In response to recent school closures, CSCA staff are implementing virtual ways to maintain strong relationships with their students as regularly scheduled apprenticeships are now postponed until further notice. As school closures are extended, our staff are preparing to work even more closely with school leaders and teachers to directly support the potential academic slide. We are preparing to return to school ready to support wherever we are needed the most.
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Students embark on intersession activities every semester before apprenticeships begin, where they are given the opportunity to explore new passions or hone important skill sets with their classmates. This consists of activities ranging from developing ideas for a new phone application to playing math games and mastering proficiency levels in different subjects.
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Citizen Schools California ended a successful Fall semester with WOW! events, a culmination of the 10-week-long apprenticeship program. In apprenticeships, volunteers across different industries teach their passion to students once a week for 1.5 hour sessions. Students spend the semester learning a particular skill set or subject matter, all while working towards developing a final project.
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This month, Citizen Schools students at Joseph George Middle School in San Jose, California created a drug awareness campaign on campus. Staff and students worked with the Leadership Academy, a group of 30 seventh and eighth grade Citizen Schools students responsible for promoting school spirit and bringing attention to school-wide issues.
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Each semester, Citizen Schools California hosts apprenticeships, 10-week long hands-on projects led by passionate volunteers who teach students topics ranging from cooking to coding. This semester, we are excited to offer Qigong and Taiji as an apprenticeship at Renaissance Academy at Mathson, taught by Citizen Teacher Jerriline Martinez from Cisco, with support from Teaching Fellow Renee Lemieux. Read what Jerriline had to say about her experience as a Citizen Teacher:
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On November 5th, community members from across the Bay Area came together to watch our apprenticeships in action at the McKinley Institute of Technology (MIT) site visit in Redwood City, CA. Attendees had the opportunity to meet with the Citizen Schools leadership team and hear from a panel of school partners and volunteer Citizen Teachers. They took a tour of the Tuesday after-school program and sat in on featured apprenticeships such as Fit Kids, Career Horizons, Making Beats, and Lego Robotics.
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This past summer, Citizen Schools California kicked off the year with Summer Institute, where rising and returning campus staff came together to prepare for the school year ahead of them. New Teaching Fellows came from all over the country, eager to tackle the opportunity gap that our students face. They learned skills such as lesson planning, classroom management and culturally responsive teaching.
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In the Citizen Schools apprenticeship, Carbon Footprint, students learn to research and analyze the carbon footprint of their school over the course of a 10-week period. Students develop skills around how to collect data, communicate with teammates, and eventually create an action plan for their school based on their findings.
This Spring is the second semester this class is offered at McKinley Institute of Technology (MIT) in Redwood City. Lead by a Citizen Teacher in her third semester, the current apprenticeship is taking experiential learning one step further, by engaging students in a process-oriented approach to increase effective recycling on campus.
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