Lessons learned from the It Takes a Valley program: recruitng and retaining future teachers to serve high-needs schools

“It Takes a Valley” is a teacher preparation program that aims to recruit and retain teachers in schools that serve students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. This program provides future teachers with extensive early teaching experience and chances to develop strategies for success in this type of educational context. The theoretical basis for this program\u27s approach is examined, some key aspects of the program are considered, the initial evaluation of the program and the lessons learned to date are explored, the challenges and growing pains encountered by the program are examined, and the implications of the program for teacher education are discussed

Service Learning in Alternative Education Settings

When service learning is part of the curriculum, students become involved in something important and learn that they can make a difference in the world. Based on John Dewey’s (1938) theory of experiential learning, service learning takes the student out of the classroom and into the community. In a 1995 public address, Secretary of Education Richard Riley remarked that “by involving students in hands-on learning, problem solving, and applications of academic knowledge in real settings, service learning can increase students’ academic achievement in challenging subjects and creates a sense of engagement that enhances a student’s motivation to complete school.” Introducing service learning can be time consuming and filled with interesting challenges. Teachers find, however, that the process yields positive, meaningful results for students and communities. In this article, I discuss service learning as a pedagogical process for teachers serving students defined as “at-risk” in alternative education settings

Temporary Protection: Towards a New Regional and Domestic Framework

During the past thirty-five years, the United States has seen the direct influx of thousands of individuals leaving politically unstable countries. While some seeking entry have proved themselves to be refugees and obtained permanent protection in the United States, far more, including a large number of people fleeing civil war, natural disasters, or comparable forms of upheaval in their home countries, have failed to demonstrate that they would be targets of persecution. Yet, their return to their home countries has been complicated by the very circumstances that led to their flight: conflict, violence, and repression. Over time, the United States developed a series of ad hoc responses that protected such individuals, culminating in the Immigration Act of 1990 (“IMMACT”), which provided legislative authority for Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”). Nevertheless, after eight years, many problems remain in the application of the law. Solving these problems will contribute both to better immigration control and more humane responses to future crises. Current policies fail on two accounts. First, the temporary protection provision in the law generally has failed to protect the vast majority of those in danger as a crisis develops and unfolds. If the United States government protects significant numbers at all, protection is provided outside the confines of the United States. Even so, the mechanisms for responding extraterritorially are not well developed. Second, current policies regarding protection in the United States do not provide the control mechanisms to ensure that protection is not abused and that return, when appropriate, is effected. The choice to admit people for temporary protection has been a difficult one for the United States for two main reasons: the lack of control over entry; and the inability to implement a fair but firm end game. These constraints together with the fear of litigation challenging domestic protection regimes have led policymakers to keep protection seekers offshore, such as on Guantanamo, or to return them directly to countries they fled without providing an opportunity for them to present requests for protection. But not having a fully developed regional or domestic capability for addressing these complex movements comes at a considerable cost. Estimates for the agency costs of handling the 1994 Cuban exodus through the use of offshore safe havens were more than $500 million. Further, an immigration system that cannot fairly and efficiently process protection seekers lacks credibility for which it pays a significant public cost

So You Don’t Get Tricked: Counter-Narratives of Literacy in a Rural Mexican Community

A recent nine-month field study considered the relationships among school-sponsored and community forms of literacy practices in a migrantsending area of rural Mexico. While many teachers in rural Mexico argue that students should remain in school rather than migrate to the U.S., this study demonstrates the ways in which schools in rural Mexico often do not recognize the needs of the communities that they serve. As a result, students in these schools often develop a pragmatic orientation toward formal literacy. While many of the skills that they learn help them navigate commercial and government bureaucracies, these students do not adopt the values embedded in formal education. Rather, they implicitly question the promise of education as a neutral means to social and economic mobility

Family Structures and the Feminization of Poverty: Women in Hawaii

The quality of life for many single mothers and their children is shrouded in economic hardship. Women outside the traditional nuclear family, attempting to raise children, are doing so in poverty and without much public support. Marital disruption, teenage mothers, and out of wedlock births have resulted in an alarming number of improverished children living in America. This paper examines census data in the state of Hawaii and the impact of family structure on the quality of lives of women with children. Women living in multigenerational family arrangements, rather than in traditional families have higher income, holding family size constant. Social policies that do not focus on the issues of insufficient wages, job security, education, racial, sex and wage discrimination and child care needs will only fail

Silicon Valley Partnership for Recruiting and Preparing Quality Teachers For Students in High Needs Schools: It Takes A Valley

The old African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child seemed apropos as the team members discussed our shared commitment to recruiting and retaining quality teachers for our children. However, we are not a village, we are the Silicon Valley hence, It takes a valley to raise the teachers, specifically prepared for the children in our valley who are struggling in high need schools

Getting Familiar with Mapping

Students will identify characteristics of maps and learn how to use tools to make and analyze them