Category Archives: Education

Anna Powell ’13, Landon School

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This Jan­u­ary, I had the plea­sure to spend three days at the Lan­don School, a boys school in D.C., with David Arm­strong ‘70. This Cot­tage Club alum­nus and fel­low His­tory con­cen­tra­tor wel­comed me to his sprawl­ing cam­pus in Bethesda, offer­ing me a packed sched­ule. I spent a day in each school divi­sion – lower (3-5th), mid­dle (6-8th), and upper (9-12th). Each day meant the oppor­tu­nity to sit in on a class or two, which Mr. Armstrong’s assis­tant Patti gen­er­ously arranged to be of the his­tor­i­cal per­sua­sion. I got to observe what it means to “know boys” the way only a top-notch school like Lan­don can. Hop­ing to max­i­mize the value of the expe­ri­ence, I kept a note­book with me – a size­able por­tion of which is now filled with obser­va­tions and “notes to self” about work­ing at an edu­ca­tional institution. 

Not only was I able to see the teach­ers in action, but I also got to sit down with them and hear about their career paths. Many took sur­pris­ing turns, but all of them con­cluded with sat­is­fac­tion at Lan­don. The boys I met shared this same pos­i­tive atti­tude. Those I met were well dressed, well man­nered, and respect­ful. At the request of a teacher, a fourth grade boy walked me to class. On the way, he gal­lantly asked, “How has your expe­ri­ence at Lan­don been so far?” The matu­rity and sin­cer­ity of the ques­tion com­pletely caught me off guard, but I assured him that I was very pleased with every­thing and everyone.

I spent a part of each day with the music depart­ment. My father grew up in D.C., so I had heard of Lan­don before – gen­er­ally as a strong com­peti­tor in ath­let­ics. I did not expect to find the real gem of the school to be its music pro­gram, but at the end of the first after­noon, it was unmis­tak­able. Run by the vet­eran musi­cian Earl Jack­son and his crew of geniuses, the band, orches­tra, choir, and hand bell classes were beyond impres­sive. I found myself envy­ing even the lower school boys for their luck in study­ing music at Landon.

David Arm­strong and Anna

Mr. Arm­strong took me to impor­tant meet­ings which fell dur­ing my visit, includ­ing a cal­en­dar meet­ing, a devel­op­ment meet­ing, and a big pic­ture meet­ing for divi­sion heads. By the end of my three days, I felt I had an insider’s view into the indi­vid­ual parts of a qual­ity inde­pen­dent school – as well as their sum. I learned so much about the pri­vate school envi­ron­ment. I can now actu­ally pic­ture apply­ing for jobs in edu­ca­tion and even­tu­ally tak­ing one, an idea which before seemed hope­lessly abstract. If this Princetern­ship comes up again, I whole­heart­edly rec­om­mend it. I could not have had a warmer recep­tion or a more use­ful set of expe­ri­ences. Mr. Arm­strong and his crew were fab­u­lous hosts, and I could not be more pleased with my Intercession.

Allison Kruk ’15, Citizen Schools

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Before attend­ing this Princetern­ship, I did some research into edu­ca­tion reform, watch­ing doc­u­men­taries like “Wait­ing for Super­man” and “The Lot­tery” as well as read­ing the arti­cles pro­vided to me by my alumni host Sylvia Mon­real ‘10. I didn’t con­sider myself an expert on edu­ca­tion reform by any means, but I thought that I had a pretty good idea of the issues sur­round­ing edu­ca­tion in this coun­try and the pos­si­ble solu­tions to those issues. I imag­ined that if only the edu­ca­tion sys­tem fos­tered ded­i­cated, pas­sion­ate teach­ers who were fully aware of their enor­mous respon­si­bil­ity to impart knowl­edge onto their stu­dents, all chil­dren would dis­play the drive to learn and con­se­quently, would per­form bet­ter in school. How­ever, after observ­ing the Cit­i­zen Schools pro­gram at the Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Mid­dle School in Newark, New Jer­sey, I real­ized how sim­pli­fied my model for edu­ca­tion reform was. Edu­cat­ing stu­dents at a school like this one where only 16% of sev­enth graders dis­played pro­fi­ciency in read­ing and lan­guage and only 20% of sev­enth graders dis­played pro­fi­ciency in math is not sim­ply a mat­ter of intro­duc­ing “good” teach­ers into the class­room. Each and every Cit­i­zen Schools teacher I observed was excep­tional in their self­less and seem­ingly infi­nite drive to help their stu­dents to not only learn basic skills like frac­tions but also to make thought­ful con­nec­tions between the class­room and the “real world.” Yet, to truly change a student’s life and put them on the path toward a col­lege edu­ca­tion and a mean­ing­ful career does not just require good teach­ers, I soon real­ized. To accom­plish this gar­gan­tuan task means chang­ing the stu­dents’ mind­sets, com­bat­ing other poten­tial fac­tors like bro­ken home lives and the neg­a­tive val­ues imparted onto them by their peers, fam­i­lies, and the sur­round­ing cul­ture of the area – a feat that would seem impos­si­ble to many.

How­ever, to the teach­ers I observed at Cit­i­zen Schools, this feat was just another day at the office. Watch­ing them metic­u­lously con­struct les­son plans and seam­lessly con­duct class in a chaotic envi­ron­ment gave me a new­found respect for the pro­fes­sion. Specif­i­cally, I remem­ber walk­ing into the class Sylvia was sub­bing on my first day at the Princetern­ship. Although these were not her nor­mal stu­dents nor was this her nor­mal respon­si­bil­ity at the work­place, Sylvia took on the task mas­ter­fully, lead­ing a quiet group of about five or six girls in their home­work in the midst of the tur­moil that is the com­bi­na­tion of a hot after­noon and tired chil­dren. The gen­tle way she inter­acted with the stu­dents was extra­or­di­nary and was mir­rored in numer­ous other classes I observed. For instance, see­ing Mr. Tay­lor help the kids with their home­work on the sec­ond day of my Princetern­ship was like watch­ing a con­duc­tor direct a world-class sym­phony. Keep­ing the class under con­trol, he deftly went from desk to desk, using care­fully con­structed ques­tions to encour­age his stu­dents to arrive at the answer inde­pen­dently, fos­ter­ing per­sonal growth and self-reliance. Observ­ing Ms. Lopez con­duct a dis­cus­sion on whether the wealthy have a respon­si­bil­ity to help the poor or see­ing Mr. W begin a con­ver­sa­tion with his stu­dents on the link between edu­ca­tion and poverty pro­duced sim­i­lar feel­ings of amaze­ment in me. And these are just a few iso­lated exam­ples – every day at Cit­i­zen Schools was a new oppor­tu­nity for me to look at the inspir­ing work of these teach­ers, giv­ing me hope for the future of edu­ca­tion in this country.

This Princetern­ship truly changed my per­spec­tive in a way that no other expe­ri­ence in my life has. It taught me to look for the pos­i­tive in all sit­u­a­tions, to devote your­self fully to what you love, and to per­sist even in the face of seem­ingly insur­mount­able chal­lenges. It opened my eyes to a com­pletely dif­fer­ent world, forc­ing me out of the Orange Bub­ble men­tal­ity and broad­en­ing my out­look as a whole. Finally, it solid­i­fied my desire to do a pro­gram like the Cit­i­zen Schools teach­ing fel­low­ship after I grad­u­ate so that I too can work toward the bet­ter­ment of the Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion sys­tem. I really can­not thank my Princetern host Sylvia and all of the teach­ers and staff I encoun­tered through­out these three days enough for allow­ing me to expe­ri­ence this extra­or­di­nary opportunity.

 

Lekha Kanchinadam ’15, Brooklyn Latin School

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I had a hard time find­ing the Brook­lyn Latin School. As I approached the block where I knew it was sup­posed to be, after hav­ing dou­ble and triple-checked the address of the school, all I could see was a grand stone build­ing, obvi­ously labeled “Pub­lic School 250.” I asked the cross­ing guard where TBLS was, and she pointed to the Pub­lic School. I walked in, and real­ized that TBLS was fully con­tained within two floors of this build­ing that they share with a pub­lic ele­men­tary school. It was the first of many times that my expec­ta­tions were sur­passed dur­ing my time as a “Princetern” with the head­mas­ter of the Brook­lyn Latin School, Jason Grif­fiths ’97.

The Brook­lyn Latin School, founded in 2006, is mod­eled after the Boston Latin School, the first pub­lic high school in Amer­ica. TBLS has lifted the centuries-old tra­di­tions of the Boston Latin School and trans­planted them to Bush­wick Avenue. The stu­dents wear uni­forms, learn four years of Latin, call their teach­ers “mag­is­tra” and “mag­is­ter,” and per­form decla­ma­tions in class and sev­eral times a year in front of the entire school.

My expe­ri­ences for the three days of the Princetern­ship were incred­i­bly reward­ing. I had the oppor­tu­nity to shadow Mr. Grif­fiths in his meet­ings with var­i­ous mem­bers of the fac­ulty, includ­ing check-ins with the grade-level lead­ers, col­lege coun­selor, depart­ment heads, and office staff, as well as mem­bers of the com­mu­nity that are work­ing with the school to build men­tor­ship pro­grams, exchange facil­i­ties, etc. Dur­ing lunch I sat in on two inter­views that Mr. Grif­fiths con­ducted for an open posi­tion in the His­tory depart­ment. Observ­ing him meet with his fac­ulty gave me first hand insight on inter­ac­tions between teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tion, and gave me a full appre­ci­a­tion of the eye for detail that Mr. Grif­fiths is able to main­tain even as the school, and his respon­si­bil­i­ties out­side the class­room, grow. Observ­ing the inter­views he con­ducted was incred­i­bly infor­ma­tive, espe­cially because as an aspir­ing teacher I will even­tu­ally find myself on the other side of the table being interviewed.

Jason Grif­fiths and Lekha

When I was not join­ing Mr. Grif­fiths for meet­ings, I was able to sit in on classes to observe. TBLS fol­lows the Inter­na­tional Bac­calau­re­ate cur­ricu­lum and con­ducts most classes using the Socratic method, so many classes that I observed con­sisted almost entirely of student-based dis­cus­sion. I was able to sit in on classes as var­ied as fresh­man level Art His­tory, sopho­more year Health, and Higher Level Latin, where I stopped tak­ing notes about the class, and started pay­ing atten­tion as if I was a stu­dent too. The fac­ulty was wel­com­ing and warm, and the stu­dents con­sis­tently impressed me with how well-spoken and con­fi­dent they were. Sit­ting in on classes also posed a sharp con­trast to the admin­is­tra­tive work that Mr. Grif­fiths is pri­mar­ily involved with. As TBLS grows, his respon­si­bil­i­ties will mainly focus on keep­ing the school well-funded and well-run. One thing this Princetern­ship helped me con­firm was that I would rather pri­mar­ily spend time in the class­room with students.

My last day at TBLS, as luck would have it, was the day of their penul­ti­mate Pub­lic Decla­ma­tion, an oppor­tu­nity for stu­dents (selected by audi­tion) to declaim a poem or prose pas­sage in front of the entire school. Pub­lic Decla­ma­tion is some­thing to look for­ward to at TBLS, no doubt. The excite­ment in the audi­to­rium was pal­pa­ble, and though stu­dents are told to with­hold applause until all the declaimers have per­formed, after each decla­ma­tion the audi­ence could barely con­tain their applause. One stu­dent declaimed Cat­ul­lus 101 in both Eng­lish and Latin, while another per­formed the mono­logue “Mad as Hell” from the 1976 movie Net­work. It was an elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance. At one point, she demanded from the audi­ence: “I want you to get up right now and go to the win­dow. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” For a moment, I thought some­one would spring up from their seat. “Mad as Hell” was the last decla­ma­tion of the after­noon, and the declaimer’s last line prompted absolute uproar. Pub­lic decla­ma­tion gave me chills, and I was sad to leave TBLS shortly afterward.

There is a lot of dis­cus­sion today about edu­ca­tion reform, edu­ca­tion pol­icy, and the state of edu­ca­tion in Amer­ica, espe­cially in urban areas. My expe­ri­ence with Mr. Grif­fiths gave me an oppor­tu­nity to watch the work of edu­ca­tion reform—the real, on-the-ground work of it. It helped me under­stand the impor­tance of qual­ity teach­ing and main­tain­ing a cohe­sive school phi­los­o­phy. The Brook­lyn Latin School offers, as Mr. Grif­fiths described it to me, “an unapolo­get­i­cally lib­eral arts edu­ca­tion.” It isn’t the right school for every­one, but for the stu­dents that have grad­u­ated in the last two years, and have gone to col­lege, it has worked well. What espe­cially struck me was that Mr. Grif­fiths did not start his career as a teacher with grandiose visions that he would sin­gle hand­edly save the sys­tem of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion, but instead founded a school in line with his edu­ca­tion val­ues, and is, one grad­u­at­ing class at a time, improv­ing the niche that he has made. My Princetern­ship gave me valu­able expo­sure to a won­der­ful school, and cer­tainly inspired me to pur­sue a path that will bring me back to high school, not as a stu­dent or observer, but as a teacher.

Antonia Hyman ’13, Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School

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Day One: March 19, 2012

Today was my first day work­ing at Williams­burg Col­le­giate Char­ter School in Brook­lyn, NY. The school day began at 8:00 for stu­dents and ended at 4:30, which is longer than most. Addi­tion­ally, many stu­dents stay for extra tutor­ing, which meant that my day ended at 5:45. Work­ing these hours pro­vided me with a real­is­tic view of what life would be like as a teacher.

When I first arrived at the school, Stephanie Green­berg ‘04 showed me around the two floors of the school. All of the hall­ways were dec­o­rated with ban­ners, and posters pro­mot­ing col­lege edu­ca­tion. I also met with sev­eral teach­ers, the main office staff, the aca­d­e­mic Dean, the behav­ior Dean, the prin­ci­pal, and the recruit­ing direc­tor. I got a chance to sit in on sev­eral class­rooms and observe the teach­ing styles of var­i­ous teach­ers. Notably, most of the teach­ers were fairly young and had grad­u­ated from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties. Each home­room was themed accord­ing to the alma mater of the teacher, which fur­ther enhanced the cul­ture of “Col­lege for All.” Stephanie’s room had a huge Prince­ton ban­ner that said “Class of 2020,” the antic­i­pated col­lege grad­u­a­tion year of her stu­dents. The over­all vibe of the school seemed to be set by the pos­i­tive atti­tudes of the teach­ers and the empha­sis that col­lege was an attain­able goal for every child.

Day Two: March 20, 2012

Yes­ter­day, I sat in on over fif­teen dif­fer­ent classes and observed more than ten teach­ers, but today I got a chance to engage directly with the kids. When I led the tutor­ing ses­sion at the end of the day, I real­ized that I felt extremely com­fort­able in front of the class­room. How­ever, I also learned that I would need to take a firmer stance as a teacher, than as a col­lege stu­dent sim­ply men­tor­ing mid­dle school kids. As a twenty-year old stu­dent it felt so strange to be stand­ing in a posi­tion of author­ity, but I learned to embrace it because my stu­dents were look­ing at me to set the tone of the classroom.

Over­all, today’s expe­ri­ence con­firmed my impres­sion of the field, how­ever it did offer some new insights. It was extremely ben­e­fi­cial to expe­ri­ence the daily rou­tine of a teacher. I also learned solid tech­niques that I would apply in my class­room, such as using pre­cise sta­tis­ti­cal tech­niques to track each stu­dent. Addi­tion­ally, I learned about build­ing con­sis­tency from class to class by employ­ing the same jar­gon, and hold­ing stu­dents to the same standards. 

Stephanie Green­berg and Antonia

Day Three: March 21, 2012

Today I helped with a lot of the admin­is­tra­tive tasks in the main office. Specif­i­cally, I helped the school with recruit­ing efforts for the incom­ing fifth grade class by call­ing local orga­ni­za­tions to explain what Williams­burg would offer. This gave me a great chance to see the oper­a­tional func­tions of the school, which gen­er­ally take place behind the scene.

This Princetern­ship was extremely valu­able to me. As some­one with an inter­est in edu­ca­tion, it was great to get in front of a class­room. The oppor­tu­nity may be thought of as a type of career test-drive. Stephanie made the expe­ri­ence even more incred­i­ble for me. It was such a plea­sure to spend three days with some­one so pas­sion­ate about her work and will­ing to share her expe­ri­ences with me. The many ben­e­fits accrued dur­ing such a short time frame is even more rea­son for stu­dents to apply to the Princetern­ship Pro­gram. As a stu­dent with a hec­tic sched­ule, the Princetern­ship oppor­tu­nity pro­vided me with an in-depth career expe­ri­ence in a rel­a­tively short amount of time – obvi­ously ideal for a Prince­ton student.

Launa Greer ’14, Citizen Schools

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My inter­est in edu­ca­tion has man­i­fested itself in dif­fer­ent ways over time, from mak­ing mini books on dif­fer­ent sub­jects as a fifth grader, to writ­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing ideas as a beat reporter for The Daily Prince­ton­ian.  How­ever, serv­ing as an advi­sor to two high school girls last sum­mer and lis­ten­ing to edu­ca­tors talk about their pro­fes­sion through the cam­pus group Stu­dents for Edu­ca­tion Reform this past fall inspired me to explore teach­ing as a pos­si­ble career.

I decided that a Princetern­ship with Cit­i­zen Schools— an inno­v­a­tive after­school pro­gram help­ing stu­dents become aca­d­e­m­i­cally suc­cess­ful, with an eye towards college—would pro­vide a great oppor­tu­nity to learn about effec­tive teach­ing meth­ods and the spe­cific chal­lenges of urban edu­ca­tion.  The Princetern­ship did not dis­ap­point, and I was very thank­ful to have been able to par­tic­i­pate in the program.

DAY ONE

At 10:17 am, I boarded the Dinky with a copy of the NJ Tran­sit sched­ule on hand, along with fel­low Princetern Alli­son.  After trav­el­ing to Prince­ton Junc­tion, we hopped on another train and headed to Newark Penn Sta­tion, where we talked and ate brunch before catch­ing a bus ride to the site of Cit­i­zen Schools: Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Ele­men­tary School (K-8).

After sign­ing in at the school’s secu­rity desk, we were led upstairs by the cam­pus direc­tor, Mr. Jose, to the Cit­i­zen Schools staff office.  There we exchanged greet­ings with our host, Sylvia Mon­real ‘10, a two-year teach­ing fel­low who had grad­u­ated from Prince­ton with a degree in Pol­i­tics.  Sylvia intro­duced us to a mem­ber of the office who was prep­ping for the day’s fun team-building activ­i­ties (“flick the cup” and jelly­bean relay races) and then gave us a quick tour of the build­ing.  After­ward we went out­side and talked on the black­top, where the stu­dents were hav­ing recess.

Cit­i­zen Schools part­ners with pub­lic schools to pro­vide after­school home­work sup­port, math and lan­guage arts instruc­tion, col­lege vis­its, and appren­tice­ships for stu­dents in grades 6–8.  Sylvia explained to us that although stu­dents nor­mally elect to join the pro­gram, the Mar­tin Luther King site is unique in that stu­dent par­tic­i­pa­tion is manda­tory.  Because the school is rated as “Fail­ing,” the program’s goal has been to raise stu­dents’ test scores and grades as a “turn-around” approach.

Two years after the program’s imple­men­ta­tion, scores and grades have grad­u­ally improved.  How­ever, Cit­i­zen Schools faces a new chal­lenge because the regional super­in­ten­dent has announced that the school, along with a num­ber of other low-performing schools in Newark, will close at the end of the year and be replaced with char­ter schools.  In the face of all the uncer­tainty regard­ing the future of the school and the Newark Cit­i­zen Schools pro­gram, the teach­ing fel­lows work hard to keep the stu­dents moti­vated and focused on their work, which I find very admirable.

Launa and Cit­i­zen Schools Staff

While on the black­top, a num­ber of stu­dents intro­duced them­selves to Alli­son and me and asked us where we were from and what work we were doing.  Meet­ing the Cit­i­zen Schools staff was also great.  Although most of the fel­lows were busy prepar­ing lessons, a few talked with us about why they had joined the pro­gram and dis­cussed the chal­lenges and rewards of teach­ing.  One staff mem­ber who had majored in The­ater as an under­grad­u­ate said that he drew upon his act­ing skills fre­quently to engage stu­dents.  He also men­tioned that the stu­dents had put on a play about bul­ly­ing in line with the new bul­ly­ing laws set by the state that went very well.  Another teach­ing fel­low said that he tried to meet the stu­dents on their level—playing bas­ket­ball out­side with them on the play­ground, for example—so that he might get to know them bet­ter and earn their trust and respect.
That  after­noon, I rotated through sev­eral dif­fer­ent class­rooms man­aged by teach­ing fel­lows and recorded obser­va­tions about student-teacher inter­ac­tions and teach­ers’ pac­ing of dif­fer­ent com­po­nents of their math and Eng­lish lessons (e.g. 3-minute hook, 5-minute intro­duc­tion of new mate­r­ial, 10 min­utes of guided prac­tice, etc.).   Although sev­eral stu­dents acted out dur­ing the pro­gram, the teach­ers han­dled the mis­be­hav­iors very well and with great patience.  Over­all, I thought the first day high­lighted some of the chal­lenges edu­ca­tors might face on a day-to-day basis.

DAY TWO

When Alli­son and I arrived at Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Ele­men­tary School for our sec­ond day of the Princetern­ship, we were imme­di­ately recruited by a teach­ing fel­low to help with les­son prepa­ra­tions.  After­wards we talked with another fel­low who showed us a pro­gram he used to ana­lyze stu­dent grades and stan­dard­ized test scores and cre­ate more per­son­al­ized and effec­tive les­son plans.  For me, the day as a whole involved much read­ing and dis­cus­sion of teach­ing method­ol­ogy:  Sylvia had sent us a num­ber of resources the fel­lows used to cre­ate les­son plans, such as the book Teach Like a Cham­pion and their own Les­son Inter­nal­iza­tion Plan (I-Plan).  Both stressed the need to hold stu­dents account­able for giv­ing answers in the class­room and for teach­ers to push stu­dents to pro­vide more accu­rate expla­na­tions, in com­plete sen­tences that helped them bet­ter express their ideas.

After observ­ing teach­ers in the class­room, I had the oppor­tu­nity to sit in on two appren­tice­ships, the term Cit­i­zen Schools uses to refer to spe­cial­ized mod­ules like engi­neer­ing, film, mar­ket­ing, or dance taught by local com­mu­nity mem­bers. The first appren­tice­ship I observed involved culi­nary arts; stu­dents made home­made cook­ies from flour, egg, vanilla, oil, etc., some of them cook­ing for the very first time.  The sec­ond appren­tice­ship was engineering-based and involved mak­ing mini “Bug-bots” using clay.  Stu­dents in the appren­tice­ship con­structed a sim­ple cir­cuit to light up a pair of LEDs, which I thought was a really cre­ative way to teach prin­ci­ples of elec­tron­ics.  One of the stu­dents was very inter­ested in elec­tron­ics and told Alli­son and me that he intended to par­tic­i­pate in a local LEGO robot­ics com­pe­ti­tion offered for mid­dle school students.

DAY THREE

Although Sylvia had to take an absence from Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Ele­men­tary School on the last day of our Princetern­ship, Alli­son and I arrived on cam­pus before receiv­ing her noti­fi­ca­tion and stayed to con­tinue the day’s obser­va­tions.  After help­ing one of the pro­gram direc­tors with office tasks—creating two monthly cal­en­dars to hang on the wall—we entered into class­rooms again to shadow teachers.

While in class, I met two stu­dents who were curi­ous about where I was from and what col­lege was like.  I was happy to speak with them and answer their ques­tions before they had to begin their home­work assign­ments.  Dur­ing the les­son period, I thought that the instruc­tor did a great job of using the Socratic Method to ask stu­dents to iden­tify the mood and theme of their assigned poem and pro­vide evi­dence for their claims.  In another class­room, an instruc­tor played a sci­ence review game that involved answer­ing a ques­tion after catch­ing a kick­ball with one hand.

At the end of the class­room obser­va­tion period, I sat in on a doc­u­men­tary appren­tice­ship led by a team of stu­dents from Rut­gers.  The goal of the appren­tice­ship was for stu­dents to make a mini-documentary using Flip cam­eras about a social issue they cared about.  In past weeks, the stu­dents had decided to make a film advo­cat­ing for the con­struc­tion of a park in their neigh­bor­hood so chil­dren and teens would have some­where to play.  I thought the Rut­gers stu­dents and Cit­i­zen Schools teach­ing fel­low that assisted them did a great job prompt­ing the stu­dents to think crit­i­cally about how they might lobby for the con­struc­tion of the park as film­mak­ers.  To get the stu­dents think­ing, the instruc­tors asked ques­tions like: “Who do you want to inter­view for the film?  Who would sup­port the con­struc­tion of a park (e.g. par­ents, youth, and com­mu­nity mem­bers)?  Who would oppose it (e.g. police, com­mu­nity mem­bers against tax increases), and why?”  Over­all, the project seemed very positive—the stu­dents were learn­ing how to think crit­i­cally; gain­ing con­fi­dence and sharp­en­ing inter­per­sonal skills by learn­ing how to con­duct inter­views; gain­ing tech­no­log­i­cal lit­er­acy by learn­ing how to use a cam­era and edit video; and finally, mak­ing a direct pos­i­tive impact on their community.

Observ­ing the three stu­dent appren­tice­ships was one of the high­lights of my time at Cit­i­zen Schools. The expe­ri­ence showed me the cre­ativ­ity pos­si­ble in writ­ing and imple­ment­ing les­son plans and how such lessons could pro­duce ben­e­fits for stu­dents beyond the class­room.  Com­ing out of the Princetern­ship, I think I would like to explore oppor­tu­ni­ties for two-year teach­ing fel­low­ships post-graduation.  I am very thank­ful for Sylvia Mon­real, Cit­i­zen Schools, and the Princetern­ship admin­is­tra­tors for mak­ing this learn­ing expe­ri­ence possible.