I appreciate everyone's feedback about the Spelling Bee. Something about it still just doesn't feel right to me. I don't think it will accomplish much other than bringing people together--unless we devote ourselves to literacy and spelling tutoring throughout the year. How does this bring people together? How does it connect schools or the UR with tutoring efforts? I like the idea (or a similar event in the same vein) as a fundraiser...but what is our mission? Maybe it would be better if we defined out goals! And by maybe...I mean absolutley. I do love the idea of an event or benefit that brings students together and highlights their positive abilities though.
1. I am meeting with Glenn this Friday. I plan on speaking with him about all of the tutoring efforts that RCCL manages / used to manage. I'd also like to learn more about the former Education Alliance as well. As some of you know, Jumpstart was canceled for the upcoming yeat at UR. I am eager to find out more from Glenn. That means about 65 students from UR that were planning to tutor in the city will not be able to, not to mention hundeds of rochester preschoolers that will be without additional on-on-one time with college students.
To me, this means more UR students that will be looking to join one of the smaller, disjointed tutoring efforts at UR. It drives me crazy that we let a good program go. Also, Tara's postion as Vista Scholar in the RCCL has ended and she is now gone...leaving NO ONE inthe RCCL to manage UR Tours, UR potential, Partners in Reading etc etc. Seems it is time to reform the education alliance? Or not....?!
Mollie Foust was one of the handfull of UR undregraduates who started the Ed Alliance a few years back. There was a grassroots movment to unify and support each other in their independent efforts. There is NO Doubt that UR needs unificatioin behind their EDU outreach and community service. I spoke with Mollie about why the group failed. She thinks that it was in large part because the position requires more time than a student can dedicate. Additionally, the leaders of each tutoring group had a hard time staying motivated under the umbrella of the ed alliance...since it did not have an administartive/offical overtone, as it would if RCCL had a staff position to oversee all EDU related communicty serive. This is something that I would like to see happen-- because until this is made possible each tutoring effort will remain small and disjointed and fail to gather ample support from the Univeristy as it scrambles to keep itself organized!
As you can probably tell, I would really like to find a way to optimize RCCL. I have numerous other reasons which I can go into at another time. (right now I am trying to use true typing technique....and it is awful. Takes at least ten times longer than my adapted method) aside over!
I am not sure if I ever told you guys this but I just found out more details. Mollie, John Oakford, Erin Fry, Erin something...and a couple of others have been developing a UR interdepartmental course on tutoring and urban issues. Originally designed to be a 2 credit CAS class, they have been meeting, developing, thinking and re thinking and as the plan stands now the course would be 6 credits and be run in the style of Theories of Religion. Ideally, all UR students that tutor or volunteer (or anyone really) could take the course and then the class would break into smaller groups ie. Partners in reading, Jumpstart, etc. There, each group could talk about their specific issues. Mollie and friends are still in the development stages now - and we can def join in the fun as part of our KEY project!
Additionally, Mollie and I did some brinstorming about specific project ideas for our group based on our individial interests and postings that Derek and Alicia have made to the blog thus far. Sooooo ...drum roll please...
We came up with the idea of having a web site :) which features all of the univeristies and community centers in rochester that are tutorinG! This can start very small and we can add info gradually. The idea would be to serve as a hub of Tutoring/ edu info....so kind of establishing a Tutoring and Education Social networking site. We could go out into the community/look on other schools web sites...have the write to us... whatever. The web site can also contain research, suggestions for tutors, etc etc. We can change the postings frequently. Add research papers have community memebers write articles... THEN....
Each week we can have a different school/tutoring program be in charge of writing in a positive story about the students that they work with. Think about it, their parents would look at the site, their teachers and administrators from their respective Rochester school would go to the site, the volunteers from the local college would go to the site. This is partially inspired by the web site that Alicia loves so much higlighting the accomplishments of city school students.
From here we can plan events and post a community calendar. I might be crazy but i really like this idea. We can start small and keep growing as our ideas develop. I have emailed Mr. Melnick to get some good sources on alternative learning and tutoriung theory. Fyi..I will let you know what his suggested reading entails.
I have totally forgotten everything else that I wanted to say, but since this post is so long I would like to stop now anyway!! Leave your thoughts ASAP. We need to start developing our project and indi studies ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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