Meetings, meetings, meetings

The past two days have been incredibly busy but I’m grateful for all of the successful meetings I’ve had thus far!

On Thursday I had two meetings and was able to observe a fantastic session at NYU.

First meeting of the day was with Venessa Marks, Director of College Partnerships of KIPP Foundation – the non-profit arm of the largest charter school network in the country. KIPP started out as a cluster of middle schools but has since grown to over 200 schools primarily K-12 (Kindergarten to 12th Grade).

The schools promote a ‘college-going culture’ with teachers rooms named after colleges, for example. Venessa kindly talked me through her role and the nature of partnerships that KIPP have with colleges. I learned of Venessa’s role through the program for this year’s HBCU Conference. I stumbled across the hashtag on Twitter and followed the trail, reaching out to a number of people who ran sessions of interest to me. With over 90% of KIPP students African-American or Latino, I was keen to learn more of how KIPP supports its students to ‘aim high’. We discussed issues such as ‘summer melt’ (which occurs when students due to enrol in college in the Fall fade away over the Summer months) and how KIPP works with students right through to college graduation.

Second meeting of the day was to LaGuardia Community College – a school part of the CUNY BMI Initiative. At LaGuardia, I met with Shayla, James and Rachel, officials from BMEC – the Black Male Empowerment Cooperative and even got to meet a student-mentor Mohammad from Bangladesh. BMEC is a retention program designed to ‘engage and empower’ the young men throughout their education. Like many programs in the CUNY BMI Initiative, it is open to all students regardless of race, gender etc.

As well as meeting with Shayla, James, Rachel and Mohammad, I was lucky enough to visit the BMEC space – an area for the students to meet with staff and socialise ‘at a reasonable volume’ (to use Shayla’s words). The space was bright, large and had recently moved up to the more accessible Ground Floor. Arguably BMEC’s USP, it was great to see that the program takes pride of place in the college with a space dedicated to its students. At the very heart of a Churchill Fellowship is the exchange of knowledge so not only was I able to learn from the guys at BMEC but I was also able to share insights into life at Cambridge with them!

Sharing stories and the odd picture of a Harry Potter-esque dining hall left me dashing to observe a session of the Critically Conscious Educators Rising Series (CCER). CCER is an initiative that sees a group of teachers meeting monthly at NYU to examine their beliefs and practices around the students they work this, in particular non-white students.

The session I was fortunate to sit in on – which covered the topic of Code-Switching was absolutely brilliant and delivered in the most engaging way.

There was an introductory video which sparked conversations around microaggresions and one of the ways in which they’re delivered to minority groups, the classic ‘you’re so articulate’. I could completely relate to this as as Cardozie, one of the session convenors said – you’ll never catch a white man being referred to as articulate. The video and discussion was followed by Two by Three by Bradford – an activity from Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed which aims to show participants reality through the lens of theatrics.

My favourite part of the session involved literary analysis of the works of Jay-Z and J. Cole. Although I’m a Hip-Hop fan, I’ve never really had an aesthetic appreciation for Jay-Z’s work in particular. He’s a literary genius – stay tuned for my final report to find out why 🙂

I’m glad that CCER exists and think its a great model that should be replicated globally. Teachers/educators are a major stakeholder when it comes to student success/achievement so ensuring that they’re checking their biases and not allowing them to negatively impact their interactions with students is really important. Especially if students lack support from their guardians or peer group, teachers can play an incredibly powerful role in providing a sense of hope to the young people they work with.

Overall, yesterday was incredibly insight but I did feel a little exhausted by the end of it – it’s hard navigating the New York Subway system! I’ve still not mastered the art of ensuring that the train I get on is actually going in the direction I want to be going in… but I’ll get there eventually.