9-9 Saturday Regents Preparation
9-9 Regents Prep four Saturdays preceding the Regents. All students who are scheduled to take the Regents
Regents level teachers (Saturday Academy runs concurrently). Students arrive at 9:00am and remain for 12 hours with two breaks. Lunch and Dinner are provided by the Parents.
9th Grade Professional Learning Community (PLC)
This school year, the High School for Law and Public Service (HSLPS) located in Washington Heights, created a common period where each grade level Professional Learning Community (PLC) meets at the same time, twice a week, during the school day. The 9th grade PLC, led by Assistant Principal and ESI Liaison, Alexandra Brown, decided to include students once per week during their meeting.
From January- June, ESI starts the Academic Achievement Program. In this program, ESI recommends 20 students from each grade to come after-school for extra help. Two teachers from each grade help administer the program. Each teacher is in charge of ten students. These students stay after school twice a week for two hours to do make up assignments, regents prep or tutoring for any subject they are having difficulties with. The teacher monitors their grades and any improvement they are making.
George Washington Carver High School for the Sciences (GWCHSS) employs an online platform of videos and resources that reflect the cultural experiences of young Black and Latino males. GWCHSS has found that this content is critical to recreating culturally-relevant educational connections among its targeted student population. School Advisors begin by watching the videos with students. Each video features a teen’s true experience about the challenges that Black and Latino male students face.
The Academic Support Center is a tutoring center for 9th & 10th grade black and Latino young men. The tutoring center is open from Monday – Thursday from 4-6pm. After tutoring, the student incentive is participation in a basketball game from 6-8:30pm. The Academic Support Center has been open since October and is run by a school guidance counselor, a special ed teacher and a science teacher.
At Bronx Leadership Academy II, we have used our ESI resources to introduce Blue Engine services into specific traditional content-based courses. During Year One, Blue Engine services were used throughout our 9th grade Math and English classes. During Year Two, Blue Engine services expanded into 10th grade Math and English classes as well as continuing their work with 9th grade Math and English classes. Blue Engine is an organization that focuses on enhancing the classroom learning environment for students in order to increase the percentage of students who succeed within each specific course.
Building Resilient Outstanding Scholars (BROS) Therapeutic Program
The BROS therapeutic program provides a web of supports and infuses culturally relevant experiences and pedagogy. An advisory class was designed to address the psycho-affective, social-emotional and intellectual concerns of the young men at the Eagle Academy.
Campus visits generally take place year round at BK Law and Tech. There is definitely more of an emphasis during the second semester as students and professors have settled into the academic school year. Last spring we developed a “Spring Campus Crawl”.
From September – December, we had check-in luncheons every 3 weeks. Students met with teachers during this time. In this time, grades were looked at and new goals were created. During these luncheons, the boys were able to discuss what they are having difficulties with. We used this time to reiterate the importance of passing their classes and regents to keep the promise they made to themselves and ESI. In the end of December, the ESI team meets to pick the students who they feel will benefit for extra help based on the luncheons and their report card.
We started our College and Career Initiative last year. We have always done things on a small scale, but the last two years we have made an effort to include all students. They hear about college and career readiness in all of their classes. We talk about it at school meetings and PDs. Everyone is involved. The Guidance Counselors, the Social Worker and the Parent Coordinator, the Administrators and the teachers attend external PD relating to college readiness.
College House Immersion Challenger
Every student in grade 9 and 10 is placed in a house at the beginning of the academic school year. Each house is named after a university. The houses are named: Harvard, Columbia, Yale and UWI (University of the West Indies). Each house has teacher and student leaders. Houses compete all year long in events. Each event adds points to your house bank. Some of the events include but are not limited to: Academic debates, Academic Inter house quick-fire challenge, spelling challenge, House Banner Challenge, and Field Day Challenge. The house with the most points in their bank receives a free trip and a Trophy emblazoned with the House name for all to see.
Contracting Community-Based Organizations to provide daily and direct services to RHSMTT students
One of our best practices involves contracting services from CBOs to provide daily and direct services to our students. Since the 2012-13 school year and up to the present, our students have received services from the following CBOs:
FEGS Health & Human Services Systems: The primary function is to provide academic, post-secondary and socio-emotional support primarily to 9th & 10th grade male students. The support is provided through individual counseling sessions, in-class academic support, weekly advisory sessions and three weekly after-school club sessions that focus on mentorship, peer leadership/mediation training and a student council.
A year-long, two-credit theme-based advisory course for all Freshmen. This practice includes six marking periods, six module themes, and six teachers. Each marking period, students will rotate into a new module, with a new teacher, focused on a different theme.
Positive Reinforcement: Meet students where they are; highlight and celebrate successes; utilize strategies and techniques to encourage, build and restore confidence and self-esteem; occurs during weekly sessions for the past 4 years; teacher teams and guest speakers are involved.
East Bronx Academy for the Future (EBA) celebrated what is now an annual event and a rite of passage at their school, the ESI Ring Ceremony. Last year, the young men in the Class of 2016 freshmen cohort received their graduation rings during a commitment ceremony that was witnessed by staff, peers, parents and guardians. These young men received their ring and read a pledge that focused on things that they needed to do in order to graduate in 2016.
On Saturday, March 8, members of the Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology community held a day-long ESI school-wide retreat at the LaGuardia Marriot. Over 60 stakeholders including the entire school staff, student scholars, parents, external partners, and representatives from the ESI central team gathered to begin the process of rewriting the vision for the school community utilizing ESI practices as a basis and framework.
Extend students’ school day by 2 hours and provide academic courses and assistance to struggling and advanced students, provide enrichment such as robotics, music production, book club, peer mediation, gender-based mentoring, assign an ELT liaison to coordinate after-school courses, daily from 3:30-5:30PM, teachers and outside liaisons are involved.
Students help at school events, partake in peer tutoring, attend an induction ceremony, have their own uniform shirts and go on reward trips.
George Washington Carver High School for the Sciences (GWCHSS) employs an online platform of videos and resources that reflect the cultural experiences of young Black and Latino males. GWCHSS has found that this content is critical to recreating culturally-relevant educational connections among its targeted student population. School Advisors begin by watching the videos with students. Each video features a teen’s true experience about the challenges that Black and Latino male students face.
The practices involve creating additional classes called college ready classes. These classes are supplementary to the regular Regents math classes where the content area is reinforced through a series of mathematical based activities building on the students’ problem solving skills using collaborative strategies in the classroom. These strategies have been reinforced by utilizing the College Board Spring Board framework throughout the math curriculum.
Our school started a Boy’s Leadership program that would serve as the program for ESI activities. Dubbed “Man-Up,” 5 male teachers drafted teams of 9th and 10th grade boys. We then created a competition between these teams in areas of academics, attendance, participation at school functions and other contests. We then gather the boy’s twice monthly, share data and update activities, award prizes, etc. We also use this as an opportunity to divide the boys into teams and mentor them.
Male Youth Empowerment Symposium
The empowerment symposium is a special day that we have designed here at ACORN Community High School to provide additional support for ESI in our school. The day is composed of several workshops/ panel discussions centered around information that coincides with making our African American and Latino young men college and career ready.
Teachers and students have seen the benefits of the mentoring program at Explorations Academy High School. As part of the program, eleventh and twelfth grade Black and Latino male student mentors are paired with ninth and tenth grade student mentees. As part of the program, mentors support the academic and social/emotional growth of their mentees.
George Washington Carver High School for the Sciences (GWCHSS) employs an online platform of videos and resources that reflect the cultural experiences of young Black and Latino males. GWCHSS has found that this content is critical to recreating culturally-relevant educational connections among its targeted student population. School Advisors begin by watching the videos with students. Each video features a teen’s true experience about the challenges that Black and Latino male students face.
Peer Group Connection is a high-school peer leadership program designed to build caring, safe and learning communities where diversity is respected. PGC helps motivate students to get involved in school activities and improve academic performance. This helps students develop leadership skills that can help our students make positive changes in our school environment.
Peer Group Connections Partnership
Peer Group Connections is a peer-to-peer mentoring program that is designed to ease the transition to high school for new ninth grade students. The Center for Supportive Schools created the program which provides top rate training for instructional and leadership staff at our school, who in turn train eleventh grade peer leaders to conduct weekly outreach session with small groups of ninth grade students.
Peer mentoring is something we’ve had since the start of the ESI grant. Alumni, college-going males mentor ESI students and lead our Gents group. We have anywhere from 4-5 mentors working for a stipend to provide peer mentorship through classroom push-ins, pull-outs, observations, tutoring, weekly small group lunches as well as meeting with parents, staff and students regarding academics and socio-emotional needs. Mentors are each in 2-3 days weekly and we have at least one in each day.
This year we’ve used a significant portion of our ESI funds to create a peer mentoring program. This program – adopted from the Princeton Center for Supportive Schools’ Peer Group Connection program – is intended to: Build relationships between older and younger students in the school…
Personalization through Advisories
Weekly advisories with small class sizes use College Board advisory curriculum. Advisories meet once a week for 45 minute class on Fridays at the end of the day.
Restructuring Math Instructional Program
Summer Bridge for Incoming 8th Graders – Algebra 1 (credit bearing), College Visit, and Engineering Project (oral presentation at STEM Showcase Day and written portion)
Robotics/computer programming course. Based on success with robotics mini-course in February of 2013 and after-school robotics program. Daily course that will count as a math credit for students.
Saturday Academy open to all students who need additional tutoring. Freshmen who are falling behind in more than one subject are scheduled for Saturday Academy. Sophomores – Seniors are scheduled as needed Saturdays 10:00am – 1:00pm. All teaching staff are involved
The Young men Leadership group is a single gender group that focuses on teaching young men the importance of discipline, respect and education. This single-gender setting allows for minimal distractions on their journey to building character and learning leadership. We have based their teachings off of the five prides: Respect, Integrity, Loyalty, Accountability and Courage. The students are expected to learn and possess these qualities as a group. We hope to increase academic achievement, school connectedness, positive student-teacher relationships and brotherhood.
The High School of Sports Management (HSSM) implemented a school advisory program in year 2 of ESI. Last year, we piloted advisory with the class of 2016 and teachers were professionally developed around student goal setting. Every student at HSSM has an advisor. Advisories class sizes ranges from 12-20 students, larger advisories have co-advisors. Advisory meets every Thursday for one hour during Period 3 (9:31-10:31).
Science Coaching that emphasizes literacy and inquiry through ISA. Our coach, Miriam, comes once a week, meets our living environment teacher, observes him, and plans with him the next few lessons of the unit during the course of one whole school day. She brings resources that support the teacher’s work and makes their lives easier by helping them plan out lessons and performance tasks.
Social/Emotional Basis of Success
We implemented a negotiation training program into the college prep piece ESI. In essence, students were made aware of their role in their own success. The program focused on students finding their place within their family, Luperon and finally NYC. Being immigrant students, understanding themselves while learning to understand a new culture was a difficult but necessary act. It takes place now on Mondays and we have a dedicated counselor and third party provider that supports this piece of the program. It has been in place since the inception of the ESI program although it morphed from an in-house venture.
The goal of the summer bridge program was to expose incoming 9th grade students to BK Law and Tech’s unique and enriching learning environment. Utilizing Math, English, Science including the common core literacy instructional shifts, technology and programming skills students conceptualized, designed, and marketed a robot. Our goal was to provide students with a variety of engaging opportunities and experiences that would not only ease the transition from middle school to high school, but would strengthen the new peer relationships and develop key academic understandings and skills.
One of Channel View’s best practices is our Summer Bridge program. The Summer Bridge program targets incoming freshmen and lasts for six weeks during the summer. During this program students have an opportunity to earn one Math and one English credit, which gives them an advantage later on their High School years to take college level courses.
Trips are organized throughout the year: one Blairstown trip per semester; at least one college trip per semester. Focus is on 9th graders, but last Blairstown trip also included mentors from upper grades.
We started this practice last year, and have been involving as many teachers as possible to go along with these students.
The Big Sib program assigns every 9th grade boy to an 11th or 12th grade mentor, or Big Sib. Big Sibs are recruited through an application process, but starting next year, the 11th grade boys will all become Big Sibs, as they have participated in the program as Little Sibs. This is our 2nd year running the program. We have partnered with Outward Bound, through which the Big Sibs participate in workshops that help build their leadership and collaboration skills.
George Washington Carver High School for the Sciences (GWCHSS) employs an online platform of videos and resources that reflect the cultural experiences of young Black and Latino males. GWCHSS has found that this content is critical to recreating culturally-relevant educational connections among its targeted student population. School Advisors begin by watching the videos with students. Each video features a teen’s true experience about the challenges that Black and Latino male students face.
The Liberator’s program is comprised of ninth and tenth grade students who receive mentorship from 11th and 12th grade students and staff. This program is designed to provide mentorship, academic support, cultural opportunities, and social emotional support to Black and Latino young men.
George Washington Carver High School for the Sciences (GWCHSS) employs an online platform of videos and resources that reflect the cultural experiences of young Black and Latino males. GWCHSS has found that this content is critical to recreating culturally-relevant educational connections among its targeted student population. School Advisors begin by watching the videos with students. Each video features a teen’s true experience about the challenges that Black and Latino male students face.
Transforming a Cultural Relevant Learning Community
Media Spot entails students centered technology in the classroom. A consultant comes in weekly and meets with the teachers for common planning. Presentations will be developed with core courses (Math, Science, English and Social Studies). The students will complete tasks that are common core aligned to their curriculum in subject area.
A special weekend assembly program is held for both boys in the ESI program and students who have failed one or more classes. Students are given written invitations in school and parents / guardians are sent letters of invitation. This special assembly takes place once in the Fall and once in the Spring. We have had similar assemblies in the past. However, this assembly was more successful because the parents attended.
All students are encouraged to participate in ESI activities such as: Guest speakers, College visits, Group discussions, Homework help/peer tutoring, and Peer mentoring. ESI student meet with ESI design team members once a week and hold meeting that focus on self-esteem, resiliency, self-reflection, college and career readiness, and various other topics. The purpose of the weekly meeting is to provide opportunities for 9th grade male students to learn about the aforementioned topics, and to provide access and resources in a way that will allow for future leadership opportunities.
The Young Men’s Group began in October 2013. Twice a week during lunch, a representative from College Confident facilitates a discussion on issues relevant to the lives of the young men. The facilitator is a current college student who comes with an agenda and materials to foster discussion. In addition to the lunchtime sessions, the students take trips. Last year they visited two colleges. Within the 49 minute lunch period students share pizza and discussion. Last year ninth graders were involved. This year it is for 9th and 10th graders. The goal of the group is to help the young men learn how to confront and deal with the challenges that occur to distract them from their education. Conflict resolution is a large focus of the group.