Volume 12, Number 1, 2003
Education researchers would consider many of the students at Alexis I. du Pont Middle School near Wilmington, Del., "at risk."
The school has the highest poverty rate among the state's middle schools, with more than 70 percent of its students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, according to the principal, Robert Farr, CHEP '99MEd. Test scores are low and suspension rates are high. Few students seem likely to be prepared for college or even aspire to it.
Can the indicators be proved wrong? A CHEP team is determined to do just that, with the help of community partners.
CHEP's Delaware Center for Teacher Education, under the direction of Carol Vukelich, the L. Sandra and Bruce L. Hammonds Professor of Teacher Education, has won a $1.5 million, five-year grant from the federal Department of Education. The grant is being used to assist the middle school's 441 rising seventh- and eighth-graders "GEAR UP" for college. The acronym stands for Gaining Early Awareness & Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. The GEAR UP team will follow the students until they graduate from high school.
GEAR UP project director Melva Ware has recruited faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, AmeriCorps-VISTA volunteers and even recent graduates to lead what she terms "culturally responsive" tutoring and enrichment projects. CHEP doctoral students like Lamont Browne, who assists with math, not only help the younger students academically but provide role models close to their own ages, points out seventh-grade math teacher Amy Parker, CHEP '92MEd.
Ware and her team have created after-school clubs designed to motivate students through activities that are meaningful to them. That's why a group of students could be found around a microphone in the band room last spring chanting "G-E-A-R-U-P 2003! Come get it! Come get it!" to a recorded beat. "I just wanted to do something fun," says seventh-grader Patrick Mulshnock, who wrote one of the song's verses.
"They're getting us ready for high school," classmate Orlando Osorio adds.
The students can relate to hip-hop, says "DJs in the Making" club leader Tony Anderson, a CHEP doctoral student, who says the students eagerly composed verses--at the same time that many were getting failing grades in English. "They're not demonstrating what they can do in school because they're not interested," Anderson says.
The club has made students aware of possible careers in the recording field, Anderson says. They've learned to market their CD to classmates, to multitask and to work cooperatively with others. They put beats to words composed by members of the poetry club, led by Shauib Meacham, assistant professor of education at UD.
CHEP's Education Resource Center purchased the mixing and recording equipment, which will be available to teachers in other Delaware schools. Also partnering in the project are Delaware American Educational Services, the Delaware Higher Education Commission, Delaware Office of School to Work, the Latin American Community Center and the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League.
The after-school clubs attracted 100 students last school year and will expand next year, Ware says. In addition to academic assistance, she says, the grant is unusual in providing funding to involve parents. The program aims to help parents understand their role in monitoring their children's academic progress and to advise them about college admission requirements, career planning and resources for financial aid.
"I see a lot of people in our community who are so caught up in the day-to-day that they don't plan for their kids' future," says Merrie Pritchett, parent facilitator for GEAR UP and mother of an A.I. du Pont Middle School student. The program has drawn as many as 35 parents to meetings--compared with as few as two in the past, Farr says.
GEAR UP emphasizes numeracy because few of the middle school students are meeting state math standards and because higher-level math is an early hurdle to college preparedness, Ware says. "One of our objectives is to double the number of kids who have access to algebra in eighth grade," she says.
That's where Browne and another CHEP doctoral student, Lashona Burkes, have been key, working with youngsters during the school day. Browne targeted students in the regular seventh-grade math classes who showed promise, and in the accelerated math classes he focused on students who were struggling to keep up. Both he and Burkes, who worked with sixth-graders, often would take about 10 students to another room for special attention, thus reducing the remaining class size to around 20--also a benefit for those who remained, Farr says. Browne and Burkes will continue with the same students next year.
After school hours, while the hip-hop and poetry clubs worked on literacy and related skills, UD undergraduates served as math mentors to another group, emphasizing having fun with math. Sometimes, they shared activities, such as the fraction matching game that Zehava Vitberg and Kelly Edmonston, both CHEP 2006, played with sixth-grader Reka Hill. Sometimes, they worked equations, as Glenn Byrum, CHEP 2004, did with sixth-grader Jessica Morales.
Meanwhile, members of the Book Club were reading aloud from a novel and discussing it. "My reading has improved tremendously," seventh-grader Rick Griffiths says. "For some reason I didn't enjoy reading, but since I joined the Book Club, I've been reading two or more hours a day."
GEAR UP continued for four weeks earlier this summer, when about 30 students participated in a special program to prepare them to pass a test demonstrating they are capable of eighth-grade algebra.
Ware says she believes GEAR UP can change the future of poor children and children of color from "risk" to "promise" through activities that incorporate and value the skills, language and cultural styles that differ from those of middle-class white children.
"What is it about the traditional environment that doesn't support these kids' ability to demonstrate these skills?" she asks. "Part of what we've been able to do is model for [the middle school's staff] high-engagement strategies, how to get the kids connected." The goal, she says, is to motivate students by converting them from thinking, "They want us to improve," in favor of, "We want to perform."
--Sandy Dennison James