Latino male students

Choosing summer school

/ Julie Nariman / 1 Comment

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I used to tell students, “Don’t plan on summer school.” I didn’t want kids to feel complacent during the year and figure, “Oh, well, I’ll just go to summer school if I don’t pass.” To create a sense of urgency, and scarcity, I’d say things like, “We might not be able to give you this class in summer school so you’d better pass now.”

Yet now, I’m reminded again of why summer school is special. For kids, they’re with their friends instead of being bored at home. Each classroom, blessedly, has a cold, blasting air conditioner.

For staff, summer school is a unique time with a small group of students.

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The upset of praise

/ Julie Nariman / Leave a comment

TrophyLast year in the 9th grade, Robert* had a rough start.  He would argue with directions, wander hallways, and frequently cut classes.  We were alarmed to see these habits so early in his high school career and did our best to address his behavior.

However, we didn’t see a major change until July: over the summer, Robert calmed down and got focused.  He attended summer school and had a math class with a teacher he admired.  In August, he passed the state math exam.  He started his 10th-grade year well, arriving on time, participating enthusiastically in classes, and performing well.

Then, the cutting habits started to creep in again.  We noticed he’d skip his last class of the day, history.  This year, we started a much stronger approach to addressing cutting.  We developed a system to stop students in the morning who had cut class the day before.  We met with them and helped them re-think how and why they should stay in school all day. Continue reading →

My partners in the “demo”

/ Julie Nariman / 2 Comments

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At the High School of Language and Innovation, part of our teacher hiring process is having the candidate deliver a 15-minute demonstration lesson (a “demo”) in front of one of our classes. A candidate can nail an interview but the demo is often the most telling part of the process because we see what the person would be like in front of real students.

I wrote in an earlier blog about the comparatively low number of Latino boys in my school who are graduating on time. When I expressed this concern to my leadership consultants Ariel and Shya Kane, they suggested that in every demo lesson, we include a significant number of Latino boys and take special note of how the teacher engages those boys. This suggestion has been invaluable– rather than looking narrowly for a certain “type” of candidate, we’ve shifted to simply seeing who our students become in front of that candidate.

Since summer school classes are smaller, we have sometimes needed to add boys from other classes.

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Graduating the boys

/ Julie Nariman / 7 Comments

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My school, the High School of Language and Innovation, is a school for newcomer immigrant English Language Learners that was founded in 2011. We had our first graduating class in 2015. This week, we graduated our fourth class, the class of 2018.

As I listened to the students’ speeches at graduation, I was struck by how many of the students had experienced our intended vision for the school: “We learned to work together as a team in order to learn English,” “We got to make friends with people from diverse cultures.”

However, even as I enjoyed the graduation, something was on my mind: 90% of our girls graduated. 51% of our boys graduated.*

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