and their tools to make the world a better place.
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  Citizen Schools Teaching Fellows

  I learned there are pockets of people all over the world who know about and draw inspiration from Citizen Schools.  Two years ago I met with Louise van Rhyn, CEO and Founder of Symphonia for South Africa. Now Louise says she goes all around her country talking about the 80 percent of a child’s waking hours that are out of school and the need for citizens to step up as full partners with the state in ensuring healthy futures for their children and their country.  “We elected a new government,” Louise told me last night, “but now we need models like Citizen Schools to get our people engaged in making our society work.”  Others in Japan, Colombia, and England said they are frequent visitors to our web site.  Willy Oppenheim, a Rhodes Scholar and founder of Omprakash, which connects volunteers, to schools around the world, said he has drawn inspiration from Citizen Schools since his days teaching in rural Maine; he offered to push the Teaching Fellow job opportunity on his web site, which gets 13,000 unique visitors every month.

• My last lesson was about grit.  We talk about how our kids will need to develop and show grit as they take on big challenges and work their way through hardships to inspiring futures.  We on the staff need grit too.  And we need to find ways to perpetually replenish our supply — whether it is through listening to Annie Lennox, talking with an inspirational peer, or just spending a little more time with a child or parent or volunteer at Citizen Schools and reminding ourselves that we are helping to build a bridge to a better, fairer, more beloved future.

These corporate volunteers are teaching our students about electrical engineering, investing, creating and marketing products, the science in baking, documentary filmmaking, LED technology, and so much more.

In New York, 230 sixth grade students from East Harlem and the Bronx visit the Google NY headquarters each week. Google is offering a wide range of exciting apprenticeships this semester including “Gourmet Google,” which looks at the cultural, biological, and economic aspects of food.

In North Carolina, Cisco employees are leading the “Brand You/Networking 101” apprenticeship, which teaches students about key marketing and business concepts. Cisco is also offering a math focused apprenticeship, “Building Blocks with Math,” which focuses on the fundamentals of math and design through the creation of 2D and 3D scalable models.

These are just a few examples of the tremendous learning opportunities our students are exposed to thanks to the support of our partners and Citizen Teachers. Learn more about how your company can get involved.

Citizen Schools News:

• Charlotte Chamber – 1/26/12 – Bob About Town Visits Citizen Schools – Charlotte Chamber President Bob Morgan visited MLK Middle School last week while students were preparing for their 6 Degrees of Charlotte interviews. He was able to talk to a few students about how they are preparing for the event.
• East Durham Children’s Initiative – 1/27/12 – What is EDCI? – A video featuring Jill Ullman, the Development Director of Citizen Schools North Carolina, is featured on the landing page of the EDCI website.
• The Charlotte Observer:  South Charlotte News – 1/29/12 – Event Helps At-Risk Students Network, Succeed – The Citizen Schools’ 6 Degrees of Charlotte networking event is featured in this article.
• TED Charlotte- 1/31/12 – Citizen Schools Connects 8^th Grade Students to Local Professionals – The 6 Degrees of Charlotte is featured in this article written by Abby Whisenant, the Executive Assistant & Communications Associate of Citizen Schools North Carolina.
• Thread Square – 2/1/12 – Sewing for Citizen Schools – Citizen Schools was mentioned in this blog post that describes a recent sewing class that took place with Citizen Schools students.
• The Harvard Crimson – 2/1/12 – How to Grow STEM – Article mentions Google’s support of Citizen Schools STEM initiatives.
• The Boston College Chronicle – 2/2/12 – GSSW, Capstone Launch Social Innovation Effort – Citizen Schools and Eric Schwarz, CEO and co-founder of Citizen Schools, are mentioned in this article that discusses a recent forum at Boston College where Eric spoke.

Education Stories and News:

• Education Week: Digital Education (Blog) – 1/26/12 – School of One Creators Unveil New Nonprofit – New Classroom Innovation Partners will launch middle school math programs in three cities including Chicago and Perth Amboy, NJ under the name “Teach to One: Math.”
• The New York Times – 1/30/12 – The Great Divorce – Article discusses Charles Murray’s new book “Coming Apart” that looks at how America is dividing into a two-caste society.
• USA Today – 2/1/12 – Obama Wants Schools to Speed Digital Transition – Story that discusses Obama’s plan to have an e-textbook in every student’s hand by 2017.
• The Washington Post – 1/29/12 – Is College Not For Poor Kids? – Article discusses a list used by the College Success Foundation to help disadvantaged students prepare for college and graduation.

Citizen Schools news:

• The New York Times, The Opinion Pages – 12/11/2011 – The Unaddressed Link Between Poverty and Education – This opinion piece is written by Edward Fiske, who is on the board of Citizen Schools New Jersey, and his wife Helen Ladd. The op-ed mentions Citizen Schools and looks at the disadvantages students in impoverished areas face and discusses how policy leaders are currently dealing with the issue in education reform.
• Boston Magazine Blog, Boston Daily – 12/12/2011 – Students Take on Celtics Management – This blog post looks at the “Managing the Celtics” apprenticeship that students at Orchard Gardens took part in this fall semester.
• Forbes – 12/12/2011 – Do Americans Have 21^st Century Jobs Skills? – This article by Howard Elias, President and COO of EMC, explores why so many jobs in the technology field are left unfilled despite the growing number of positions available. Citizen Schools is mentioned as an organization that creates a passion for STEM among students.
• The Boston Herald – 12/14/2011 – Google Gives $3M for Hub Nonprofit’s Afterschool Efforts – This article focuses specifically on the grant that Google awarded Citizen Schools.
• The Boston Globe – 12/14/2011- Google to Give $6M to Local Groups – The article mentions Citizen Schools as an organization that Google singled out “for its work in exposing students to science, technology, engineering, and math education, and for expanding the “horizons of underprivileged youngsters.’’
• Mass High Tech – 12/14/2011 – Google to Give $6M in STEM Grants to Boston Groups – An article announcing the grant mentions Citizen Schools.
• The Herald Sun – 12/14/2011- Citizen Schools Wraps Up First Semester at Neal – A great reflection on the successful first semester at Neal in Durham, NC.
• Mass High Tech, Blog – 12/14/2011 – STEM Needs to Branch Out – This article is written by Rodney Brown who was a “celebrity” judge at the Boston Building & Innovation WOW! The piece discusses Brown’s positive experience at the WOW! and praises the work Citizen Schools is doing to improve STEM education.
• Boston.com – 12/14/2011 – Google to Give $6M to Local Groups as Part of Effort to Help Education and Tech Nonprofits – This article announces the grants made by Google and specifically highlights the grant made to Citizen Schools.
• Boston Business Journal – 12/14/2011- Google Grants $6M to 3 Boston Nonprofits – A brief announcement of the Google grants that mentions Citizen Schools.
• Network World, Open Source Matters – 12/14/2011 – Google’s Impressive Year of Philanthropy – An announcement of the Google grants that specifically mentions Citizen Schools.
• Skoll Foundation – 12/14/2011 – Google Supports Five Skoll Awardees – An article that announces the Google grants and highlights Citizen Schools.
• The Boston Globe – 12/14/2011- Let Students Stay Near Homes – But Offer Choice As Needed – Article discusses the zoning rules in Boston that prevent kids from attending some schools. Citizen Schools is mentioned as “a highly-quality nonprofit provider” that provides three hours of after-school mentoring at $1,500 per student, the same amount that it costs to bus students across the city.

A few additional blogs also posted about Citizen Schools this week:

• Moxie Q – 12/13/2011 – Shien-Ru Tsao Pulls Herself and Others Up By the Bootstraps – Shein-Ru Tsao runs a social philanthropy organization, Project 116, that is partnered with Citizen Schools. The article features the work she has done this year with students through her entrepreneurship and product design apprenticeship.
• Nonprofit-force.org – 12/13/2011 – How Citizen Schools has Deployed Salesforce Chatter -  An article that looks at how Citizen Schools uses Chatter.
• The Official Google Blog – 12/14/2011 – Giving Back in 2011 – A post on Google’s official blog that features the grant given to Citizen Schools at the top of the page among other STEM organizations that received grants.
• Students for Ed Reform – 12/14/2011 – How Students Should Guide Policy – An article written by Allie Kimmel, a senior at Harvard who is also a student teacher in Boston, that looks at the experiences her students have had so far this semester. Kimmel mentions Citizen Schools as a program that one of her students could benefit from because the program would “introduce him to the working world [and] emphasize the importance of securing a high school diploma.”

Two great videos were also posted this week on Youtube featuring Citizen Schools students, Teaching Fellows, and Google Citizen Teachers:

• 12/13/2011 – Dear Mr. Rohit… – Students at Elmhurst Community Prepatory School in Oakland, CA made a video showing all of the things that their teacher Mr. Rohit taught them this semester. It looks like the students had a successful fall!
• 12/13/2011 – Google Citizen Schools Video – Google volunteers share their apprenticeship experiences and challenge people to “Step Up for Citizen Schools” and volunteer as a Citizen Teacher.

Education articles:

• The New York Times – 12/15/2011 – Failure Rate of Schools Overstated, Study Says –  An article that discusses the new failure rate of all of the nation’s public schools reported by a new study, which is up to 48% from 39% in 2010.
• Education Week – 12/16/2011 – 9 States Win Race to Top Early Learning Grants – A piece discussing the nine states, California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Washington, that received Race to the Top early learning grants.

The Education News Weekly Roundup is brought to you by Holly Trippett, the Public Relations Intern at Citizen Schools and a senior at Emerson College studying Marketing Communications.

The Boston Herald

December 14, 2011

After the announcement was made this morning, The Boston Herald published a piece on the grant that Google.org has awarded Citizen Schools. Citizen Schools’ co-founder and CEO Eric Schwarz was quoted, “Citizen Schools is built around citizen teachers from the community. So we have Google engineers working with students to design Android apps or to design video games. Instead of going home to play video games, they stay at school and help design them.” Read the full article here.

Google Supports Citizen Schools With Volunteers and Dollars
$3.25 Million Grant Supports Hands-On, Expanded Learning Programs

BOSTON, MA, December 14, 2011—Citizen Schools, a national non-profit organization that partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for low-income students, today announced a $3.25 million dollar grant from Google.org to support its programs in 17 communities across the country.

The grant accompanies the personal participation of Google employees in Citizen Schools’ educational model. More than 350 Google employees have volunteered with Citizen Schools since 2006, teaching nearly 100 hands-on courses called apprenticeships with middle schools in New York, California and Massachusetts.

Each apprenticeship unites one or more volunteer adults with about 15 students from a partner middle school, to meet weekly for 11 weeks to complete a project in a real- world field. Google employees have taught curricula designed to bridge academic skills with real-world careers, including blogging, video game design, cell phone marketing, computer programming, mural making, and photography.

“Middle-school students, especially low-income students at higher risk of dropping out of high school, need to spend more time learning, and they need that time to be engaging,” says Eric Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Schools. “When passionate adults from Google and elsewhere show them the connections between learning and future careers that look like fun, it translates into better performance in academics.”

Alan Su, a software engineer at Google in Cambridge, has taught nine apprenticeships in the last five years, including one on Android applications in which students from the Edwards Middle School in Charlestown presented the programs they had developed to an audience of peers, families and other Google employees.

The 60 Boston middle school students learning from Google employees this semester present their final projects at a “WOW!” near Google’s Cambridge office on December 15. Five apprenticeships, led by 15 volunteers, will be showcased for parents, Google employees, and a panel of Google judges. Projects include online games, robots, and food: one group of volunteers taught a “Top Chef” apprenticeship, whose dishes will be prepared at the event and judged by Google’s on-site chefs.

Google employees have also taught Citizen Schools apprenticeships at middle schools in other parts of the country—a grand total of 355 volunteers, teaching nearly 1,400 students about a wide range of subjects. In California, students at four schools from Campbell, Redwood City and Oakland have taken Google apprenticeships. In New York, Google volunteers have taught apprenticeships to students in seven middle schools, in East Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.

“Google’s deep commitment to education—especially to bringing technology and engineering to life for students—has set the bar for high impact, results-driven investment,” says Schwarz. “Their talent and resources are really moving the needle for students and schools.”

Citizen Schools’ apprenticeships are part of expanded learning partnerships with 31 middle schools in seven states. The organization provides a “second shift of educators,” consisting of the volunteers plus AmeriCorps members and paid staff, to add 400 hours of learning time to schools’ traditional school year. Those hours, usually from 3 to 5 in the afternoon, comprise academic support and exposure to colleges and careers as well as apprenticeships, led by volunteers from a range of organizations, including Google.

In the next three years, Citizen Schools plans to increase the number of students served from 4,200 to 6,600, and evaluate the program’s effectiveness over time.

Citizen Schools is one of several dozen organizations receiving grants from Google.org at the end of 2011.

About Citizen Schools

Citizen Schools is a leading national education initiative that partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for children in low-income communities across the country through afterschool and expanded learning time programs. The organization mobilizes a second shift of afternoon educators, who provide academic support, leadership development, and “apprenticeships”—hands-on projects taught by volunteers from business and civic organizations. At 31 middle schools in seven states across the country, Citizen Schools students develop the skills they need to succeed in high school, college, the workforce, and civic life. Learn more about Citizen Schools’ programs and results at www.citizenschools.org.