Today (Friday), I met with Paul Forbes – Director of Expanded Success Initiative (ESI). It was thanks to Paul that I was able to sit in on yesterday’s brilliant CCER session as CCER is one of the ways in which ESI supports the Educators it works with.
Like with Venessa Marks of KIPP Foundation, I found out about Paul through the program for the HBCU conference in March. Social Media is such a powerful tool and shouldn’t be underestimated as a means of forging connections (for research purposes or otherwise!)
ESI is an initiative committed to working with young black and latino men to reduce the ‘racial achievement gap’ between these groups and white and asian young men. It’s the largest public-private partnership in the USA and operates thanks to support from the Bloomberg Foundation, Open Society Foundation and Office of the Mayor in NYC. It forms the ‘Education’ component of the 4 areas of focus for the Young Men’s Initiative.
Paul took me through his presentation for the aforementioned conference, explaining the rationale behind the term ‘college-readiness’, how it’s measured in New York and how the education system is promoting ‘inequity by design’. He pulled up a number of videos which provided further insight into ESI, its origins and the work the team does.
We talked about the role that peer-to-peer mentoring plays in student development and Paul shared a number of programs, including one founded by a teacher that attended one of ESI’s sessions and learned about the concept of UMOJA (Swahili for ‘unity’). Umoja began as a weekend away for students at risk due to challenges with Academics, Poor Behaviour and/or Attendance and blossomed into a beautiful brotherhood between a group of boys in the Bronx. The peer-to-peer mentoring provided a sense of community and gave the boys figures that they could remain accountable to. As a result of this there were huge improvements in attendance rates in school and even academic achievement.
A brief flick through a booklet on the peer-to-peer mentoring programs in schools across New York showed the various forms they’ve taken on. At one school – Nia – a group for girls (based on another principle of Kwanzaa) was set up with the program led by teachers who are women.
From chatting to Paul, you can tell that he’s incredibly passionate about the work that he does and it was a real pleasure talking to him. Our meeting ran over by an hour but it was truly worth it to hear about the great work that ESI is doing!
Strengthening the black student pipeline 