Celebrating our members for AmeriCorps Week
AmeriCorps Week is a time to salute our AmeriCorps members and alumni for their service!
It is a time to say ‘Thank You’ to our AmeriCorps community partners, and communicate AmeriCorps’ impact on communities and on the lives of those we serve. Each year during AmeriCorps Week, Citizen Schools and the Corporation for National and Community Service recognizes the commitment of AmeriCorps members and alumni by highlighting the remarkable impact AmeriCorps makes across our nation, every day.
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Citizen Schools Appoints Four New Board Members to National Board of Directors
Boston, MA – On February 26th, Citizen Schools welcomed four new members to their National Board of Directors. Tony Barnes, Joyce Coleman, Bing Howell and Vincent Letteri, bringing nearly 80 years of combined professional experience to the four seats who are all excited to share their expertise to help drive Citizen Schools forward.
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“Do You Need to Talk?” Simple ways to tap into the mental health of our students
I am an educator. I am not a psychiatrist nor a trained mental health professional, but in my role as a Citizen Schools Teaching Fellow it’s my job to show students I care. The students I work with are between 13 and 15 years old. They have complex feelings and emotions and I seek to treat them as such, as opposed to “just kids” that don’t know any better. When I am supporting students in their classes, I often ask “how are you?” and mean it genuinely.
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OK Go is holding a contest to send student art projects into space!
Rock band OK Go is inviting elementary, middle and high school students to use their creative art and science minds to dream up cool experiments that can be sent into actual space onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.
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'Cracking The Case' with PwC
In our ‘Crack the Case” apprenticeship, students learn to become insightful marketers through careful research and analysis. Last fall, students at Isaac Newton Middle School in New York, played the role of business consultant to Ben and Jerry’s, working to determine the best choice for their newest flavor.
Led by partners and staff at PwC, the global professional services firm, students research the popularity and profitability of different flavors, and ultimately worked to build a case for their ice cream flavor - and why it should be chosen.
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Bringing a ‘maker mindset’ to the future of work
Maker-centered learning teaches life skills — critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Other aspects of education encourage and cultivate these skills in students, but one of the unique things about maker-centered learning is that it teaches students these particular skills in an interdisciplinary way.
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AmeriCorps Member Spotlight: Erica Yoon
Erica Yoon, joined Citizen Schools after graduating from UC Berkeley with a Bachelors majoring in Cognitive Science Education minor. Serving as a AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow at Greenleaf K-8 Elementary School family in Oakland, California, she says “I love this job! It is definitely a position that comes with various challenges, but the relationships I make and the improvements I see on a daily basis keep me going.” Outside of work, she enjoys going for swims, playing Monopoly Deal, and singing karaoke.
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Bridging Two Worlds - DACA Recipient Admitted Early to Harvard
An avid soccer player, Santy explained that the only reason he even heard about Menlo School, a private school in Atherton, was because of an after-school program, Citizen Schools, where he would wait out the gap of time between the end of school and the start of soccer practice and took an extracurricular course about local private school opportunities.
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Citizen Schools Employee Spotlight: Vanessa Bishop
This month our employee spotlight goes to Vanessa Bishop, Regional Director of the Massachusetts region. When asked where she gets her inspiration from she had this to say, “My faith and students. When I think about both of them, they give me a purpose to keep going when things are challenging. My faith reminds me that there is a bigger purpose in everything that I do. On the same note, our students our the center of all the work and they deserve the best we can give. “
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Our Schools, Our City - Learning, Growing and Exploring Beyond the School Day
On Thursday, February 7th, AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow, Iris Restrepo and two students from East Somerville Community School got the chance to chat with Educational TV: Somerville about their experience in Citizen Schools.
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Makerspace Ecosystem Summit for College Educators April 24-26 in Irvine, CA
The California Community College Makerspace initiative (CCC Maker) has partnered with the National Association of Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) to present make/SHIFT -- the Makerspace Ecosystem Summit in Irvine, CA on April 24-26. Registration is open for make/SHIFT and early bird discounts are available through February 28.
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How Citizen Schools Works to Close the Opportunity Gap
While talent is everywhere, the opportunity to develop the skills, mindsets, and networks needed for success is not. By the time they reach middle school, it has been shown that middle school students from middle-class families have spent 6,000 more hours learning than kids born into poverty. That’s where nonprofit organizations such as Citizen Schools come in, helping young students get the tools and networks that they need to later thrive as adults in a fast-moving economy.
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Citizen Schools Hires Kathryn Gabriele as New Campus Director at East Somerville Community School
Citizen Schools, a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Boston, is pleased to announce Kathryn Gabriele has been named the Campus Director at the East Somerville Community School. As Campus Director, she will oversee Citizen Schools out-of-school time programming at East Somerville Community School, where she will work with a team of AmeriCorps Teaching Fellows and school administrative staff to provide hands-on learning experiences, taught in partnership with local volunteers, for students.
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Citizen Schools Apprenticeship Culminates in Robotics Competition
A team of five intrepid students from Fischer Renaissance participated in a FIRST LEGO League (FLL) Qualifier tournament at Santa Clara High School November 11, 2018 as part of a Citizen School Apprenticeship. Lead by by a team of mentors, and Americorps members James Wesselman (myself) and Jamila Mentuhotep (Citizen Schools Teaching Fellows), the team finished the fun filled day ranking 6th in the robot game outperforming experienced better funded teams.
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Citizen Schools Supports Recommendations on How Learning Happens
Citizen Schools strongly supports the recommendations released today by the Aspen Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development. “From a Nation at Risk to a Nation at Hope” asserts that our nation is at a turning point: We now understand that social, emotional, and cognitive development underpin children’s academic learning. This breakthrough understanding about how people learn is fueling a growing movement to educate children as whole people, with social and emotional as well as academic needs.
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AmeriCorps Member Spotlight: Liam McCarthy
At Citizen Schools, no role is more essential to the success of our students than that of the AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow. Citizen Schools National Teaching Fellows create extraordinary enrichment and academic support experiences for the students we serve the nation. On a daily basis, Fellows deepen connections between schools and parents, help to develop social-emotional skills through mentoring and coaching students, and facilitate hands-on learning opportunities through our apprenticeships
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Citizen Schools Employee Spotlight: Jay Torres-Almodovar
I get my inspiration from my childhood, my students, and my team. When I see the students come into after school every day, I think about my days in middle school when I had the opportunity to be part of an amazing after school program. I want to be able to provide the same great after school experience or even better than I had growing up and I know my team and I can make it happen for them.
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An Evening of Mock Trial for Students in Citizen Schools Massachuetts
On Tuesday, December 11th, Citizen Schools Massachusetts students from the Trotter Innovation School, East Somerville Community School and Orchard Gardens K-8 schools got the chance showcase all that they have learned and practiced in a Mock Trial at the Moakley Courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Make For All Launches National Call to Action to Expand Support for Maker-Centered Learning for All Students
December 19, 2018 - BOSTON, MA - Today, Make For All, a national coalition of leading education organizations, is issuing a 2019 call to action for K-12 schools, colleges, companies, makerspaces, museums, libraries, local governments, agencies and non-profit organizations across the country to work together and expand their efforts to support maker-centered learning, and build a strong focus on equity that reaches all students.
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Service Year Alliance Launches Service+Tech to Increase Underrepresented Groups in Technology
Through this program, service year participants will have the opportunity to develop essential technology skills, discover pathways into tech careers, and leverage technology to solve society’s most pressing challenges. As part of the new Service+Tech network, service year participants will have access to free, technology-focused resources and activities, including coding training opportunities, local civic tech hackathons, speaker series events, and tech career resources.
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