Citizen Schools CA is proud to be partnering with 7 schools this year across 3 districts: Oakland, San Jose and Redwood City. Our team of 7 Campus Leaders and 30 AmeriCorps Teaching Fellows will join 350 volunteers from our local communities to serve nearly 1,400 students this school year.
Read MoreJoining the Advisory Board are Joy Harper, Tracy Meng, and Kayla Norris “All three of our newest Board members embody the mission and values of Citizen Schools and bring distinct individual skill sets. We are very fortunate to have them serve our organization as we continue to close the opportunity and achievement gaps for middle schoolers in the Bay Area ”, Maria Drake, Executive Director.
Read MoreOakland has always been an epicenter for social change in the US and those roots are reflected in Citizen Schools apprenticeships. We've partnered with community organizations who, among many things, use near peer mentoring, student-led discussion, and explorations of Oakland neighborhoods and cultural sites to build civic-minded leaders within our student body - and address relevant social issues such as violence prevention, discrimination and injustice.
Read MoreThis spring, we were proud to host another successful WOW! season in California. From yoga and tai chi to backpacking, web design and more, our students had no shortage of amazing apprenticeships to chose from this semester. We're so proud of all that our students have learned - and so thankful to all our amazing volunteer Citizen Teachers!
Read MoreOn Tuesday May 1, the Citizen Schools community gathered at the Computer History Museum to celebrate our community at our annual BenefitEd 2018 Gala. So many of our amazing partners had the opportunity to connect with our students, volunteers, school partners and each other, to celebrate yet another successful semester of hard work and apprenticeships at our WOW! Gallery, and to help transform the lives of our Bay Area students.
Read MoreYearlong apprenticeships come with a unique set of challenges; the challenge of keeping students engaged for a full year, the challenge of creating an extensive curriculum to incorporate a years’ worth of learning, and the challenge of finding volunteer Citizen Teachers willing to make twice the usual time commitment for an apprenticeship (it’s usually just one semester!). This spring, the Entrepreneurship Apprenticeship at Renaissance Academy at Fischer in San Jose, CA, a first of its kind, certainly had its share of challenges - but the outcome was more than Stephanie Lin, the AmeriCorps Teaching Fellow overseeing the class could have imagined.
Read MoreOn May 23 2018, Beyond Sport and the San Francisco 49ers Foundation will hold the second installment of the Beyond Innovation Summit in Santa Clara, California. Expanding on the successes of last year’s event and the subsequent launch of the Sport & STEM Alliance, Beyond Innovation will bring together global experts, inspirational innovators and committed decision-makers to discuss state-of-art approaches to leveraging sport to improve, empower and create new approaches to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education. Upwards of 200 delegates will explore the unique opportunity sports presents to help prevent the predicted shortfall of 85 million skilled jobs in the global economy by 2020.
Read MoreIn the 2016-17 school year, Citizen Schools completed the second year of our initiative to pilot and evaluate digital courseware across our national network to learn more about how best to integrate technology into Expanded Learning Time (ELT) for middle school students.
Read MoreThis semester, San Francisco-based nonprofit Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) partnered with Citizen Schools to teach apprenticeships at two of our middle schools in Oakland: Roots Academy and Greenleaf. The apprenticeship, called Girls on the Mic, educates girls about audio technology, recording and sound engineering through music and media. The goal of the program is to drive girls’ interest in STEM and introduce them to technology-based careers in a traditionally male-dominated field.
Read MoreOn January 31, 2018, US2020 hosted the STEM Collaboratory event in Pittsburgh. This unique gathering, sponsored by Arconic Foundation, brought together the 15 finalist communities of the US2020 STEM Coalition Challenge The initial intent behind the STEM Collaboratory was to provide competing teams a chance to connect with experts and refine their ideas — it turned out to be so much more.
Read MoreWhile 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.
Read MoreThe Dalles is a top-15 finalist nationwide for a grant that could potentially hire two full-time employees to help bring hands-on STEM mentoring and projects to local students. US2020 announced the finalists in its STEM Coalition Challenge in January, and the top eight applicants will share around $1 million in grant awards. The finalists were selected based on their potential for impact, approach to partnership building, creative engagement strategies and sustainability planning, according to US2020. The goal of the challenge is to bring STEM mentorship and hands-on experiences to underrepresented students. The challenge received proposals from 92 communities, representing nearly 2,000 partners.
Read MoreIridescent, a global STEM education nonprofit, is launching its 2018 season with Technovation Alliance partners: Salesforce.org, Google's Made with Code, Adobe Foundation, and Uber. This alliance is working to marshal the resources of multiple tech and innovation partners to make a deeper and more sustainable impact in inspiring and supporting female tech leaders across the globe.
Read MoreOn February 8, 2018, over 40 Volunteers from more than 20 Businesses in the Bay Area gathered at Greenleaf Elementary School in Oakland, California to take part in our annual 6 Degrees of the Bay Area networking event! Students had the chance to network with professionals from fields ranging from Architecture, Computer Science, and Human Resources to name a few.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreWASHINGTON, D.C. – January 16, 2018 – Today, US2020 announces 15 finalists for the STEM Coalition Challenge, a competition for communities across the country to develop cross-sector partnerships to bring quality hands-on STEM mentoring and maker-centered learning to underrepresented students. These finalists will now move forward to compete for $1 million in resources to implement their bold strategies, representing some of the most innovative approaches to tackling the opportunity gap through STEM.
Read MoreSeveral Marshall Middle School students made the decision to take part in a Future City competition this year — the first time the project-based learning program was offered after school for MMS sixth- through eighth-grade students. The students are now looking forward to state competition on Jan. 20 in Rosemount.
Read MoreSan Jose, CA—Nov 30, 2017—Citizen Schools is today announcing applications are available to become an AmeriCorps National Teaching Fellow in CA.
Read MoreThis summer, Citizen Schools began a 2-year pilot, with teacher design partners, to develop and test a new approach to classroom instruction - one that pairs teachers with community experts to deliver engaging, real-world projects in middle school classrooms.
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