El Centro de Estudiantes Creates Success One Student at a Time
One Pupil at a Time
At El Centro de Estudiantes, intense adult interaction helps high school dropouts graduate—and sets them up for success in their lives
Jun. 07, 2016
By the fourth dimension Ryan Rivera was eighteen years former he had dropped out of loftier school twice, lost his father, virtually lost his female parent to breast cancer, had a kid, been to a disciplinary school, and been arrested twice. Perhaps counterintuitively, after a lifetime of seeing drugs sold on every corner, selling drugs himself, witnessing regular violence on his block, and frequent run-ins with police enforcement, this Northward Philly kid—now 21—had always wanted to be a police officer.
But beginning he needed a high schoolhouse diploma. Traditional school environments had never worked for Rivera. He had a mild learning inability and had conflicts with teachers whom he felt had labeled him equally a "problem child." And so Rivera enrolled in one of Philadelphia's alternative schools for students who have disengaged from high school: El Centro de Estudiantes in Kensington, which—as its name suggests—serves the neighborhood's big Latino population.
Similar Philadelphia'southward eleven other public alternative and accelerated schools, El Centro opened as part of an effort to counter the high dropout rate in Philadelphia and find ways to re-engage youth who had either dropped out or been kicked out of traditional schools. They give students who are between 16 and 21 the opportunity to graduate in 3 years or less. (Some students need only a few more than credits, others the total three years.)
"El Centro molded me into the person I am today," said Rivera. "Without it I would probably be back on the streets or dorsum in jail. It's like home."
While many of these schools use online credit-recovery programs, composite learning models and other experimental technologies to aid disengaged students earn the credits they demand for graduation, El Centro uses a different approach to encourage appointment in their students. Their model includes having more caring adults in the school than is possible for a district high schoolhouse to provide, edifice potent relationships betwixt staff and students, and inspiring students to take control and responsibility for their own education through project-based learning and mandatory internships.
El Centro is run by Big Motion picture Philadelphia and grew out of the national organization, Big Film Learning. The focus on individualized learning based on student interests is function of the larger Big Picture Learning "one student at a fourth dimension" model used in more than forty schools in 17 states across the land.
But El Centro is Large Picture's but accelerated school. In 2008, in response to the alarming city dropout charge per unit and a telephone call from City Hall for new ideas for alternative schools, Big Flick idea that its model could assistance. So that year Big Picture Philadelphia applied for a contract from the district, and opened El Centro the following twelvemonth.
Since its first yr, El Centro has had an 88 per centum graduation charge per unit, significantly higher than Philadelphia's 65 percent overall graduation rate—and more impressive still when compared to the 22 percent graduation charge per unit for a similar population of students. The schoolhouse boasts a daily attendance charge per unit of almost 80 percentage, with 100 percent of their students enrolled in outside internships. It holds three graduations a year, and and so far this yr 79 percent of El Centro graduates have been accepted into colleges.
The pupil-kickoff approach is more than than merely the school'south mission, it is what drives every interaction at El Centro.With only 180 students, El Centro is able to devote more time and attention to each individual student, assigning each to an advisor with whom they work for the duration of their fourth dimension at the school. There are no more than xviii students per advising group, who become similar family units, where conflicts are resolved, support is provided, and relationships grow at morning and afternoon meetings.
"My advisor bought me my showtime tux for prom," says Rivera, "he taught me to bulldoze and was going to take me to my driving test."
All 24 El Centro staff members are experienced with trauma, and resilience and restorative practices inform everything from how students are assigned to 1 of three staff counselors, to the way they construct detention. Stephanie Contreras, director of counseling services, says almost all El Centro students are dealing with issues of corruption, fail or violence which has hampered their abilities to learn in traditional schools. Like Rivera, she says, they've often been labeled as "bad," "aggressive," and "defiant." At El Centro, the goal is to help students have charge of their ain lives, starting with their education.
El Centro has an 88 percent graduation rate, significantly higher than Philadelphia's 65 pct overall graduation charge per unit—and more impressive still when compared to the 22 percent graduation charge per unit for a similar population of students. The school also boasts a daily attendance charge per unit of nigh 80 percent, with 100 pct of their students enrolled in exterior internships.
"We are non here to authorize over their pedagogy, but facilitate it," says Contreras.
Students spend three days a week at El Centro in project-based classroom learning, in which academic skills are taught through individualized projects overseen by their teachers. Students move through courses past demonstrating to their teachers that they have achieved pregnant personal growth in that subject area area. At the end of the year, instead of final exams, each student does presentations for the staff and their peers about the subjects they learned that semester both in the classroom and in their internships.
The other days are spent in internships, which are mandatory and are focused on mentorship and exploring potential passions, besides as career-readiness. The students are responsible for finding their ain jobs after brainstorming their interests with the internship coordinator and cold calling different businesses that may fit into that interest. While the internships teach students real-life job skills, the main goal of the program is to make students recollect near life later on El Centro. Like Rivera, many of the students at El Centro are accepted to seeing violence, drug dealing, and gangs running the cake. "That's what yous know, that's what you lot remember is normal," he says. Only the internship gets students thinking about what professions they want to pursue and what dreams are really within their grasp if they stay on track.
Throughout the week, between the teachers, advisors, resilience specialists, postal service-secondary specialists, and mentors, "nosotros take abiding points of contact" with students, Contreras says. This allows staff to deal with issues before they arise, meliorate understand how to proceed individual students engaged, and keep them from falling through the cracks.
For Rivera, his internships proved to be key to his continued success afterwards graduation. During his terminal yr at El Centro, Rivera had his sights on interning for one particular judge at the Criminal Justice Centre whom he'd come to respect after seeing him preside over a friend'southward example. One morn in January, he went to the courtroom, where he saturday for hours until the judge finally asked what he was doing there. "I am here because I go to El Centro High School and we need to discover internships and I would like to intern with yous," Rivera told him.
The next week, he was working in the guess'south function. A few months later, he graduated and got a job equally a security baby-sit, putting him one step closer to his dream. Now that dream is virtually to come up true. He graduated from El Centro in March after more than two years at El Centro and his record has been granted for expungement by the Criminal Justice Center. He plans to apply to the Philadelphia Police Department this fall.
"El Centro molded me into the person I am today," said Rivera. "Without it I would probably be back on the streets or back in jail. It'due south like domicile."
Photograph: Big Film Philadelphia: El Centro de Estudiantes 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/el-centro-de-estudiantes/
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