A Community of Literacy Champions

My name is Benjamin Oliver, and I am an AmeriCorps member championing literacy in Kent County through the Schools of Hope Family Literacy Program.  My school site is Harrison Park Elementary, situated on the west-side of Grand Rapids, where I instruct more than 20 parents in English as a Second Language (ESL) and Family Literacy.  The goal of the program is to improve the literacy and language skills of parents so they may better assist in raising strong and successful readers. If we want every child in our community to be little “literacy champions,” then their parents have to be ones as well.     

To best illustrate the impact of our program, I will tell you about one of my students, Martina (not her real name).  Martina is from Hidalgo, Mexico, and has been in the program for two years.  In that time she has made significant progress in her linguistic ability, taking her education very seriously. As a result of being in our program, she has begun Advanced ESL classes at the Literacy Center of West Michigan and is on her way to achieving a National Career Readiness Certificate.  She has even successfully completed a college-level class through Ferris State University! 

Martina also considers the education of her kids with the same, if not greater concern.  She has stepped up as a parent leader at the school; representing a grade level in school improvement meetings, coordinating volunteers for a new Spanish literacy program, and taking initiative in planning school events such as Cinco de Mayo, Dia de los Muertos, and Teacher Appreciation Week.

More than this, Martina has connected on a personal level with school leadership, teachers, and other staff.  She constantly pushes other parents to get more involved, and she motivates her peers to come to classes.  I joke with her that the school needs to turn one of the rooms into an apartment so she could sleep there too - she’s always there helping someone! 

Martina is a literacy champion.  She takes her kids to the library, reads to them at night, and tells me that she tries to help her kids with their homework, though more often they are the ones that help her with hers.  Her children are reaping the benefits of her dedication.  They are excelling in school and her eldest daughter, an honors student, wants to go to college in the medical field.  Martina has done everything she can, from college campus visits, to connecting with a college readiness counselor and ensuring her daughter is getting the information she needs to achieve her dream.    

I am extremely proud of all of the parents that come to Family Literacy Classes.  I especially enjoy seeing them bond with their kids around learning, as they engage together in literacy activities at our monthly Family Nights.  Like Martina, nearly all of the parents in our program are regular volunteers at the school and have overcome language and cultural barriers to successfully navigate the school environment.  I can’t hear enough from school personnel who tell me how much our program has done to help them engage with families who have limited English proficiency. 

In addition to being very satisfying, helping to empower parents like Martina is also a lot of fun!  Seeing parents connect with each other and teachers—joking around, or indulging in harmless gossip—are all strong indications they feel comfortable in their child’s school and are actively building the school community.  It is important for the overall health of the school that these parents learn the necessary skills to not only understand the school system, but to feel understood themselves.         

Anyone can be a literacy champion.  It will take a community of these to combat the generational problem of illiteracy.  Bing Goei, one of two officially designated "Literacy Champions” in Grand Rapids (the other being Mayor George Heartwell), described the problem of illiteracy in Kent County in an interesting way.  He said, “Illiteracy is not only a problem for the 22 percent of the adult population that struggle with reading and writing, but it is also a problem for the 78 precent of the population who may be unaware of the issue.”  

You can help address the issue by spreading the word. Consider continuing your “lifetime of service” after your service year by tutoring a child at a school, or helping an adult with their language skills.  That is the AmeriCorps way, and if we all pitch in, if we all get things done, maybe we will have an entire community of literacy champions!

Green School Daze

The Detroit Youth Energy Squad empowers individuals, especially youth, to make their communities more energy efficient and become leaders in Michigan's green economy. D-YES is a program of WARM Training Center, a non-profit organization that promotes the development of resource-efficient, affordable, healthy homes through education, training, and technical assistance. 

Hey everyone out there in the blogosphere, Austin Broderick comin' at ya live. I'm in my second year serving with WARM Training Center's AmeriCorps program, often times referred to as the Detroit Youth Energy Squad (or D-YES, depending on who you ask). In order to understand how the program came to occupy its current niche providing environmental education and programming in Detroit Public Schools, one must first understand where we've been over the past few years....literally all over Detroit! There's a lot going on here, so pay attention.

After a successful inaugural 2010-2011 campaign, which saw approximately 20 high-school seniors from Detroit Community High School (DCHS) launch their green careers via after-school technical training in energy efficiency and home weatherization visits, D-YES Program Director Justin Schott expanded the program into FOUR schools (DCHS, Detroit Institute of Technology at Cody High School, Central Collegiate Academy, and Highland Park Community High School) for the 2011-2012 program year. Volunteers served double-duty as Weatherization Crew Leaders by morning and Education Leaders by afternoon. Thirty-six high-school students drawn from environmentally-focused after-school programs at each school were hired to serve as full-time weatherization technicians in the summer of 2012.

Thanks to an ideal partnership with Detroit Public Schools (DPS), the newest incarnation rolled off the assembly line in the fall of 2012. The AmeriCorps program has been tweaked a bit but the mission remains the same, with energy efficiency at the heart of a comprehensive environmental stewardship curriculum:

• Through hands-on, active learning, the DPS Go Green Challenge allows students to develop an ethic of environmental stewardship and take an active role in community transformation. Teachers are encouraged to use school facilities as the basis for innovative programming and serve as a tool for hands-on lessons. The DPS Go Green Challenge has three areas of focus: Student Achievement, Financial Stability, and Community Impact. 

AmeriCorps Green School Coordinators are responsible for facilitating in-class and after-school sessions with "Green Teams" at each of their schools. The Challenge exposes students to practical and hands-on activities in the areas of energy-efficiency and resource conservation, which also allow schools to reduce their energy use and operating costs. My day-to-day involves working in eight schools in Detroit's northwest side, with sessions ranging from introducing sustainability concepts to a class of energetic 1st graders, to developing green infrastructure plans for school campuses and facilitating Go Green Challenge projects. Completing each project gets a school one step closer to receiving a large cash prize awarded to the overall Challenge winner arranged by school structure; up to $1,000 for Elementary, $1,500 for Middle, and $2,400 for High Schools! It's been a race to the finish for many schools over the past few weeks as they complete projects by the April 30th deadline!

The Challenge began with the Incandescent Light Bulb Hunt to replace older light bulbs with higher-efficiency compact fluorescents (CFLs). It was not only a great primer on energy-efficiency for students, but will save the school district a bunch of money on utility bills after replacement! The second project was the Small Appliance Inventory, which teaches resource conservation by allowing students to identify and unplug extraneous appliances and dreaded energy vampires. Energy Monitors is an ongoing initiative for students to actively cut down their school's energy use by turning off lights and computers after school, and issue tickets and suggestions for further reduction. Students also spent some time investigating the efficiency of their school's heating system with the Set Points and Scheduling-HVAC Project. They spoke with their Facility Manager to learn about how the system functions, recorded temperature readings to reflect the classroom conditions, and again made recommendations to improve performance. The most tangible and exciting aspect of the Go Green Challenge, however, came last month in the form of a single-stream RECYCLING pilot program in 20 elementary and special needs schools! Each piece of paper diverted from the waste stream is a sign of progress. The rest of the schools will begin recycling programs in the fall!

Our schools are feeling especially "green" this time of year, and it's not just because spring is finally in the air! Outside of the Challenge framework, Green Teams are working around the clock and spearheading additional projects which will expand educational opportunities for years. Coordinators Alessandra and Jerry are assisting with the District's first "bio wall" at East English Preparatory Academy, while Cheryl and Erin have been busy all year with Cass Technical High School students on a hydroponic indoor growing system! We've got a number of school greening projects in the pipeline, including a "seed bombing" event that Kyung and Yazmin are organizing at Western High School. Over on the northwest side of the city, my partner Nikolette and I have been working to complete Ms. Kunjan Vyas' greenhouse transformation at Emerson Elementary, an outdoor instruction space on the Cody High School campus complete with native plantings, and a vegetable garden at the Jerry L. White Special Needs Center!

Needless to say, it's been a busy year, and I am grateful for the opportunity to use sustainability as a means of enhancing our student's academic performance and learning environments. It's exciting being on the ground floor of such a triple-bottom-line initiative from Detroit Public Schools as many generations of students will benefit from their commitment to going green. I was fortunate enough to learn about environmental stewardship at the college level; for a DPS student to learn such practical and vital information at a young age, the future's looking bright (at a lower wattage, no doubt)!