Summer Seniors

Tuesday was a day that I finally got to do what I had been looking forward to doing all summer, work with high school seniors applying to college. The other day our writing center team met with a group of Marriage and Family Health (MFH) interns from Lewis & Clarks who were hosting a program called summer seniors. This program offers guidance and coaching to Roosevelt seniors who want help both with their college application and with learning the skills necessary for college success. The summer seniors program was a great opportunity for our team to come in and help coach some of these students in writing their personal essay. I must say that this group of Roosevelt students broke the mold of what I had become somewhat accustomed to encountering. From what I had experienced in helping tutor at the SUN school, the typical Roosevelt student was smart, but pretty unmotivated to put their best effort into whatever assignment it was they were working on. This was not the case for these summer senior students. These students were incredibly attentive to everything the MFH interns were saying, put their absolute best effort into their first draft of their personal essay, which they only had a few minutes to write, and seemed to soak up every ounce of advice myself and the rest of the writing center team had to offer them.
To be honest, this ultra-attentiveness was kind of intimidating for me. As the student I worked with hung on my every word when I went over her essay, I got kind of nervous that I would screw up and miss something or give her some bad advice. Obviously, if I was feeling nervous critiquing her essay, I could only imagine how nervous she felt writing it. The particular student I worked with had high aspirations of attending a good college on a scholarship, but she admitted she was more of a math and science oriented student and felt that, in her words, she "sucked at writing." When I heard her say this I knew that my main objective of this session would be to get her confidence up. I know how hard it can be to write an essay when you think every sentence you are putting down is terrible. Also, the best essays are ones that are fun to write, and no one has fun writing an essay they think is horrible. I read her essay and to be honest it wasn't bad at all. I told her that it was a great essay and that all the pieces were there, she just needed to put a little pizzazz in it. We discussed some strategies to help her personality shine through in her words and she came up with a great hook to draw the reader in and by the end I could tell she was excited to get home and work on her essay even further. Hopefully, now that this student has a little more confidence in her writing it will show in her finished product and not only will she enjoy the process of writing more, but she will be able to produce a product that colleges will enjoy reading because they can see her emotional investment shine through in her final product.

Unfortunately I have to start this blog post with some bummer news. The summer program we have been designing for Roosevelt High School students has fallen through. To our dismay, we simply couldn't recruit enough participants to make the program a viable option. However, hope for a productive and educational summer is by no means lost for Roosevelt students or for our RHS intern team. Right now we are looking into a number of options for redirecting our focus for the summer. Lucky for us and for Roosevelt students, there are a number of programs already in place to help tutor academic priority students in the summer months. Some of the programs we are looking to help out with now that our program is no more include Step-up, a program for high school freshman, Summer Seniors, a program that helps seniors prepare and apply to college, and a program that helps tutor recent African immigrant children in the area. In addition to these options, we are also working on establishing a strong curriculum and recruiting strategy for an RHS writing center summer program that can be implemented next summer. While I must admit I was originally a little stressed about the abrupt halt of our program, I am still hopeful and excited to not only work with students through these other programs we will be helping out with, but also to play a role in planning a stronger writing center program that can be successfully implemented next summer. Even though things are not going as planned, I am actually starting to think that this will be an even more valuable learning experience than the original program may have been, allowing me to work with a wider array of kids and helping me take a leadership role in helping to design a sustainable summer program for the future. After all, the greatest experiences often don't go according to plan.

In my first blog post I suppose I should introduce myself and explain exactly what I am doing for my Interns for Justice placement. This summer I will be working with the Roosevelt High School Writing Center to put together a summer school program that teaches students leadership skills, writing skills and deepens their connections and familiarity with the St. Johns and North Portland community. The program is set up in manner that pairs upperclassmen students with incoming freshman and sophomores. This design is aimed at helping the upperclassmen gain first hand leadership and teaching experience, not only in an effort to help both parties gain the skills and experience necessary for high school and college success, but also in hopes that these connections will help foster a greater sense of cross-class community within Roosevelt High School in the years to come. On the other hand, the older teachers and interns, like myself, act more as supervisors and organizers, putting together the curriculum and making sure everything goes smoothly. For the last month or so I have been working with the writing center to gain a better understanding of the type of work and expectations that Roosevelt students face as well as how I can best help tutor them to go beyond simply writing better papers, but ultimately to  become better writers. As the start of the summer school program draws closer, our team of teachers and interns are beginning to put together a list of sites in the community we want to visit, including local parks, businesses, historical sites and large companies, like adidas. Just talking about the curriculum and sites we will be visiting is getting me excited for the program to start and, while I may be the first person to ever say this, I cannot wait until the first day of summer school.