Jill Tucker and Kristina Rizga on Making the grade" at Mission High and in General

Jill Tucker deserves a big thank  you, as does Kristina Rizga, for making a statement on the unreliability of test scores in judging schools.   (Making the grade," Jill tucker's review of Kristina Rizga's Mission High, Sunday Datebook, August 2-8, 2015)

Before my retirement last year, I taught and trained teachers on four continents and was at first surprised to see teachers cheating, prompting students during the administration of tests.  Then I realized that they were being judged not by their performance but by their students' test scores.  I was so glad that we didn't do that here.

In her review of Kristina Rizga's Mission High, Jill Tucker states correctly that test scores are more about demographics than teachers or quality of instruction.  She tells parents they should visit schools to evaluate the instruction rather than depending on test scores, no one ever believes her.

I believe her, and I'm glad that Kristina Rizga did what Tucker advises--right at Mission High and not for a day but for four years!!

I also believe that Mission High, like Reign of Error and Teacher Wars, is a book everyone who cares about education should read.

Slow Down--They Live Here

On my way to a baby shower in the Tenderloin for a former student, I noticed more of the banners proclaiming, "Slow down!  We live here."  Now I see them in Arabic, Tagalog, Spanish, and Vietnamese.  (I have them here in the first three language, but I failed to get the one in Vietnamese even though the mother-to-be, a former student, is from--and in--Vietnamese community.)

The "slow down" directive is in reference to traffic, I think, but it could be used to pertain to closing services too:  Slow down and reflect before closing a service to the community.
I'm thinking of the very sudden closure of City College's Civic Center at 750 Eddy, close to the people in the Tenderloin, who weren't told until the first day of the semester, January 12, that they could no longer attend classes there and were sent off to other parts of the city.

  I'm glad that on August 17, the students in the Tenderloin will have classes at 1170 Market, much closer to home.

But I do think it would be good to speed up community services and slow down before cutting them off for those who live there.

CCSF Enrollment Material to Clement

I continue to take CCSF Enrollment Campaign material--this week Encore Learning--to the Y and put it in the stacks with the magazines.  But I also found a place (finally) at Green Apple, where I put the CCSF WHY flyer along with the Women's Studies one.  

 I also found a place at the very popular Genki on Clement, where young clients were very accommodating and helpful (getting up and holding the poster while I put masking tape around it).  One person told me she's a student at CCSF, and a guy told me his aunt worked at the Phelan campus.

 The people at Toy Boat told me they could put up the CCSF poster in the corner but only after the customers were gone, so I just left it.  I also took material to the Richmond District Public Library, where there are cubicles for flyers from the community.

The 3CPE Central City Coalition for Public Education & The Civic Center for the Tenderloin

Yesterday I went to the gathering sponsored by the Central City Coalition for Public Education, which was at Sergeant John Macaulay Park on the corner of Larkin and Powell.

Among the people I saw there was Kate Robinson, the Program Director of Safe Passage, whose advice I asked about where to take the material I had in my bag.  She was interested in the Trauma Prevention & Recovery certificate program and said that maybe there was a way that could be linked with the Safe Passage program.



http://hoodline.com/2015/03/safe-passage-guides-kids-through-the-tenderloin

http://www.ccsf.edu/en/educational-programs/school-and-departments/school-of-behavioral-and-social-sciences/InterdisciplinaryStudies/TraumaCertificate.html

I had made a list of the flyers I was taking around, and she was amazed at how many offerings there are at CCSF.  (My list, of course, didn't have them all!)

  As for the rest of the material, she suggested the safe haven place across the street--a community housing partnership--as well as similar places at 211 Jones and 201 Turk, so after talking to a few people and hearing the speeches, I took more material around.  At 835 O'Farrell I was able to put things up myself (and the nice person-in-charge, who was leaving the 3CPE gathering when I was, also gave me a tour of the building, where the north side looks out at the park. But at 201 Turk, I was told to just leave the flyers so they could put them up when there was room, and at 111 Jones I was told that the social worker had to approve everything before it went up.

CCSF's Civic Center Campus at 1170 Market: Getting the Word Out about the New Location

Yesterday I delivered a lot of flyers and brochures to the West Portal Library, where I also removed the ones from summer that were still there.

I'd made a list of all the material, but it was only yesterday that I noticed the wrong address for the Civic Center, no longer at 750 Eddy,  was still on three of the brochures.  (I didn't leave them.)

I sent out a message about this to the ESL Department early this morning, relating the incident with the Asian woman who hadn't gotten the message that the school had a new site at 1170 Market Street.

At  the Sunday Streets in the Tenderloin, an Asian woman passing by our CCSF Enrollment table said, "School closed!" and pointed towards Eddy.  When we told her that 750 was closed but another school was open, she said, "Too far!"  So we understood that she was thinking of the Chinatown/Northbeach campus.  We told her about the new site at 1170 Market,  showed her how to get there and gave her a Civic Center flyer. 

She served as a reminder that we need to be sure that everyone knows about the 1170 Market Street site for the Fall semester.

I noticed that three of the flyers I was about to take around needed to be updated: 

The red, white, and pink  "CCSF Find Your Community" pamphlet (Metro Academy, Puente, Project Survive,  Yo, Accelerated Math Gateway, Bridge to Bioscience)   still has 750 Eddy on the back.   

The green, white and black "Build Your Future" brochure has 750 Eddy on the back.

The 2013 (still being given out because so much of it applies to 2015) has 750 Eddy given as the address on the inside of the back cover.

Then I called the number given on the "CCSF Find Your Community" brochure, which has 750 Eddy for its address.  The recorded message identified the number (415 561-1878)  as that of the Counseling Department, and I was asked to leave my name and telephone number, but I didn't hear anything about the new Civic Center address at 1170 Market Street.

I wrote to Carl Jew, head of Counseling for the Civic Center Campus and John Adams, to ask whether the new address could be added to the recorded message.  I also asked who was in charge of printing new brochures. 

 I called two other numbers--the one for the Career & Technical Education Program Guide from 2013 (used in 2015) and "Build Your Future/Study English, both of which gave 750 Eddy as the address.  

It's not difficult to cross through the 750 Eddy address and write in 1170 Market, but people need to know that the wrong address is on the brochures so they can make the change before taking around the material.  

CCSF City College of San Francisco: Student Success Stories Heard at the Enrollment Campaign at Sunday Streets in San Francisco

          It was warming on a cool and windy Sunday Streets off the Great Highway June 14 that people sometimes gave us vignettes of what City College of San Francisco meant to them.

             "Closing down City College would be like shutting off the main artery in the city," a young man commented.  The mother and father of a student who'd had an unsuccessful year at Gateway were hoping to find a place for their daughter at CCSF.  Another couple, Ron and Christina Chun,  gave a particularly inspirational account.

           Their  daughter, Gabrielle, found out while still at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) that she could take courses at City College after finishing her sophomore year in high school.  Even though English AP courses were available at SOTA,  she wasn’t able to get a seat in the AP class and was assigned to a regular English class for her junior year.  So during the summer,  Gabrielle took the CCSF placement test and was able to directly enroll into English 1A in the fall, meeting the English high school requirements and earning college credits at the same time.   This was very good news because she sometimes found regular high school classes a bit distracting with all those spitballs flying around the classroom when the teacher wasn’t looking.

           After her first semester at CCSF, she kept taking CCSF courses along with her high school courses, completing 15 college credits,  with her parents providing transportation from CCSF to SOTA for her morning classes.  She found that CCSF students,  often paying  for their own classes, seemed more mature, focused,  and less inclined to mess around.  Her parents say they were also really impressed by the kindness of the instructors. 

            Starting off in college wasn’t easy,  Gabrielle was struggling on her final English 1A paper with Richard Simon and didn’t have much of a rough draft for an in-class peer review,  and the pressure was getting to her at the time she was trying to recover from strep throat.  Embarrassed by  what she had written,  she broke down in tears that day, so Mr.  Simon reviewed her draft alone and gave her the feedback and encouragement she needed to complete the essay.  She got an A as her final grade in that class. 

            For her evening English 1B class, the instructor Nathan Wirth,  stayed with her after class until her parents picked her up so she wouldn't be alone at night in the building.   Gabrielle was surprised that Nathan Wirth already knew about her from Richard Simon and said he had been looking forward to having her in his class.  "She didn’t realize that she was already developing a reputation around campus," her father said, marveling at how the two caring instructors conferred with one another for the benefit of a student. 

            Gabrielle was able to return the kindness that she received at City College and connect high school with college when she was taking a CCSF course in Theatre, her passion, At SOTA, she performed in 42^nd Street and Monty Python’s Spamalot,  at YPTMTC (Young People's Teen Musical Theater Company) she landed a lead in Cats as Mr.  Mistoffelees, and finally, at San Francisco Youth Theater Company, she got to go on tour throughout the Bay Area performing  an original work by Emily Klion and Gary Soto,  In and Out of Shadows,  a musical on undocumented teens in America.   In Spring 2015, when she was taking a CCSF acting class with Deborah Shaw,  Deborah’s daughter, Kaeli, was applying to SOTA's musical theater program.  Gabrille happened to be one of the seniors managing the yearly nerve-wracking audition process and was able to help steady Kaeli’s nerves and encourage her throughout the audition.  (Suffice it to say,  Kaeli will be part of the SOTA’s class of 2019!)

           In her final semester at high school, Gabrielle and her father also took a cooking class together at CCSF.  Christina wanted him to have the chance to spend as much time as possible with their daughter, and she wanted her daughter to learn to cook before she left home for college.  At the beginning of the semester, they began to make muffins together and built up to more complex dishes such as pies, and cakes, homemade soup stocks, and various dinner entrees.  

            Since she got a head start earning college credits, her initial plans were to complete her Associate’s Degree at CCSF after high school and then transfer to a four year college, but Gabrielle went ahead and applied to and auditioned at a handful of her musical theater dream schools in New York,  where the acceptance rate is anywhere from two to five percent.  She was accepted and granted a scholarship at Theater Arts program at Malloy, which  is in partnership with the music theater conservatory, CAP21. 

            The result will be like the hybrid program she created for herself at SOTA and City College!  Her freshman year, she will take academic classes on Long Island  for three days a week and commute to Manhattan for the other two days.   In her subsequent years,  she will be training in Manhattan for three days a week and taking classes at Molloy for two days,  so she will be experiencing both the “hustle and bustle” of Manhattan and the traditional suburban college life.

           "We really appreciate what City College offered our daughter," the parents said.  “She can challenge herself fully and get ahead in pursuing her college degree as a high school student.   It’s like hitting three birds with one stone.  Many of her CCSF classes fulfilled her high school graduation requirements,   she earned college credit automatically without having to deal with passing the AP exams,  and she had free time to perform in musicals with the various theater companies in the community because each CCSF semester class equates to two semesters in high school.”

         As you may have guessed, this write-up involved contact with these caring parents after the Sunday Streets, but it began there.  We really appreciate the exchanges Sunday Streets foster, making us feel good about City College and rest of the community we live in!  It's also worth noting that both the Sunday Streets and  the YPTMT where Gabrielle performed in CATS are sponsored by The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department!

            The next Sunday Streets will be in the Tenderloin on July 12.  The CCSF Enrollment Campaign will focus on getting out the word that the Civic Center Campus, closed at its 750 Eddy location, will hold classes in the fall at the Art Institute at 1170 Market Street.

Abbreviation for classes at City College of San Francisco

I'm going out to distribute material for CCSF this morning, so I wanted to familiarize myself with the catalogs for summer and fall. I came across three abbreviated categories I didn't immediately understand.  OLAD, TRST, and BOSS.  OLAD means Older Adults.  TRST stands for Transitional Studies. BOSS, I knew, pertained to business, and I thought maybe the O stood for offices, but I wasn't sure about the rest, so I looked it up.  Here are some possibilities

Be On the Safe Side
Brother of Sexy Sister
Better Opportunities for Single Soldiers
Building on Spiritual Substance
Borsen Order Service
Black Oil Sunflower Seeds
Boulder Outdoor Survival School
Bureau of State Security
Business Operation Support System  (Bingo--but not the most interesting or appealing)
Bond and Option Sales Strategy
Body Orifice Security Scanner
Bonn Open Synthesis System
British Office Supplies and Services