Promise Fellow Story Archives
GREAT STORY:
IDELLE ERICKSON, THE GREEN TEAM
SPRING 2009
Students participating in the Green Team at Morgan Park Middle School program during the school-year spent time discussing the benefits of coming to school and participating in extra-curricular activities. This part of completing the Plan for Success meant evaluating what kinds of academic and future goals each student was working toward. Together, they decided that having Green Team meetings was something for students to look forward to and could contribute toward reducing their truancy. As a result, students set goals such as getting on the B honor roll, getting into college, and volunteering in the community. All of these things became important motivators to get them involved and engaged in school.
A key part of the Green Team’s success was service and service-learning projects. During Green Team meetings, students participated in fun and engaging activities that facilitated in interaction with each other and volunteers. The atmosphere of meetings promoted respect and openness of participants and gave them a place to be comfortable enough to share ideas and make new friends.
Because they worked so well together, students were given the responsibility for planning a service project. The project included taking a trip to Gooseberry Falls State Park to visit with a naturalist and learn about the state park system. They used that experience to create a project about tree identification and the importance of forest diversity. As a result, a Global Youth Service Day project was developed about local environmental issues called “Planting Trees for Diversity”. The group decided to clean up a small wooded park and applied lessons about environmental diversity to lessons on cultural and ethnic diversity. The middle school students worked with elementary students to clean up and plant 200 trees for the local park. The older students did a great job as role models for the younger students and built confidence in their own abilities to lead. All of these experiences led the youth to be more involved in school, view themselves as leaders and recognize their potential to change the world.
GREAT STORY:
JASON HALLEN, NORTHFIELD MIDDLE SCHOOL
SPRING 2009
In working with the Plans for Success, one Fellow took the need to foster hope in his students to heart. One of the Fellows in Northfield, Jason Hallen, encouraged hope in his students by helping to bring about opportunities for them to pursue their passions. He worked with them to brainstorm ways they could expand their engagement in their interests. As Jason said, “One student of mine struggles academically and socially. He has a bad reputation at school. Through the Plans for Success, I learned that he enjoyed cooking. To keep him engaged, I invited him to lead a cooking session at the afterschool program. He successfully led the activity in which students baked gigantic cookies.”
Jason went on to describe another student who was interested in film and aspired to be a director, but was often lonely and bored with school. Jason talked about film and different ways to get involved. Jason old him about film societies at two local colleges and they explored how this student might start attending and what he needed to pursue his interest. In the end, he went to several film screenings and is hoping to connect with the Film Club at another local youth organization. It was Jason’s commitment to finding that inner spark in his students and then finding ways to help students fan that flame that makes this a great story.
GREAT STORY:
NIKKI JENSEN, WOODLAND MIDDLE SCHOOL
SPRING 2009
I was working with a young woman who had a difficult time reading and was well behind her grade level. She had a difficult time recognizing and sounding out simple words. She was behind in all her classes because reading is such a fundamental skill to the rest of her courses. We started working together once a week on her reading skills. She liked it so much in the tutoring center, she started staying afterschool at the drop-in center to do her homework and to read. Together, we read three books and this student has found a new love of reading. She said to me, “I can’t wait to go to the library each week and pick out a new book!”. It has been an amazing transformation!
