A Profile of YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School’s Service Model

Posted by on June 30, 2011

I interviewed Melissa Jackson, math teacher, and Rory Katz, volunteer coordinator, at YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School at Broad and Girard to learn more about their service-learning model, their students’ “Transformation Interview” process, and how they engage and place college students as volunteers to serve as mentors and tutors in their classrooms, vocational training and service programs.

YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School is a 501(c)(3) organization with 18 years of experience. Their one-year program provides high school dropouts with a chance to earn their diplomas while learning vital job skills and providing valuable community services.

Youthbuild is also integrated in to AmeriCorps programming. “YouthBuild Philadelphia is supported by AmeriCorps National and AmeriCorps State via PennSERVE, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Citizen Service. All students are reduced part-time members of AmeriCorps during their time at YouthBuild Philadelphia. YouthBuild also has Full-time members of AmeriCorps serve as community outreach coordinators, and are integral players in the lives of the students.”

Website: http://www.youthbuildphilly.org/

Interviewees Profiles:

Melissa Jackson is a math teacher and cheer-leading coach at Youthbuild and has been here 7 years.  She previously taught at Lincoln High School, Gillespie Middle School and Cooke Middle School and previously worked in mental health as a residential advisor.

Rory Katz is completing her second year as an AmeriCorps member, her first being served at a Head Start program in Chicago. She is the second VISTA to serve in the position of volunteer coordinator at YouthBuild.

Academics at YouthBuild:

Q: What is difference between Youthbuild’s educational model and a Philadelphia comprehensive high school?

A: MJ: If you go to high school in Philadelphia, the teachers have to teach this particular curriculum. Everyone should be on the same page in every classroom. So we’re on a pacing schedule and we can’t veer from that pacing schedule, and then at the end of 6 weeks you have a benchmark.

The problem with that situation, is that students are on various levels, I’ve had students who can barely add subtract, multiply or divide. And I have students with very little pre-algebra skills coming in to an algebra class.

So a quarter of them are frustrated on the first day, because they don’t know any of the material that I’m required to teach. And there is no room for re-teaching skills that they didn’t get.

By mid-year you’ve lost another 1/8 of the class by April and March you’d have half, by May 1/3 of the class is left, and they might come back to class hoping you’ll pass them for finals so they can move on to the next grade.

YouthBuild tests you when you come in and starts you in your comfort zone. The only way that a student will fall off the charts is when they don’t come to school. And they can come to “7th session” in the summer to make up what they didn’t finish.

Q: Each YouthBuild student takes a service course in addition to a vocation course and academic courses. How is service integrated in to students’ academic work and how does it affect the school climate at YouthBuild?

A: MJ: Students will have a service class on “homelessness” or “violence” or “teen parenting” or something else.  They discuss what obstacles with those issues would keep a person out of school. It makes students a lot more helpful; they are able to work with each other instead of just being in it [to get their diploma] for themselves. The learning becomes more natural because of the service. Also, as a staff we all do service and we work side by side with students, which makes us more like a team.

R: Students think of service as something to be proud of when they didn’t think of that before. It gives them a new way to feel accomplished.

MJ: The service we do is not punitive, it’s not a punishment. [like many perceptions of service as handed out through the criminal justice system]

Q: Does the service they do effect their career choices?

A: R: All the staff are mentors to at least two students. Both of my students are on the health care track, and they both say it’s because they “want to help people”. I also know a students who stated, “I want to be a social worker and work with youth because I know a lot of what they are going through.” I definitely see how service has an impact on the students. It helps them make interesting connections.

Another example: Students had to write a Compare and contrast essay and one student decided to compare and contrast nursing homes and prisons. Those are the tools they’re getting, the ability to see the big picture.

Q: Is coursework with real world connections and civic engagement important to staff at YouthBuild?

A: R: Our school also focuses a lot on professional development for staff. In one staff meeting we made a gigantic list with all the ways that we could embed civic-engagement in all the classes and then implemented them. It also allows classes to become more interconnected.

MJ: I create Math problems that have to do with a real world situation or a project they are working on in another class. Say the homelessness class does a cookout, we planned how much everything would cost based on how many people were attending etc. So we would put what we learned in math directly in to what they were doing in service.

I have this other mini-project where they can relate to a situation that might be familiar to them. This example connects to their violence class:

“Two kids robbed a store and got caught. The kid who was new to the town, didn’t have a way to get out and the old kid got out with bail. The new kid then had to be in foster care and to pay back the store and work there in restitution.”

“How many weeks did he have to work to pay off how much money he took, and how much more will he have to do to make up for what the other kid did”,  Using math we talked about the deeper repercussions of issues like that.

MJ: I really can’t say if it’s because of the service classes alone, but we open the doors to their future and help them see beyond graduation.

Resource for “real world” math connections: Math Stories for Problem Solving Success by Jim Overhold

Volunteering at YouthBuild:

Q: What is the role of the volunteer coordinator at YouthBuild?

A: R: Most volunteers help out as Teaching Assistants and tutors, but they help out in other ways too. We have many volunteers that come from Temple and Drexel.  We partnered with two different service-learning classes this year–an emotional intelligence class and a freshman writing class. Both were very successful. In addition a lot of people hear through idealist.org and other volunteer websites. Many volunteer because they are interested in learning about education and social justice issues, some volunteers are older professionals who have free time during the day.

Q: How do you train your volunteers?

A: R: I meet with all volunteers one on one to help make the most appropriate placement for them. For service-learning classes I met with the whole class beforehand but I also met with all students individually. I do this so we can try to match them with different kinds of experiences. I give everyone a tour, and try to orient them to the culture at YouthBuild. I want someone to be prepared to be flexible in their roles but also feel supported.

Q: What role do the tutors play in supporting YouthBuild students?

A: R: Each YouthBuild term is 6 weeks academics and 6 weeks of vocation. Missing a day of school is huge, when they’ve missed a couple days they can come back and get really frustrated. We try and get the students to ask for help. However, we sometimes find that the ones who don’t really need it ask for help and the ones who do need it wouldn’t ask for it.

MJ: In other schools if they had tutoring it’s because they were “done” [close to being pushed out of school], so we have to erase all the negative attitudes about tutoring. And we have to get them to learn how to change those stigmas. And so when they go to college, using a learning lab won’t be an issue.

MJ: One big issue we had is that the lowest math groups would not ask for help saying “I don’t need help, I got it, I got it”, and would not work with each other. Now they look for a tutor. Students put in requests for tutoring. There has been a lot of enthusiasm. I always tell my students, take your paper to the lab so they can look it over. It’s always good to have another set of eyes.

Q: How do you create that enthusiasm for and break down the stigmas of having a tutor?

A: MJ: This school is filled with the “hall walkers” of Philadelphia high-schools. So getting them to come in to Rory (the volunteer office) is a huge deal.

R: It’s a collaborative approach to getting all the options out there. We work with the teachers, I make announcements at community meetings etc. More and more students also want to be peer tutors.

MJ: I set a rule in my classroom that is, “ask three before me”. In this way students start asking more people than just me for help. By mid-year they’ve formed groups that are working together and checking with each other. At first it’s rough, students get upset, but then it pays off. This process also is to help students once they are in college to reach out to and be a part of tutoring groups.

Q: How did volunteers and tutors find placements before there was a volunteer coordinator?

A: MJ: Before we had a volunteer coordinator, the AmeriCorps members would do what they could but they have a lot of clubs to run and tutoring was on the back burner. Last year they started the volunteer coordinator.

I think that Rory has found more volunteers than ever. Now I see them everywhere. Last year only one math teacher had a tutor. This year I harassed Rory to get as many tutors as possible.

Q: How do you structure your volunteer placements?

A: R: It’s really about preparing the tutors for a place where needs vary on a day to day basis. Our students generally dropped out of high-school because they have very complicated personal lives. For me it took a while to figure out the best way to give the tutors a somewhat “prepared” point of view and support.

At first I tried to set up individualized matches between students and tutors, but it ended up getting very complicated with everyone’s personalized schedules.

Then I focused on utilizing teachers, and making teachers comfortable with having tutors in the classroom. Some teachers didn’t understand the role for volunteers in the class, not every class has or needs one but teachers have realized that they have this options and are figuring out how to use tutors effectively. Overall, it was more successful for volunteers to be in the classroom, because the teacher is there and knows how to push their particular students. And the kind of students who work well with tutors in the classroom, will get their friends to work with tutors.

MJ: Tutoring helps with the growth of the students. It teaches a lot of life skills to make appointments with tutors.

R: And they learn social skills. Learning how to get along with people they wouldn’t normally talk to. They learn how to be respectful of people who are from different situations. We’ve also had a couple volunteers who have been high-school drop outs themselves and they’re big motivators.

Q: What other roles would you like volunteers to play in the classroom?

A: Tutors also get to do service days and co-lead them. And they help with alumni, and if they come in and ask for it. I feel like volunteers have been very strongly integrated in to the academic program here. And that has grown. I’d like to better integrate volunteers in to the vocational aspect of the program to help students to bridge their academics and their vocation. Students struggle with applying what they learn in classrooms with applying them in their vocation or in other classes. When they go on a construction site, students still struggle with applying what they know. Having the same person there (a volunteer) could help students make the connections better.

Transformation Interviews:

YouthBuild students are required to pass their “Transformation Interview” before graduating. Students receive a set of questions about themselves, their educational process at YouthBuild and their goals for the future. They are expected to prepare answers to these questions and to present themselves professionally to a panel of judges consisting of volunteers and YouthBuild staff in a 20 minute presentation and Q&A followed by feedback from the judges.

Q: How did the concept of the “Transformation Interview” process start and how has it changed?

A: MJ: We have changed the final project many times since I’ve been here, but the goal has always been to help students show what they have learned and how they have changed as a person.  Last year was the first year we did transformation interviews. One reason we adapted to this model is that our population [of students] was having a hard time finding jobs and the interview process was not going well.

We have a career development class that teaches them interviewing skills, but the students weren’t taking enough away from mock interviews with a teacher that they know so well. We decided to make the final project a practice interview that would include volunteers and people they don’t know, so it would be more like a real-world interview. Our students have to transition to careers and schooling so learning the interview process and how to express all they learned to people outside of YouthBuild is essential for them to move forward.

Contact information if you are interested in volunteer and service-learning opportunities for yourself or for your students:

Kristen Forbriger
YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School
kforbriger@youthbuildphilly.org
215-627-8671 ext.46

For more information, visit: http://www.youthbuildphilly.org/volunteer.html