This article was originally published in the YMCA publication Make Change Happen: Stories from NYC Asset Labs, a publication for teachers and youth development professionals.
Step into the parent coordinator’s office at EBC and you will find Ms. Trinidad and the rest of the Assets planning team huddled over pizza, hammering out Asset building strategies to help students understand how vital their voices truly are. The team takes their job as Asset Champions seriously- whether it’s reflecting on the school’s climate, dialoguing on EBC’s strengths and challenges, recruiting new staff and students to join the team or brainstorming new strategies for making change.
In addition to EBC’s academic offerings, each grade participates in daily “Advisory” for exposure to community building and leadership programming. The Advisories are a natural fit for introducing Asset building since these classes are designed to support students academically and socially. Advisories are a place where students are given the opportunity to learn about and contribute to their community. Some of their initial ideas included: creating a peer mentoring program, organizing a mini conference, designing brag boards and developing youth-led workshops. After much deliberation, the team went with the idea of launching an Advisory Contest that would encourage the student body to develop projects that would push for positive change in their school. Each Advisory was invited to submit a proposal to the Lab planning team for possible funding. Each grade would have one winning Advisory project. Dubbed the “Advisory Contest,” the team sought to introduce Assets to the school community and give students a strategy for strength-based school engagement.
The Advisory Contest not only offered a way for advisories to learn about assets, but also gave students an opportunity to take ownership of their school community. The Asset Lab team also developed this strategy because they wanted the adults in the school to take the ideas and input of the youth seriously. The team got to work fast. The project was accomplished in 4 major steps: 1). Teacher training/lesson plans on Asset Building in the Classroom; through interactive activities, students explored which Assets they possessed and analyzed how their Advisory fared as a group in terms of the number of Assets they experienced. 2). Introducing the Advisory Contest and encouraging Advisories to develop and submit proposals to the planning team; students were to consider what Assets the school could do a better job of building in students and what their Advisory could do to help build these Assets. 3). Reviewing and selecting proposals (planning team); thought had to be given to how much funding each proposal would receive based on the budgets submitted. 4). Implementing the winning proposals. The entire process, from beginning to end, took 6 months.
The following criteria was used by the Asset Lab team to judge the Advisory Contest proposals: Does it strengthen Assets of our school? Does it involve the whole Advisory and is it doable by June? Will it affect lasting change? Is it creative and exciting? Can it affect any people in the school?
According to Nieves, one of the students on the team, “We scored each proposal, ate Chinese food and wore ourselves out in a marathon meeting session.” The team was thrilled with the variety and creativity of each proposal. Winners received a pizza party and a budget of up to $500 (which they accessed from their Asset Lab Project stipend) to execute their ideas.
Funded projects included:
* 9th grade winner: A Mural Project * 10th grade winner: “Fun” or elective classes for alternative programming (Chinese Language, Cooking, etc.) on select days during Advisory * 11th grade winner: “Teacher Report Card” system, where students grade their teachers. Resource: Go to ymcanyc.org/assets to download a sample Teacher Report Card * 12th grade winner: A morning student radio show over P.A. systemThe Advisory Contest was popular. The process and end results made an impact on many students, giving them more decision-making power and shifting the “balance” so that adults were more open to listen to new ideas. The team was convinced of its success when teachers requested that this process be adopted officially by the Advisory. To much applause, the Advisory Contest was successfully carried out again the following year.
For information about the YMCA Asset Labs, contact Marty W. Forth, Senior Director of Teen Programs and Services, (212) 630-9627 or mforth@ymcanyc.org.
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