This year Citizen Schools hosted nine WOW! celebrations with thousands of students, parents, teachers, and community members to highlight students’ hard work from their apprenticeships.
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From April through June, coast to coast, Citizen Schools celebrated the school year’s apprenticeship programs with two WOW!NOW breakfasts in Massachusetts and New York and a mock-trial themed benefitEd in California. These events mark the culmination of both the 10-week apprenticeships and also the school year.
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During winter intersession, the six weeks between the fall and spring semester, approximately 350 students in the Citizen Schools’ California region completed an academically rigorous STEM curriculum challenge. The curriculum created and licensed by Tata Consultancy Services, allows students to design paper and electronic prototypes of an app that will help solve a community problem. During their challenge, they get the chance to practice their design thinking skills through a lens of empathy while learning about different STEM careers.
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Erica Yoon, joined Citizen Schools after graduating from UC Berkeley with a Bachelors majoring in Cognitive Science Education minor. Serving as a AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow at Greenleaf K-8 Elementary School family in Oakland, California, she says “I love this job! It is definitely a position that comes with various challenges, but the relationships I make and the improvements I see on a daily basis keep me going.” Outside of work, she enjoys going for swims, playing Monopoly Deal, and singing karaoke.
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An avid soccer player, Santy explained that the only reason he even heard about Menlo School, a private school in Atherton, was because of an after-school program, Citizen Schools, where he would wait out the gap of time between the end of school and the start of soccer practice and took an extracurricular course about local private school opportunities.
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The California Community College Makerspace initiative (CCC Maker) has partnered with the National Association of Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) to present make/SHIFT -- the Makerspace Ecosystem Summit in Irvine, CA on April 24-26. Registration is open for make/SHIFT and early bird discounts are available through February 28.
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At Citizen Schools, no role is more essential to the success of our students than that of the AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow. Citizen Schools National Teaching Fellows create extraordinary enrichment and academic support experiences for the students we serve the nation. On a daily basis, Fellows deepen connections between schools and parents, help to develop social-emotional skills through mentoring and coaching students, and facilitate hands-on learning opportunities through our apprenticeships
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Fresh from a visit to the greenhouse and a bit of weeding in a row of radishes and pumpkins, 18 youngsters gathered to show what they’d soaked up during their field trip to the Veggielution organic farm in San Jose.
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While many at Sandia know Kayla Norris (8100) as a financial analyst, a class of students in Oakland knows her as “Ms. Kayla,” their afterschool yoga instructor. For ten weeks in the fall of 2017, Kayla taught a yoga and mindfulness class at Roots International Academy, a small middle school in East Oakland.
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This semester, Pasadena-based non profit Tools for Peace partnered with Citizen Schools California to teach an apprenticeship at Roots Academy in Oakland. Founded in 2000, Tools for Peace is an organization whose purpose is to strengthen and support emotional intelligence, as well as increase academic success. Their mission is to inspire people of all ages to develop kindness and compassion in everyday life, and that is exactly what this semester allowed them to build with our students in Oakland.
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1.Why did you decide to become an AmeriCorps VISTA?
I became an AmeriCorps VISTA because I wanted to go a different direction with my professional life and gain an experience that I would not have anywhere else.
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Citizen Schools California welcomed a new staff member, Wesley Thompson, Development Coordinator. Wesley will work to create new partnerships and strengthen existing relationships with foundations and individuals who share Citizen Schools California’s goal of expanding opportunity to all Bay Area middle school students.
Read MoreI came to Citizen Schools to earn my English Language Arts (ELA) single subject teaching credential in a supportive, hands-on setting. I was also extremely interested in working with 6th graders in apprenticeships; I remember developing my interest in art and poetry during my middle school years, and I pursued those disciplines in college. Having invested teachers who provided one-on-one mentoring helped me pursue my dreams. When pre-teen children have reliable adults who encourage them to pick up a paintbrush, go to a poetry reading or start their own business, they are more likely to succeed. I feel grateful that I can carry on that torch and foster creativity and self-confidence in my students.
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