This call focused on extended learning opportunities for high school students and featured Angela Hernandez-Marshall, Director, Secondary School Redesign, CCSSO; Michelle Novello, Executive Director, RiverzEdge Arts Project; Karen Pittman, Executive Director, The Forum for Youth Investment; and Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom, Program Manager, The Forum for Youth Investment. In addition, students participating in the RiverzEdge Arts Project, Wesley Cruz and Kyjuana Boyd, provided remarks.
The call provided an opportunity for SEAs to consider how to best serve high school students during out-of-school time. On the call Angela Hernandez-Marshall provided remarks on high school redesign and its implications for both SEAs and afterschool. She also gave examples of connections between high school reform and afterschool. Karen Pittman and Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom gave explicit linkages between high school reform and afterschool based on The Forum for Youth Investment’s out-of-school commentary series, number two and ten; discussed the various types of quality afterschool programs serving high school students; and offered guidance to SEAs on what changes could be made to 21st CCLC grant competitions that might attract more proposals to serve high school students. Michelle Novello shared her experience on the challenges and successes related to programming for high school youth. The students, Kyjuana Boyd and Wesley Cruz discussed their views of the meaningful and relevant aspects in both their high school and RiverzEdge experience.
Please download and access materials and the transcript of the call
Extended Learning Opportunities for High School Students – presentation by Angela Hernandez-Marshall
CCSSO Transforming Instruction Pre-Meeting Reads
National Youth Employment Coalition. Financing Alternative Education Pathways Executive Summary
America Youth Policy Forum. Whatever It Takes—How 12 Communities are Reconnecting OST Youth, Chapter Five: Portland, OR
National High School Alliance. A Call to Action Resource Guide
21st Century Skills, 21st Century Contexts: Promoting Rigor, Relevance and Relationships in School and Community Learning Environments – presentation by Karen Pittman and Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom
The Forum for Youth Investment. Out-of-School Time Policy Commentary #2: High School After-School: What is it? What it might be? Why is it important?
The Forum for Youth Investment. Out-of-School Time Policy Commentary #10: Rethinking the High School Experience: What’s After-School Got To Do With It?
RiverzEdge Arts Project pictures
Written transcript of the Audioconference
Audio recording of the call
PRESENTER BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
KYJUANA BOYD
Kyjuana has been a RiverzEdge participant for three years. She is sixteen and is currently in the eleventh grade at Woonsocket High School. “When I first heard about RiverzEdge, I had a 32% in English. I was doing really bad in school,” she said.
At 13 Kyjuana began having difficulties at home as well, her parents were in the midst of their final break up and life was becoming increasingly frustrating. Of course, her sudden bad grades caused even greater difficulties between Kyjuana and her parents, and before long her life began to feel out of her control.
“My guidance counselors at school told me about RiverzEdge. They knew I definitely needed something,” Kyjuana explained. “I had to get my grades up before I could come! Honestly, if I hadn’t had the incentive I would have struggled for the rest of high school.”
Kyjuana joined our Graphic Design Studio and has worked hard on both her art and design skills and her schoolwork over the past 3 years. She had no computer skills when she entered the program, and started out in the Painting Studio before becoming intrigued by computer graphics. She is a youth mentor to 3 participants and feels extremely proud of this accomplishment. “I really enjoy it,” she said. “I feel like I’m really doing something for them - helping them. Before I didn’t like to talk to new people, now I am really opening up and I talk to everyone.”
Kyjuana has been the lead artist in designing four web sites. In fact, when we were in between instructors, she worked with another participant, met with a new client, and created an amazing web site (stonehorseconstruction.com)-without a teacher. Additionally, Kyjuana recently represented RiverzEdge as speaker and panelist at a national workshop for the After School Plus Alliance Networks conference in Newport, RI. She has been listed in the Who's Who in America's High Schools, has attended the Presidential Leadership Forum and the National Leadership Forum and is a member of the National Honors Society.
Kyjuana plans to attend the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in California after she graduates next year.
WESLEY CRUZ
Wesley is a 17 year old high school junior. A year ago his grades were poor, he felt unmotivated and his constant fights with his parents were taking a toll on all of them. “My parents didn’t care about my grades, no one was pushing me to be top notch. I was bored out of my life and just wasting time,” he said recently. He knew he needed a job and was planning to seek employment in a fast food restaurant like many of his peers. Wesley knew it would mean even less time and energy for school as many students took early morning shifts before school, then put in a full day of classes before heading back to work late into the evening.
Fortunately for Wesley, he partnered with a long-time RiverzEdge participant on a school project. She told Wesley about the program and even brought him to RiverzEdge to show him around. He said he couldn’t believe that he would be able get paid for making art and it didn’t phase him that he had to keep his grades up in order to attend. He knew he was smart; he just hadn’t had a reason to care before.
Wesley chose to join the Silkscreen Studio and began making designs immediately. He was paired with a youth mentor who helped him feel at home and provided guidance. Wesley feels that through his work at RiverzEdge and his involvement in community service work with his church, he is able to make a difference in the lives of other youth. He is anxious to become a mentor himself and feels that he has already taken a leadership role in the program. “People really need to have friends,” he explained. “I like to build relationships and provide people with help.”
Something else has transformed as well: “My family life has really changed,” he said, “my parents can see my commitment and they finally understand that I really have something to say in life. This is like a door into opportunity for me. RiverzEdge is a place to build a part of my future and to be united with other youth. This is where I express what I have inside.”
Wesley has found more than just a supportive community where he can express his ideas. At RiverzEdge he has also found a place where people not only care about his grades, they insist that he take responsibility for them. After failing 3 classes, he met with the staff at RiverzEdge. Out of that meeting, Wesley met with each teacher to talk about the situation; together they developed strategies to improve his grades. Wesley shared this with us through a paper he wrote that detailed the process. This proactive step was an enormous leap for someone who had in the past cared very little about his schoolwork.
As a junior, Wesley has taken advantage of our college counseling and knows that the art and business skills he has learned at RiverzEdge will be invaluable in any career he chooses. Unlike a year ago, Wesley now feels that he has infinite possibilities. “I want to be an architect,” he exclaimed “and a minister and a teacher!” And his grades have dramatically turned around, such that he is now on the road to fulfill his dreams.
ANGELA HERNANDEZ-MARSHALL
Angela Hernandez-Marshall serves as Project Director for Secondary School Redesign at the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Secondary School Redesign team is responsible for supporting states capacity-building efforts to implement statewide redesign initiatives. For the past 14 years, she has served as a researcher, teacher, district administrator, and nonprofit partner of public schools in New York, Minnesota, Texas, Washington, DC, and her native California. She received her graduate degrees from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and received her B.A. from Columbia University.
MICHELLE NOVELLO
Michelle Novello is founder and Executive Director of RiverzEdge Arts Project. After spending 2001-2002 at Harvard University earning a master’s in education, with a concentration in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy and a focus on Arts in Education, Michelle established a Board of Directors and launched RiverzEdge Arts Project, a paid arts apprenticeship benefiting Woonsocket’s at-risk high-school youth. The organization began in September 2002 with five teens and $5,000. Since the time, Michelle has raised close to two million dollars, works annually with 90 youth, approximately half of whom have been identified as at-risk, and a staff of eight, including two former teen participants. She won a leadership award in 2006 for the RI Foundation, a $12,500 grant for her work as Executive Director. This past April, RiverzEdge received a regional award from Citizens Bank and NBC 10, the Champions in Action Award, an initiative rewarding non-profit organizations who are making a difference in the communities.
In 1998, she began collaboration with the Rhode Island Training School (RITS), RI’s juvenile correctional facility, where she published, printed, and designed two poetry anthologies by RITS teenagers; organized three annual calligraphy exhibits using those poems as a basis for the artwork; and participated on a committee to develop an arts curriculum for RITS students. In 2002, she established and facilitated a weekly peer mentoring group with the RITS residents.
Prior to this change in careers, Michelle owned and operated Riverside Printers from 1992-2002, a printing and designing company in Riverside, RI. Throughout the past 25 years, she has been involved in producing, exhibiting, and cutting art exhibits. She also taught calligraphy and design in schools and community organizations, including the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and Rhode Island School of Design. She has also spoken annually at Rhode Island School of Design to master’s students in the community arts program.
Other past activities include: Chairperson and co-founder of Parents for Healthier Schools in 1996 where she organized parents; testified before the school committee; and wrote editorials to get $40,000 designated for air quality improvement in a building which posed serious health problems for students and teachers; President of the Montessori School Board of Trustees, which included reorganization of the school structure from a parent-run school to an educational organization with a full time director and staff; she reorganized the board to include community members in addition to parents; expanded the school from two to three classrooms; and added an after-school daycare program.
KAREN PITTMAN
Karen is currently the Executive Director of the Forum for Youth Investment, co-founded in 1998 with Merita Irby, and the President of Impact Strategies, Inc.
A sociologist and recognized leader in youth development, Karen started her career at the Urban Institute, conducting numerous studies on social services for children and families. Later, she worked six years at the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), launching its adolescent pregnancy prevention initiatives and helping to create its adolescent policy agenda. In 1990, she left CDF to become a Vice President at the Academy for Educational Development where she founded and directed the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research and its spin-off, the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work. In January 1995, Karen handed the Center’s reins to Richard Murphy, former Commissioner for Youth Services in New York City, in order to accept a position within the Clinton Administration as Director of the unfortunately short-lived President's Crime Prevention Council, where she worked with 13 cabinet secretaries to create a coordinated prevention agenda. In the fall of 1995, Karen joined the executive team of the International Youth Foundation, charged with helping the organization strengthen its program content and develop an evaluation strategy. In 1998, she and Rick Little, head of IYF, took a six-month leave of absence to work with General Powell to create America’s Promise. In 1999, she returned to IYF to lay the seeds for what has become the Forum.
A widely published author, Karen has written three books and dozens of articles on youth issues and is a regular columnist (Youth Today) and public speaker.
Karen has served on numerous boards and panels. Currently, she is vice-chair of the Board of the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, vice chair of the National Collaboration for Youth, co-chair of the Next Generation Youth Work Coalition and she is a Trustee and Steering Committee member with the America's Promise Alliance. She has also served on the boards of the National Center for Children in Poverty, Educational Testing Service, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the National Commission on the Senior Year of High School.
Karen is the 2002 recipient of the National Commission for African American Education Augustus F. Hawkins Service Award and the 2003 American Youth Policy Forum Decade of Service Award for Sustained Visionary Leadership in Advancing Youth Policy.
Karen earned a Masters degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Oberlin College.
ALICIA WILSON-AHLSTROM
Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom is a Program Manager at the Forum for Youth Investment where she oversees national and regional projects related to policy development, strategic alignment and general technical assistance on youth-focused policy and programmatic initiatives.
Alicia joined the Forum in 2002. Alicia works on national and regional projects related to policy development, strategic alignment and general technical assistance on youth policy and program initiatives. Her work focuses specifically on improving out-of-school time systems and after-school policy development; increasing program quality in the allied youth fields; and effective engagement of young people in public policy processes. Most recently she completed projects to document and compare three distinct efforts to improve program quality across a national, state or city system and a national survey of the professional characteristics, realities and supports for frontline youth workers. Prior to her work at the Forum, Alicia served as a program manager in the Adolescent Division of the High/Scope Foundation where she was responsible for developing curriculum and launching the Trainer Certification Program, an intensive program to prepare community-level trainers in youth development. She also managed four regional youth worker and teacher training initiatives in Detroit and Kalamazoo, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska and the city of Newcastle in the United Kingdom.
Alicia is a skilled trainer and has extensive and diverse experience in both the direct youth work and policy arenas. Alicia has contributed articles to the Encyclopedia of Youth Activism, New Directions in Youth Development, the Harvard Family Research Project and the Community Youth Development Journal. Alicia has also served on the boards of Break Away and the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning.
Alicia has participated in several fellowship and service programs, including the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, the New Leaders Academy of the National Youth Employment Coalition, the Moody Exchange Fellowship for Professional Study in South Africa and the AmeriCorps service program.
Alicia earned a Master of Public Policy degree and a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Calvin College.
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