Resilience and Dedication
Posted on March 29, 2017 by Anthony Hubbard - No Comments
When most students look at the clock hoping the bell would ring so they can run out into the world – Raul Lanzo stays back and take full advantage of teachers, tutors, and interns who are ready and willing to offer additional assistance with projects, homework, and online classes.
Mr. Lanzo is 18 years old and a native of Syracuse, New York and dreams of becoming forensic specialist where he can help solve unsolved murders. He also plans to open a small barbershop while working on his dream.
Raul has a 4.0 GPA and a 98% attendance after making a promise to the Executive Director if he would be allowed to attend YouthBuild he would come to school every day and on time. Mr. Lanzo lived up to his end of the promise., he has only missed a day due to illness with permission for Mr. Hubbard. Raul is an obvious example of resilience and dedication.
Making a Difference to Underachievers
Posted on October 9, 2015 by Anthony Hubbard - No Comments
In today’s educational landscape, it is quite common to see students categorized as ‘intelligent’, ‘average’, ‘unintelligent’, ‘underperformers’ and so on. The view that students have a pre-determined, pre-set ‘level’ of intelligence and ability to learn is quite prevalent and this is a widely accepted view as well. Academicians and educators across the country, even the world, really believe that not all students can achieve the same academic goals because of the differential intelligence levels that they are endowed with. This gives credence to the belief that intellect or intelligence is an inborn ‘skill’, with each person being gifted with a specific limit of it. This also means that there are only a select few who can truly excel even when the best teachers are employed and they are leveraging the most modern, most effective teaching techniques to impart knowledge.
This view is flawed in more than one way because there is reason to believe that the so called ‘underperforming’ student does not have the same intelligence or ability to grasp complex academic concepts as the so- called ‘intelligent’ student. Further, there is no scientific basis for the assumption that everyone is born with different intelligence levels, which cannot be enhanced or drawn out in any way as they progress through life and through different educational experiences. As Nobel Prize nominee, clinical, developmental and cognitive psychologist Ruevin Feurestein explained, ‘intelligence is not fixed but modifiable’. It is the responsibility of the teacher or academician to devise a teaching system or strategy that helps every student achieve higher levels of intelligence by drawing upon his or her own hidden reserves.
An overview of the Feuerstein Method
After fleeing the Nazi invasion, Feurestein leveraged his psychology degree to teach young survivors of the Holocaust in his new home in Palestine. The needs of these children prompted him to take up a career that would address both psychological and educational needs of refugee children. In the 1950s, Feurestein was involved in working with children from Moroccan, Berber and Jewish families and he found that those who initially scored low on IQ tests showed remarkable improvement when they were given special psychological and academic attention.
This encouraged him to start viewing intelligence as a modifiable characteristics rather than a fixed one, as the traditional view point held. He started researching various ways in which too ‘teach’ intelligence even as he expounded the theory that the students who excelled and who were believed to be intelligent were actually leveraging their ability to learn more effectively than others.
The prevailing means and tools for measuring intelligence were flawed and inadequate, in his view, because they failed to indicate that all students could be elevated to the same level of intelligence provided they were taught how to do it. As a new, more effective and more accurate method of evaluation, Feurestein came up with the dynamic assessment method, as it is known today. His focus was on identifying and evaluating the inherent cognitive flexibility in the child that represents the ability to learn. Once this evaluation is done, teaching methodologies can be tweaked so that these abilities are used optimally. This view was dramatically different from what was commonly accepted then and it transformed the way people looked at ‘intelligence’ and its impact on academic performance.
Taking his study further, Feurestein began to devise methodologies to help children who were not performing well academically and work on their weaknesses, putting them on track for dramatic improvements. ‘Mediated relationship’, he discovered, lay at the foundation of meaningful teaching strategies. These methodologies have brought a ray of hope into the lives of not just poorly performing children but also children with special needs such as those affected by Down’s Syndrome, palsy, stroke or other conditions.
The journey from ‘poor performer’ to ‘gifted’ status
Feuerstien’s methods can be used with amazing success in every academic field to teach and engage urban students most effectively. The success of the methods hinge on our ability to understand and accept that intelligence is limitless. Most urban schools tend to look at students as deficits; they believe that the students can only advance so far. However, this is far from the truth that Feuerstien has proven beyond doubt. In my personal experience, wherever I have implemented Feuerstien’s method, the results have been simply dramatic and uniformly impressive. I have taught several boys and young men of color with these tools and witnessed the improved academic performance from close quarters.
One important contributing factor for this impressive change is that a growth oriented mindset is essential. A tremendous amount of growth is possible when this correct approach is adopted to take a low performing student and turn them into a “gifted” student. This growth mind set is often lacking in academic environments where ‘underachievement’ is the expected outcome. Sadly, this is true of many schools where children of color are automatically tagged with the ‘underperformer’ label. The teachers may, inadvertently, believe that these students are incapable of improving their academic excellence and thus feel that investing more attention or time on them will not yield results. In reality, it is the opposite that is true.
The teacher has to actively believe that the students can excel and this belief should be evident every single day in the teaching strategy, technique and tools utilized. This positive mindset, that the underperforming student is no different from their academically proficient peers, is the foundation block on which the students builds their new skills to learn more effectively and efficiently.
Another critical understanding for both teacher and student is that learning and intelligence are not two different aspects. Intelligence is the knowledge of identifying where knowledge can and should be applied, i.e.: a meta knowledge of sorts. This knowledge comes when the learner is actively involved in the learning process- understanding why they are studying something and where they might apply it. When the students make these connections, they can apply the knowledge intelligently to various situations. This is not all- they can also learn more advanced concepts easily because the grounding of knowing why they need it and how to use it is already present in them. This is how the transformation from poor performers to exceptional students takes place with the right teaching methodologies being implemented.
Opening Ceremony. A Huge Success!
Posted on September 24, 2014 by Anthony Hubbard - No Comments
Video and
Photos coming soon!
MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE II
Posted on September 24, 2014 by Anthony Hubbard - No Comments
The ideal society is one which upholds each child to have an equal chance of success as his peers regardless of background, social standing, or racial color. This, however, is a challenge that is difficult to overcome as we are all witnesses of the wide gap that exists between males of color and their peers in terms of achieving success in school. The national conversation around under-proficient public schools is directly linked to two phenomena: one curricular and the other socioeconomic. Schools which serve economically exploited communities of color are not new, indeed they most prominently date back to Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. Further, there continue to be substantial challenges to the lack of cultural responsiveness in the curriculum used in schools. If all students do not have the requisite access to essential technical, social, and cultural resources necessary to educate a learner for success in the twenty-first century, then we will continue to see our public schools facilitate the production of a static underclass who will perpetually struggle to be academically, politically and economically viable in their communities. Part two of YouthBuild Providence’s Community Dialog Panel seeks to address these issues head on.
Essential Questions:
What kind of culturally responsive resources do boys of color require to help them understand themselves as agents of change rather than objects of their environments?
It is said that if a student does not see him/herself in the curriculum then it’s not education, it’s indoctrination. How might our schools respond to this curricular challenge?
A group of African American families organized themselves and brought a class action suit which eventually rose all the way to Supreme Court in 1954 all in an effort to secure educational resources for their children. That was two generations ago. What radical changes are required of us today?
Many institutions of higher learning report that the retention rates of male students of color consistently sits below their academic counterparts. As we continue to see the rise of student loans and college debt what can be done to secure the varied and necessary resources to ensure that young
men of color not only make it to college, but graduate?
Call to Action:
Immediately following the panel discussion we will convene a gathering of practitioners, thought-partners, parents, and concerned community members to discuss the formation of a subcommittee which will be tasked with organizing follow-through efforts on the initiatives rendered in the panel discussions.
TO REGISTER: CLICK HERE
2014 Opening Ceremony
Posted on August 20, 2014 by Anthony Hubbard - No Comments
Harumbi 2014!
ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014
You are invited to the YouthBuild Providence
Opening Ceremonies for the 2014-2015 school year.
This is the first time that YouthBuild Providence has invited the public to take part in our opening ceremonies.
At the ceremony, members of the of the YouthBuild Providence community welcome new students and celebrate the start of the new school year.
The ceremony includes important rituals that define the beginning of a student’s YouthBuild education. Students receive their YouthBuild Providence pins and recite the YouthBuild Providence Philosophy publicly for the first time.
We hope that you will honor the scholars of YouthBuild Providence at Harumbi 2014
This year’s keynote speaker will be School Board President Keith Oliveira
WHERE:
Providence Career & Technical Academy
41 Fricker St, Providence RI 02903
WHEN:
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
5:00 pm-
7:00 pm
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Please contact Elijah Stephenson with any questions or for more information
estephenson@provplan.org (401) 273-7528