American Graduate; Citizen Schools

Okay, so remember we're looking at these dolls. Do you think they're realistic? Do they look like a real girl's look like or not? Okay, no. You got it. That's right. Yes, hollow bones. That's an adaptation for flight. And actually if we were to take this bird today, take all of the feathers and take the entire skeleton minus all of the tendons and about surgery. That has the name, but it's just the feather. It's going to be up in just the rest of it. And actually design which of the two? I think the way more. And it's a story. It's a soaring hop. Other videos are Swains and Tots. And... Citizen Schools is a nonprofit initiative dedicated in their own words to reimagining the learning day. And they do it by adding 12 hours a week of learning time for middle schoolers. The group has a presence in seven states, including here in New Mexico, where they're active in three middle schools. And so good when he is the executive director of Citizen Schools in New Mexico, welcome.

Thank you, man. Tell us how Citizen Schools has worked in the life of a child to prevent a dropout, a potential dropout. I think Citizen Schools brings learning alive. And that's a really critical thing to do in the middle school. Young people going into middle school have lots of challenges. And I think we need to think outside the box in terms of how we can engage those young people. And put them on to a trajectory of graduation on time and realising their potential as young people and citizens of our community. Explain to me a little bit more about Citizen Schools. We hear that term Citizen. Where does the Citizen part come in? That's a great question. We rely on caring adults in our community who are willing to come in and share their passion, their experience, their insights into life with these young people. So we can do our next activity.

Remember we've been working on what the media influences in our life, right? And today we're going to be looking at dolls. So look who we have up here. Barbie. You think it's a good role model or not a good role model? Those are the kinds of things you want to think about when you're... Now we don't just stand a brave volunteer in front of, you know, 15 young 13 and 14-year-olds. We support them. We train them and develop them into a situation that they can actually share their passion and their knowledge over a period of 10 weeks. The average lifespan of a wild hawk-like gavala is going to be anywhere between 15, 17 years. This bird is going to be found in the sandias, the foothills. So if you ever go out hiking with your family in this foothills or up near petroglyph, you're going to most likely see this bird there. So give me an example of a small mammal in those fields. Mace? Mace? And then work with those young people to then present back to the community what they have learnt. So citizens are a really important part of our special sources we like to call it.

And you were saying these citizens are teaching things like genetics. When we were out at Van Buren, there was a Bose Gay-centered class and there was a red-tailed hawk actually in the class. We also met a little girl named Maria Castaneda who started in a program in sixth grade. And we want to share what she said about how it re-engaged her in school. Okay, so Maria and Dio, why don't you collect journals? I didn't do my homework so much, so my parents said until I do homework. So they said you need to check this program out? I don't know if I like it, I can't stay and if I don't, I can get out. How long until you decided that you liked it? It took me like two days. Tuesday and Thursday we have apprenticeships. And Wednesday we have math week. How many horses this after school? Three. What does it make you think of in terms of girls? Remember we've been talking about ten.

It helped me raise my grades because I was getting season D's and most of my classes and I'm getting A's and B's. Oh, it's music to my ears. You know, that's what my life work has been about is ensuring that young people can really appreciate the value of education where it can take them. And I think too often we underestimate the opportunities that exist in our community that can bring learning alive for these young people. A lot of folks may be inclined to think, okay, three hours after class, a bunch of looking at red-tailed hawks, things like that. But you said that when you get approached by someone in the community who wants to teach, you try to line their talents up with the standards that these kids are expected or these students are expected to meet. Definitely. But we do it in a very non-traditional way. For example, we can do things like bringing the relevance of algebra alive through the design of roller coasters. Now, we've had engineers come in and work with students on exactly that. I'm talking to them about how roller coasters and the physics of roller coaster design is related to math.

And all of a sudden it becomes a practical application of what they're learning in the regular school day. And relevance kicks in and they can see meaning in their work and learning. That's one of the things that we see in a lot of these programs is some sort of non-traditional learning approach where the student may have a clue that they wouldn't get during the school day. This isn't just math or it isn't just reading. There's a specific application. That seems to make a big difference. Definitely. And I guess citizen schools is a booster shot. We're not the silver bullet. But the regular school day is really focused on particular skills and competencies and rightly so. What we're able to do is build the capacity of that learning by adding these extra experiences which are very intentionally aligned with what's been taught in the regular school day. And so we can build the capacity of the regular day staff faculty by adding the second shift of educators who can boost the experience and build the learning into new contexts.

This isn't a program that has addressed kids who have dropped out. Some of them may have not even thought of dropping out. Why target the 6-7-8th level? Why target them? That's a really critical age. I think it's almost too late in high school to be talking about drop out and preventing it. I think we're finding in a lot of research that the transition points from elementary into middle school and then again from middle school into high school the most dangerous times for young people to disengage. What we believe psychologically is young adolescents are at that really impressionable, influential age where we can talk to them about real possibilities and then inspire them to think a little differently and to think outside their realms of experience by building those experiences in new ways. So good one, Citizen Schools, New Mexico. Thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Thank you.