Lots O' Math and Money Management

This is a very cute photo I took last week of Tim tutoring Tasia and Daniel. This was right after Pastor John walked up and saw they were working on Calculus and said, “Oh, baby, yeah!!!” Really? He gets that excited over math? I love the looks on Tasia’s and Daniel’s faces in this photo.

Today Tim worked with the Juniors in ACT prep. Taylor and Maranda raved about his teaching and they teased him mercilessly about a drawing he did on the board. I’m sure the drawing had to do with math. . . I didn’t get to see it, but it must have been hilarious.

The Seniors did a little quiz called “Are You a Teenage Money Genius?” It helped us to see what they know and don’t know about personal money management. It was interesting: they didn’t know what it means to “pay yourself first,” but they were pretty well informed about debit cards. Nick told a funny story about how his bank account grew in the year that his debit card was lost. When he finally found the card (in his car), he went to the bank and discovered all of the money he had earned from his work teaching snowboarding at Snoqualmie.

There was little bit of judgment in the room about one of the students who wants to buy new rims for his car. Hmmmm. . .wants verses needs. . .

Carla really enjoyed her time at Starbucks headquarters last week. She said she learned so much. I want her to get a job at Starbucks. She’d be great!

We did our binder check today – thanks to Jamie for doing that for us! Again, I repeat my mantra: please encourage the students to take Cornell notes in class. They are really slacking right now.

Debriefing Starbucks and John Wooden

Last week I was unable to write my blog and I apologize for that. Last Monday and Tuesday we prepared for our trip to Starbucks by reading an article written by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Here it is: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/13/how-starbucks-got-its-mojo-back.html
It tells the story of how Mr. Schultz realized that Starbucks was tanking, resumed his position as CEO, and served as a catalyst to help Starbucks right itself again. It is an interesting way to look at and learn about the company, its mission, and its history. We also listened to a radio interview with Howard Schultz by Tavis Smiley. Here it is: http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/tavis/local-tavis-962165.mp3 . The interview starts at about 12:30.

On Tuesday, the Juniors were given the assignment of finding three interesting things from the Starbucks website. Maranda found an iPhone App where you can order your latte and a barista on a scooter will bring it to you! This is only available in the 7 largest US cities, she told us. So I was trying to find this iPhone app so I could show the Seniors during their class. We finally googled it and found this: http://www.starbucks.com/blog/introducing-starbucks-mobile-pour

We scrolled down to the comments at the bottom of this page and figured out that it was an April Fools joke conducted by Starbucks! We were totally punked by Starbucks!!!! Unbelievable. . .

All of the students and staff went to Starbucks Corporate Headquarters last Wednesday. (I couldn’t go because I was going to my nephew’s master’s degree recital in violin performance). The kids learned about where coffee comes from (berries from trees), how to make their own coffee drinks, the history of Starbucks, the careers that exist at Starbucks, how Starbucks likes to give grants to youth-driven programs, and about the logo and brand. They were greeted by Troy Alstead, CFO, who is a fan of Peace Community Center. After that, they went to Red Robin on the Seattle waterfront. They said they learned more than they even realized and enjoyed the field trip completely.

Today, in CLASS we wrote about the following blocks in John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success: self-control, alertness, initiative, and intentness. Self-control means controlling your emotions so you don’t lose control of your common sense and discipline. Alertness means learning from the mistakes and successes of others – just paying attention to what’s going on around you. Initiative means that you keep trying and you don’t let fear of failure stop you. Intentness means you never ever ever give up! (To quote Churchill).

The students wrote some thank you notes to the Starbucks employees who participated in our field trip. The kids told me about the trip, what they learned, what they enjoyed. I’m really happy they had such a great time. Hopefully I will have some photos to post soon!

Highs, Lows, and Howard Schultz

Letha making her thank you note gorgeous!

Another day of feeling like I ran through the whole day and my feet never touched the ground. Started off the day at Stadium High School where I talked to about 20 students to see if they want to join Hilltop Scholars. Some of my current Hilltop Scholars joined the conversation to encourage students to join us. Thanks kiddos! Big thanks to Stadium staff, Principal Barnum, Mr. Harris, Ms Pearcy, and Ms Bright for all of their help. I was very impressed with how easy it was to work with the staff at Stadium. Back at work I met with an AmeriCorps, then met with Professor Houston from University of Puget Sound. We are looking at how my students and her students can work together and learn from each other.

Just one class today. The Freshmen and Sophomores are combined into once class this semester. They spent some time getting their binders organized. It had been a while so it was quite a task, especially for Antonio. Perfect binder and notes scores today: Letha, Serena, Angelina! Yay!

While we organized binders, one student shared her highs and lows for the day. Sometimes they just need to talk and I’m happy that they feel CLASS is a safe place to talk it out.

They wrote some thank you notes to donors and they put some effort into them, sprucing the notes up with colored pencils and markers. It was kinda cute to see how hard they worked on these. Letha described her artwork as “FRESH.” (See attached photos).

We are going on a field trip to Starbucks corporate headquarters next week so I had the students listen to Tavis Smiley interviewing Howard Schultz on how he helped to revive Starbucks. They learned that he is dedicated to Starbucks and considers it his “baby.” He closed all of the Starbucks for a day to re-train everyone and took a lot of criticism for it. They thought he was humble when he said the revival of Starbucks wasn’t because of him, he was just a catalyst.

Then it was time to get ready to go recruiting at Foss High School tomorrow. Long day, but very productive.

Thank you notes, and Ms Ruiz got frustrated.

This is a is a shot of the Juniors with Flat Stanley who has come to visit me from San Antonio. I am to take photos of Flat Stanley in Tacoma and send them to my niece’s teacher. Anyway, the Juniors decided to pretend that they were flat, which is why they are all lying on the floor. That was Juwan’s idea.

Long day, very tired. Here’s what I can remember about CLASS today.

The kids were supposed to have binder checks today, but our binder checker wasn’t here, so we had to reschedule that to Thursday. Please encourage the students to take notes in their classes and to get their binders organized.

Development Director, Kelly Merry, visited both sections of CLASS today to introduce herself to the students and explain to them a little project she needed from them which was for them to write a thank you note to some people who attended our Instruments of Peace breakfasts. The students cheerfully wrote the notes, which as usual is greatly appreciated.

We discussed our upcoming field trips. Then we did an ACT practice drill and reviewed that.

The seniors also wrote thank you notes and then we had to have a serious discussion about their grades which resulted in them asking me at least five times why oh why they have to write Cornell notes? I answered very patiently telling them that Cornell makes them interact with the material four times which makes it more likely to stay in their head and that it gives them an easy, organized study guide. They didn’t buy that and kept asking until I just told them it was a class requirement and I was done talking about it. Note this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. I think I need some of my college students to talk to them and attest to the value of Cornell notes.

Tomorrow I am going to Stadium to recruit some new Hilltop Scholars current grades 9 – 11. Trevor and Daniel and their significant others stayed late and helped me put together everything I need for tomorrow. They are the BEST!

Restarting This Blog!

Here is a photo of me and two of my mentees, Devin and Chyna. They are both Juniors and I have known them both since they were in 8th grade. My, how they've grown. And what a joy it is to be a part of their lives.

Joys: Seeing my students compare the notes they took in my class to the notes of the intern and analyze how well they did compared to him. Baby steps.
Hearing Will (sometimes Peace Custodian, sometimes Peace musician and director extraordinaire) tell me the story of proposing to Taneisha. It gave me goosebumps. He had other people involved like Taneisha's daughter and sister, the restaurant waiters were all in on it and he even had a musician! (Of course.) So sweet.

Concerns: One of our alums is having trouble focusing on her studies, another is threatening to go to NYC to open a cupcake business (I think she's kidding). Also really concerned about some of our students lack of access to health care and food! If parent doesn't or can't provide either of these, the kid is just sunk. It's very painful to watch, we intervene when/where we can, but it never feels like enough.

Here's what we did in CLASS:

Today the Freshmen and Sophomores practiced their note taking. Intern Shawn took notes during class and so did the students. At the end they compared notes.

We reviewed the students midterm grades (which are not pretty) and discussed how they got this grade and what they need to do to improve. We also discussed our upcoming Field Trips and activities, which are:
Wed., April 20: 11am to 7pm trip to Starbucks corporate headquarters and dinner
Friday, May 5: 3:30-5:30pm Living Legacy Project, Creative Brainstorming
Friday, May 13: 6-9:30pm Archbishop Desmond Tutu

We then reviewed the reading we did on Wednesday from John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.

Students have a make-up assignment to do that is due on Wednesday:

Think of a song that motivates you, another song that calms you, and another song that cheers you up.
Attached are three note cards.
On the first note card write the name of the song that motivates you and a few of your favorite lyrics.
On the second note card write the name of the song that calms you and a few of your favorite lyrics.
On the third note card write the name of the song that cheers you up and a few of your favorite lyrics.

Foss Fiasco

I sent the email below to Tacoma School District leadership on Thursday, September 23. On Monday, September 27 I received an email from Toni Pace, Director of High School Education requesting a meeting. I have yet to hear from her assistant to set an appointment.

Two parents of Hilltop Scholars have also sent emails. One was told "we'll look into it and get back to you." The other just sent his email yesterday.

Greetings:

I am writing to request that Foss High School be given a math teacher, a Spanish teacher, and an English teacher. Not having these teachers on staff is limiting student opportunities to get classes needed to be a competitive college applicant. The following are specific concerns shared with me by Foss students and staff:

1. Students are being removed from Spanish 5/6 (third year Spanish) if they are not “full IB” students. As you know, two years of foreign language is the minimum requirement for college acceptance. Offering third year Spanish at Foss, but not allowing certain students to access the class puts them behind other students at Foss and other schools. It makes these students less competitive and may even block their acceptance to the college of their choice. In some cases, parents were not notified of this important schedule change.
2. Juniors are not allowed to take Algebra 1-2 and seniors are not allowed to take Geometry. Instead, these students are being placed in Applied Math. If these students want to go to community college, they will have to remediate Algebra and Geometry (on their own dime) in order to reach college-level math.

In addition, many of the classes at Foss have an unacceptable high student to teacher ratio and are over-capacity. This depresses teachers’ and students’ morale and continues to limit access for students who want a quality education. In particular, there are concerns about the following classes:

1. English classes are so over-capacity that freshmen and sophomores are being placed in On-Line English classes. As you know, the one-class failure rate of Tacoma freshmen is over 50%. I worry that giving them an online class is going to exacerbate the problem, especially if they are asked to take the class at home on their own.
2. World issues and history classes are over-capacity and students are being placed in on-line classes.
3. Algebra 3/Trig is over-capacity.
4. There is only one teacher teaching freshman science, so biology classes are now over-capacity.
5. Art classes are over-capacity so students are not able to access this required class.

Last spring and summer, my students from Peace Community Center presented “Voices from the Gap.” These are the same students who are coming to me with concerns about what is happening to them at Foss High School. They know about the Achievement Gap and they recognize that they are being underserved by Foss and by the Tacoma School District. It is disheartening to see a student who wants a good education try to access it and be turned away.

As I said above, Foss High School needs at the very least, an additional qualified, good math teacher, English teacher, and Spanish teacher. Otherwise, the school and the District are blocking access to learning and to college for its students. In the future, I suggest the school schedule be built based on students’ academic needs and requests. It doesn’t appear that happened this year.

Please let me know of any actions taken in the next week or so to rectify this situation. If there is anything we can do as a community to help with this problem, please let us know.

Sincerely,
Laurie Fisher Ruiz

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurie Fisher Ruiz
Peace Community Center
"Touching Lives, Extending Peace"
Education Director
253.383.0702 ext. 109
eddir@peacetacoma.org
2106 South Cushman Avenue
Tacoma, Washington 98405

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Beginning

Just started teaching CLASS last week. I am entering my second year of teaching this course. My freshmen are young, but trainable, my sophies are delightful and inquisitive, my juniors are like my very own children, and my seniors are brilliant. I can't wait to see how they all progress this year!

So far, we have done the basic stuff, like reminding everyone how to take Cornell Notes and organize their binders.

Our overarching theme this year is Prejudice. I decided to begin this theme by teaching the kids about 9/11. Just asking them questions today, I learned that they know a little about Al Qaida and Osama Bin Ladin, but some did not know that there were 4 planes involved and that the Pentagon was attacked as well. They were so young when it happened. Today I just taught them basic stuff like Al Qaida's responsible for 9/11 and Afghanistan was their training ground which is why we went into Aghanistan. There is so much more to the story, I know, but I have so little time to teach them!

I also learned today that one of my students is taking an online math class at Foss instead of taking a real live math class from a real live teacher. What the heck?

The assignment this week is for them to complete the Life Plan Assignment:

LIFE PLAN ASSIGNMENT

Your assignment is to make a timeline of your life. Indicate various milestones in your life by showing what age you plan to achieve these milestones. Some of the milestones you might not ever want (like marriage and/or children, or military service). If there are other milestones that are not listed here, please feel free to add them.

Be creative. These are going on the walls of our classroom.

Title your life plan with your name. Example: “Daniel’s Life Plan”

Milestones (in alphabetical order):

AmeriCorps Service
Begin career
Buy first house
College entrance (which college/university do you hope to attend?)
College graduation
First child
First job (part-time or summer job)
Fourth child
Graduate school (after you finish college)
High school graduation
Marriage
Military service
Second child
Third child