Social media in the classroom, best practice guidelines

While I was working with ASCD to cover the annual education conference in Philly this past March, I wrote a series of articles on social networking best practice policies for both teachers and students. 

Social networking transforms professional development
If you’ve been following or tweeting the #ASCD12 hashtag, you are part of Eric Sheninger’s personal learning network (PLN), a group of people with common interests sharing information and exchanging conversations.

For people like Sheninger, a high school principal and coauthor of Communicating and Connecting with Social Media, PLNs can span the globe—thanks to social media and online idea-sharing tools… Read the full story here.

Creating social media guidelines for educators
More videos are uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the combined number NBC, ABC, and CBS have produced in 60 years, and yet many schools restrict students from accessing this world of information.

At 6:00 a.m. on Sunday, administrators at North Carolina’s Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools (WSFCS) gave teachers permission to use YouTube in their classrooms. As Steven Anderson and Sam Walker presented the session “Understanding and Creating Social Media Guidelines for Educators,” teachers in WSFCS tweeted to thank them for pushing for this access… Read the full story here.

Helping students create positive digital footprints
When asked what words come to mind when they think about students posting to the Internet, many educators list words like danger and safety.

But with the likes of Robert Nay—who created one of the most downloaded iPad apps of 2011 when he was just 14—and even Justin Bieber—who began his international superstardom as a YouTube sensation—as inspiration, students and teachers alike should know the positives that posting to the Internet can offer… Read the full story here.

Schools as safe spaces for students

In March, I worked with ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), an educational leadership organization. ASCD hosted its annual 3-day conference in Philadelphia, and I worked with the organization to cover various sessions and conference events. 

It was a whirlwind weekend and a great experience. I produced content for the Conference Daily printed newspaper (We handed our content to the printer at 7 p.m. and had fresh copies, hot of the press by 5 a.m. each morning) and for the conference blog. Below are a few of the stories I produced. 

Effective classroom management for new teachers
In many fields, professionals say you need to log 10,000 hours to become an expert. For new teachers, that can take about five years, and those first five years are often the most challenging…. Read the full story here.

Helping students create positive digital footprints
When asked what words come to mind when they think about students posting to the Internet, many educators list words like danger and safety.

But with the likes of Robert Nay—who created one of the most downloaded iPad apps of 2011 when he was just 14—and even Justin Bieber—who began his international superstardom as a YouTube sensation—as inspiration, students and teachers alike should know the positives that posting to the Internet can offer… Read the full story here.

Creating safe schools for LGBT students
When parents at one North Carolina school refused to return a library book that featured a gay main character, the issue drew mixed reactions and international attention. Some parents wrote to the school to ask that their child not be given access to the book. Conversely, others wrote to ask that their son or daughter read the text. Before the controversy settled down, 32 copies of the book were donated to the school’s library, from as far away as Australia.

A teacher from that North Carolina school shared this story during Peter DeWitt’s “Dignity for All: Safeguarding LGBT Students” sessions… Read the full story here.

Fostering Change: Philadelphia’s Arise Academy Charter High School

This past summer I interned with Next American City in Philadelphia. The experience was extremely rewarding and overall one of the most encouraging journalism experiences I have had yet. My most recent contribution to the publication is on news stands now in the magazine’s winter edition. It can also be found below…

Fostering Change

By Christine Fisher

Illustration by David Senior

It is not uncommon for America’s half-million foster children to bounce from home to home, sometimes landing in three, four, even five or more placements in a year. As a result, they often bounce out of the education system completely, finding themselves at age 18, emancipated and living on the streets. Jill Welsh-Davis, founder of Philadelphia’s Arise Academy Charter High School, is hoping to change this reality.

In September 2008, Davis helped open the doors of Arise Academy, the nation’s first and only charter school that lets high-school-age foster students stay enrolled no matter where or how often they move. Ten months later the school’s first 10 graduates walked across the stage to collect their diplomas — diplomas that, according to statistics, only two or three of them would have normally received.

Of the 500,000 children in the foster care system, fewer than half will graduate high school. Fewer than two percent will graduate from college. “Every time they go to a different school they can lose up to six months of education,” Davis says. “They fall behind so they get discouraged, and they drop out.”

The purpose of Arise Academy is to keep foster children from getting academically discouraged, often the primary factor in a student’s decision to drop out. With approximately 200 students, the school offers small class sizes, internship and job placements and a year-round calendar. Students advance from one academic level to the next only when they have mastered the material, rather than advancing per term. Partnerships with local universities help the charter provide support services addressing behavior and health issues, also common among foster children.

The need for a program such as Arise Academy is particularly evident in Philadelphia, where 75 percent of all foster children drop out of high school. Davis points to a recent study that found that approximately 70 percent of inmates in the Philadelphia prison system have had some contact with the foster system in their lives. “For the most part these kids are over-age and very under-credentialed,” she says.

Despite the seemingly evident need, it took six years for the idea to come to fruition, and during that time, finances and practicality whittled the idea from a boarding school for foster kids to a year-round high school. In 2008, Arise Academy and 14 other programs petitioned the Philadelphia School Reform Commission for a charter. The commission approved just seven of the proposals, and though Arise Academy made the cut, it was granted a three-year charter. The school must now demonstrate its success before the charter can be renewed.

In Philadelphia, where in 2009 only 57 percent of district students completed high school in four years, Arise Academy is working to graduate every student. After demonstrating their success for another year, the staff of Arise Academy hopes to spread the model to other parts of the country.

Davis emphasizes the importance of educating foster kids because of the reality that, after they leave the system, they must rely solely on themselves.

“These kids are just invisible, and they slip away,” she says.

This article appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Next American City magazine.  http://americancity.org/magazine/article/fostering-change/

18 Schools Saved From Detroit’s Extensive List of School Closures

Originally printed for Next American City

Photo Credit: Crash Test Addict

Early this month the culmination of community action and advocacy helped save 18 Detroit public schools from the city’s massive school closure and relocation plan. In March, Robert Bobb, who became Emergency Financial Manager of Detroit Public Schools just a year earlier, announced plans to close over 40 school buildings by 2013. Since then Bobb and other DPS officials attended approximately 50 community meetings. Of the meetings, a handful succeeded in removing 18 schools from the chopping block.

The massive school closure efforts were first developed as a means of alleviating the financial deficit of DPS, which by the start of next year could be as much as $332 million. The city’s current Master Facilities Plan will relocate some school programs, cancel others all together and allow the city to close 45 buildings. Pending these closures, Detroit will have closed 100 public schools since 2005. The current list is longer than that of any other school district in the country this year.

The Master Facilities Plan, which outlines what will happen to each of the schools being closed or relocated and why, lists building conditions and declining enrollment, in addition to financial costs, as justification. Declining enrollment is an increasingly pressing issue for DPS because funding is enrollment based. The city’s schools struggle to maintain enrollment despite a loss of students to suburb and charter schools. The building closures will allow the district to funnel more of the Federal Stimulus Funds’ $500.5 million bond issue to build and/or modernize schools into fewer buildings, theoretically getting more for their money. Estimates report the closures scheduled through 2012 will generate an annualsavings of $37.67 million and require a one-time closing cost of $30.8 million.

Bobb reminds proponents and opponents alike that in many cases it is the buildings being closed, not the programs. Efforts have been made to relocate successful programs into existing facilities. But schools like Carstens Elementary, one of the handful removed from the closure list, argue that place matters. The financial gains of the closure and relocation plans, they say, do not always outweigh the social impact on surrounding communities. Carstens Elementary, for instance, provides additional services such as dental, vision and health care as well as legal advice for parents. “We are the staple of the community that keeps it alive,” Abby Phelps, who does outreach for Carstens, said in an interview with Michigan Radio. “Without us, it would be dead here.”

Advocates for Carstens Elementary convinced Bobb and DPS to take the school off of the closure list based not on this community element but on Carstens’ outstanding test scores. Over 90% of third and fourth graders passed the MEAPexam, despite the fact that 98% come from low-income families. While academic performance is not listed as reason for closure in the Master Facilities Plan, 11 of the 45 schools listed have some of the lowest test scores in the state, and some schools, like Carstens, were removed from the list based on exceptional success rates.

Other schools cleared the list based on increased enrollment through recruitment drives and additional funding through programs like Focus: HOPE – the results of community involvement and advocacy. In these cases the communities came to the aid of the schools, suggesting mutually supportive relationships. Bobb’s argument that school programs can be relocated into other buildings and be just as, if not more, successful may be true. It is hard to say, however, how neighborhoods that lose their schools – in some cases their staples of community – will fare.