Parkway West High School Community and University Partnerships

Posted by on June 07, 2011

An Interview with Suzanna Alter: Parkway West Partnerships Coordinator:

Suzanna Alter has been the “Parkway West HS Partnership Coordinator” for two years through a AmeriCorps*VISTA grant obtained by Bryn Mawr College and Pennsylvania Campus Compact. Parkway West is a small public high-school with the theme of urban education located in West Philadelphia. Before her full time employment with Parkway West Ms. Alter was placed there for her education minor and used her work with the senior project program at Parkway to complete research for her thesis. Through her position as a partnerships coordinator Ms. Alter has brought in dozens of Bryn Mawr and Haverford College students to help with a variety of projects, which she has built through numerous partnerships with District programs, CBOs and non-profits. Over the past three years this reciprocal partnership has provided students at Parkway West with opportunities to work with new technology in the classroom, to paint a community mural (pictured above), to have a credit-bearing class devoted to college access, art, and mentorship from college students and it has allowed the administration to become deeply connected to Bryn Mawr college as a university partner.

Q: When you were as student at Bryn Mawr, how did you begin your work at Parkway West?
A: It all goes back to Hillary Kane. After my junior year of college I received a summer research grant that focused on how schools teach social and cultural capital, in explicit or implicit ways. I had worked in the Civic Engagement Office for the year and I was going to be there in the summer. Because of my research grant I wanted to work in a school. That year the principal of Overbrook Elementary (Dr. McCladdie) became the principal at Parkway West and she asked Nell (Nell Anderson, co-director of the CEO) to continue to partner with her, but at Parkway West.

Nell was also attending the summer Senior Project Institute, which was in its first year. [as part of the Partnerships in Character Education Grant 2005-2009] I attended that summer, and I learned what senior projects was and I learned about pairing colleges with schools, which was the work PHENND was doing for the senior project program at the time, and I thought that this concept and the process of senior projects could help me to explore my research question. I ended up doing my “fieldwork” studying Parkway West senior projects and helping to create a school-university partnership between Bryn Mawr and Parkway West. In the beginning of my time at Parkway I was able to learn a lot from the principal, from teachers, and from Bryn Mawr professors [about how schools teach social and cultural capital] so I had a lot of different perspectives through which to view this project.

Q: Before being hired full time, was there a formal process you went through to gain your role as a student coordinator?
A: All of the partnership building was semi-informal and largely relationship based. There were no “applications”. When I was listening to people talk about senior projects, I realized I could use this as a framework to explore my research question and the partnership, and my position at Parkway West expanded from there.

My role expanded naturally. Initially, I learned a lot from Dr. McCladdie, just being in her office and seeing the range of things a principal encounters in their day. Communication channels aren’t so clear and direct in a school, (as compared to college or to a non-profit) it’s not so formal. I was witnessing how a school really functions and seeing how administrator deal with issues, like discipline, and I wanted some more perspectives so I started hanging out and in to Mr. Cohen’s English class, and began to learn from him. His senior English class focuses a lot on senior projects and I just started working with students on their senior project all the time and I began to get a better picture of how students viewed their work.

At the same time I was doing my fieldwork at Parkway I was also helping to place students at schools for their Education in the American City course. In this way I was able to bring other Bryn Mawr students in to Parkway with me. The partnership grew to be larger than just working with senior projects because of my relationships with the administration. I began placing students in math classes, sciences classes etc.

Q: How did doing fieldwork at Parkway West help your academic career?
A: I was able to use my experience at Parkway to write my senior thesis. I did a case study of seniors at Parkway and their perceptions of the senior project. This project helped me to get an in depth view of how they [high-school students] understand school reform and how they look at it in comparison to other students and schools.* I was very invested in my seniors. What I really felt most strongly when I was going to graduate, was that I really felt embedded in the school. I had spent time writing, researching etc. and I felt that now I really needed to do something with all my work. And that’s why I ended up staying at Parkway, and becoming the partnership coordinator as a VISTA.

*[The senior project pilot was only happening at nine schools city-wide as part of the Partnerships in Character Education Grant, at the School District of Philadelphia. Though the “senior project” is required at every high-school in the state, the guidelines are broad and this pilot sought to make the senior project more rigorous]

Q: Do you think your experience in getting to know Parkway West and building partnerships was unique?
A: The Bryn Mwar CEO invests in the students who have a lot of energy to work on and build partnerships in the community. It’s also a good deal for them because we’re undergraduate students who will work very hard to get projects and programs started.

The CEO works with students who are highly invested in their programs and helps to create jobs for them and this is done intentionally. This does give value to students’ energy and ingenuity. And they also allow students to get very deep in to these projects. My job was connected to my placement, which was connected to my thesis and then it became my full-time job. If you wanted to you could build that kind of relationship for yourself.

Q: How did your partnership with Parkway West help to build your professional skills and network?
A: Parkway itself didn’t grow my professional network a lot, but other people and projects that I took on did help to build that network and I brought that to Parkway. Working with non-profits and outside organizations helped me to build a unique set of programs at Bryn Mawr that I hope will stay in place when I leave. However, so much is relationship based, it’s really hard to build sustainability or capacity for these kinds of programs.

Q: How are you attempting to take on the challenge of building continuity for the programs you started at Parkway West?
A: I can pass certain programs along to teachers, professors and Bryn Mawr students. I can help facilitate relationship building between the new partnerships coordinator from Bryn Mawr and the administration. I can do relationship building between Jody Cohen (an Education professor at Bryn Mawr) and Bill Cohen (the English teacher who works on senior projects). However, I’ve been able to devote all my time to this partnership building work, and it will be hard to get anyone in the school, who is a full time teacher or staff member, to take on that kind of time commitment.

I have to decide what programs can feasibly stay, what can I give and how to connect the partnerships I’ve built to people who are at the school. I also want to determine the projects that have had a big impact on students so that those particular programs can stay. Ultimately, the shared, co-constructed programs will be the easiest to sustain. For example: the Bryn Mawr freshman writing course, that has a professor connected to it, and is partnered with a high-school English course will have a much better chance of continuing.

Any project that has a professor at Bryn Mawr connected to it makes the sustainability for the program higher. Also, having High-school students being trained with college students to do a program like AVID tutoring at Martha Washington really helps, because those tutors are already invested in the program from this year.  Other programs like my class, the “student success block”,  which is focused on placing Parkway seniors in internships, isn’t sustainable because I teach it and there would be no replacement, but I hope the energy and ideas that it created will continue to happen.

Q: Because the way that you built relationships at Parkway was so organic, how do you think you could give another students a similar opportunity?
A: Because my role did develop so organically (I just showed up and just kept showing up) the lack of definition of my role at Parkway will make it hard for anyone to fill that space. A new person won’t have that feeling of belonging and that takes a lot of time to develop. I had to deal with a lot of initial inconsistency, no one would tell me that there wasn’t school or if there were other events going on in the school. Creating that strong of a relationship with a school requires a lot of patience and persistence, and finding the confidence to learn what you need and where you can find that. Once you get past that first feeling of not knowing exactly what you’re doing, it is ultimately extremely rewarding, especially when the students can tell you are truly dedicated to their education and providing unique experiences for them.