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LearningWorks makes a place for traditionally underserved middle school kids
Middle school, with all its social and academic demands, can be rough on students just entering their teens. "I spoke softly, avoided eye contact and was never really sure of myself. I dressed in only black or red clothing...and usually enjoyed spaces where I could sit alone and not have to interact with anyone," recalled Basanti Miller, now a high school senior.
Then she joined LearningWorks. "After the first year of LearningWorks, I performed on stage at our big end-of-the-summer celebration. From sitting alone by myself, to performing on stage in front of a good couple hundred people--it was obvious a change had been made, right?"
| 'We are obviously looking for students who have a fire in the belly.' |
LearningWorks is a tuition-free, academic enrichment program for highly motivated, traditionally underserved middle school students of the Minneapolis Public Schools. "We are obviously looking for students who have a fire in the belly," says Executive Director Amy Sandeen '94. "We end up with about 80 percent students of color....Over a third of our students speak a language other than English at home; most of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Many of them will be the first in the family to attend college. LearningWorks offers a chance for kids who are smart to come together....Here, it's cool to be smart."
LearningWorks |
Admission Possible
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- established 1999
- has served 235 students and involved 97 teachers
- all 29 members of the first class are enrolled in a four-year college
- seven Mac students have taught at LearningWorks and three in the counterpart program, Breakthrough Saint Paul, established in 2005 by former LearningWorks teacher Jeff Ochs
- blakeschool.org
- moundsparkacademy.org
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- established 2000
- serves nearly 1,000 students in 13 public high schools around the Twin Cities
- all 263 seniors in 2006 were accepted to college, 95% to a four-year college
- as of fall 2006, 11 Admission Possible students have been enrolled at Macalester according to Communications Coordinator Sarah Hilton Idowu '04
- this year six Mac alumni are serving Admission Possible as full-time AmeriCorps members
- admissionpossible.org
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LearningWorks is a public/private partnership of Blake School, which provides program space and administrative support, and the Minneapolis Public Schools, which provide lunches during the summer and transportation year round. LearningWorks is not a recruiting program for Blake School, a prestigious prep school, though a few students have ended up there, but it prepares students to pursue rigorous programs in the public school system. Interested sixth-graders apply, and those accepted commit themselves to two years of Saturday morning classes during the school year and six weeks of seven-hour days, Monday through Friday, during the summers. They take core subjects--English, math, science and social studies--as well as elective classes in art and communications.
In LearningWorks' "students teaching students" model, curriculum design and teaching are done by high school juniors and seniors or undergraduate college students, and they have wide latitude in how they teach their subjects. "We encourage teachers to teach their passion," says Sandeen. "They design their own curriculum, with the help of mentor teachers....[Students learn] writing skills through critiquing music or math through sports statistics, things that they can relate to."
This gives high school and college students insight into careers in education, a second objective of LearningWorks. Graham Ravdin '06 was a program teacher for two years. "In my first summer, I taught a multicultural literature course in the English department. We read Langston Hughes, wrote 'hip-hoperas' and even had class on a bridge above I-94."
'I could not be as comfortable with the person that I am now without LearningWorks--I know this for a fact.' |
Ravdin is now co-directing Summerbridge Hong Kong, a similar program that, like LearningWorks, is one of 26 such programs joining together as the Breakthrough Collaborative. "LearningWorks empowers teachers to 'own the program' by giving them an unusual level of authority and administrative responsibility...," he wrote from Hong Kong. "To Amy's credit, I already knew what excellence in a director looked like. Additionally, I would not have been willing or capable of directing an NGO in Hong Kong right out of college without benefiting from Macalester's focus on internationalism."
This fall, the first LearningWorks class began their first year of college, says Sandeen, "and all 29 students are going to a four-year school." Thanks to a McGuire Family Foundation grant, the program is expanding to serve 120 students per year.
Another program, Admission Possible, helps talented, motivated and economically disadvantaged Minnesota high school students go to college by providing ACT test preparation services and assistance with admissions and financial aid applications. Through a partnership called Opportunities Abound, Macalester and Admission Possible work together to promote the enrollment of and foster increased access to higher education for local youth--many of whom are potential first-generation college students, low-income and/or students of color.
"I could not be as comfortable with the person that I am now without LearningWorks--I know this for a fact," says Basanti Miller, who is applying to colleges this year. "I would never have been able to get involved with my community as much as I am now had it not been for LearningWorks giving me the confidence in myself to take risks and make challenges for myself to overcome."
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