Making Connections

As you know, I'm working, somewhat unsuccessfully, on creating ties with schools and doing community research. I've also been thinking of ways to link up what all of us are doing. This started off as an email, but I'm making it a blog. Derek has recently contacted East High School so that we can do some classroom observation there. We chose East because they have a Teaching Program there for students and Derek made some contacts through his independent study professor.

That got me thinking about other schools I want to contact (obviously ones on the West Side of Rochester...) I am also thinking about the following question: how could a stand-alone tutoring center support what is already going on in classrooms? Additionally, what approaches to learning are successful and how could we export them to our center? Since we have identified a need to have support for students outside school, I want us to figure out exactly what that need is...What aren't they already getting at school? Those are some of the questions I'm pursuing this semester.

Maybe we could schedule a meeting with someone at School Without Walls to talk about their approach to learning. I don't know if you all have heard of it, but essentially SWW has sort of a college-style approach to high school. There aren't requirements or anything--students are responsible for what they learn. They don't take NYS Regents exams (I believe), rather they complete a portfolio senior year. I thought Flack specifically might be interested in a meeting with teachers, and possibly with some of the students to see what they are doing to support their students (i.e. tutoring, academic support).

I know it might not be a school that our center would potentially get students from since we are focusing on the area around UR, but this school probably has highly motivated students that might be interested in tutoring (possibly for credit). Along those lines, I'd like to do a little more research on the theme of students as tutors--there are some programs like the Teaching Institute at East High where we could draw from (or you know, suggest that people get tutors from there in the future).

This is their website:
http://www.schoolwithoutwalls.org/hs.shtml

This is a summary of what SWW offers:
http://www.rcsdk12.org/schools/secondary/sww.htm

Thoughts??

-Alicia