Training at Reload NY/NJ
Presented by: Eden Martinez and Jeremy Del Rio (2011)

Description

Goliaths fall when adults like Saul get out of David’s way. Learn from student leaders how and why they’ve been empowered as youth to reach youth and transform their communities. For TEENS serious about creating change, AND ADULT youth workers who are ready to relinquish real authority for exponential impact.

Preview Video

Part 1

Part 2

Humbling… see why below.

Faith in Action: The role of faith communities in expanding educational opportunities

Day and Time
Saturday, 01:15 PM – 02:30 PM.

Description
Faith leaders have played a critical role in many social change movements in our nation’s history. Panelists will discuss the role that faith communities can play in eliminating educational inequity and how they are partnering with other organizations to close the achievement gap.

Location
To be determined

Speaker(s)

• Jeremy Del Rio – Co-founder and Director, 20/20 Vision for Schools
• Stephanie Saroki – Co-founder and General Partner , Seton Education Partners
• Anju Bhargava – Member, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
• Jon Rosenberg – CEO, Repair the World
• Sayyid Syeed – National Director, Islamic Society of North America Office of Interfaith and Community Alliances

Moderator

• Joshua DuBois – Executive Director, White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

______________________

Since Journalism Stars continues this year as an official fifth grade club under the capable of leadership of teacher Michael Silverman, PS 102‘s fearless parent coordinator Ms. Sheri and I decided to give the budding journalists a story to cover this spring: the installation of a public art mural celebrating the school’s diversity in the school yard.

After securing necessary approvals in December and January, the principal’s announcement went to 1,200 students and parents last week, and the official mural blog launched yesterday. Initial sponsors include the Storefront Art Center and Alacrity Financial. Local artist Sam Wisneski is providing creative leadership to the project. I’m enjoying the role of instigator.

Here’s the announcement:

January 25, 2011

Dear PS 102 Parents and Families,

I am very excited to announce that this spring PS 102 will celebrate the cultural diversity of our school community with the installation of a public art mural in our schoolyard. Over the next couple of months, you and your children will have opportunities to contribute to the mural’s design. On several Saturdays, beginning April 30, your family will be invited to help prepare and paint the walls under the direction of local artist, Sam Wisneski, with additional assistance from the Storefront Art Center and our PTA Arts Committee.

To maximize the contribution of our 1,200 students, we are asking you to send in something that represents what “Welcome” means to you and your children no later than Friday, February 11. The item may reflect your culture, place of birth, neighborhood customs, favorite games and activities, family traditions, artistic preferences, or anything else of significance to your family. Examples include:

• Family photos
• Favorite game or food (description or pictures if possible)
• Celebration/party traditions
• An original drawing, sculpture, collage
• Favorite quote, greeting or family saying
• T-shirt slogans
• A poem or song lyrics
• A short story or essay
• Anything else that reflects how you would welcome a guest into your home.

Please have your child include 3-5 sentences explaining the item’s significance and why it should be represented on the mural. Be sure the item is labeled with your child’s name and class so that it can be properly returned. Thank you for your participation! Don’t forget to check www.ps102.org for regular mural announcements and updates.Sincerely,

Theresa Dovi
Principal

Let me know if you want to volunteer. Check the blog for updates.

A Crisis of Zeroes: Engaging NYC Public Schools

by Jeremy Del Rio

Where are the Christians?

The New York City Department of Education will spend $12,200,000,000 ($12.2 billion) to educate 1,100,000 students (1.1 million) in its public schools beginning this month – an average of $11,220 per student. For those of us who scrimp by on modest means, our minds struggle to grasp the effect of all those zeroes. Let’s put them in perspective.

12.2 billion: Larger than the economies of dozens of nations. More revenue than the net worth of all but the nine wealthiest Americans.

1.1 million: Larger than eight U.S. states and all but nine U.S. cities, including Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington D.C., and Las Vegas.

That’s a lot of kids, and a lot of money, especially considering that they reflect only New York’s public schools while the City also boasts private schools, charter schools, parochial schools, home schools, and too many dropped-out-of-schools to count with certainty. They are taught by a system where, as of June 2002, 18% of teachers had failed licensing exams.

Even more telling:

60.7% of the City’s elementary students do not meet state and city reading standards.

64.7% do not grasp math standards.

26.5% of students in Grades 4-12 exhibit symptoms of at least one diagnosable psychiatric disorder requiring intervention.

5.1% of high school students abuse alcohol so severely as to impair daily functioning.

Fiscal mismanagement. Failing educators. Underachievement. Mental illness. And enough children to make one school system the tenth largest city in the nation. All this crisis, plastered on the front pages of metro area newspapers at least weekly during every school year, has made reforming our public schools one of the great public mandates of our day.

Politicians, educators, teachers unions, bureaucrats, academics, corporate big shots like New York City’s current mayor and schools chancellor all seem to have opinions on how to improve our schools, but where are the evangelicals in the public discourse? As a collective voice, how many summits have we held or debates have we entered? How many coordinated city-wide efforts have we undertaken to address the problems?

Zero. The real crisis.

Individually, some are engaged. They function as principals and administrators, teachers and paraprofessionals, student missionaries and advocates, coaches and volunteers. But for every Christian employed in a public school, for every local church that has adopted a neighborhood school, for every outspoken parent or pastor, scores do nothing. For instance, how many leaders have reached out to local principals or superintendents as a resource to serve? How many retirees or youth workers or Sunday school teachers volunteer as hall monitors or teachers’ aids or tutors? How many parents are active in PTAs or coach PSAL teams or regularly attend parent-teacher conferences? How many student organizations, whether Bible clubs or not, have Christian business people supported? How many prayer groups intentionally intercede for community schools?

Sadly, not enough. In some communities, zero.

Last year, New York City’s officials finally set aside partisanship long enough to initiate the most widespread, systemic education reform in decades. As a collective group, administrators, politicians, and the teachers union all agreed to tackle entrenched problems with innovative strategies. Only time will tell how effective the reforms are.

In the interim, evangelicals, as a group, should follow their lead and bypass whatever excuses have kept so many of us disengaged for so long. It’s time for our community to seriously consider its role in one of our great public issues. It’s time for us to propose comprehensive strategies that go beyond the pat answers we are more commonly known for. Cliché solutions are no more helpful to our schools then they would be in the board room of a $12.2 billion Fortune 500 company or in Detroit’s City Council chambers.

Finally, it’s time we recognize that mandating a return to institutionalized prayer in schools is bankrupt. Legalistic prayer, devoid of faith, is no prayer at all. Besides, purposeful prayer by men, women, and students of conviction is already in public schools. It’s time for us to turn zeroes into heroes by becoming answers to those prayers.

Here’s the tribute Jeremy shared on his website for Margaret Sheri, PS 102′s amazingly inspired parent coordinator. Enjoy!

In October 2009, Margaret Sheri had a dream that one day PS 102 students would find their voices, tell their stories, and create a platform for the world to celebrate their school community. She imagined an online journalism club that overcame budget cuts to the school newspaper to regularly publish stories of students learning, growing, and discovering the world together.

She recruited two parents to help her and a dozen fourth graders to lead the way on a crazy adventure that produced six monthly issues from January-June 2010 organized around the elements of storytelling, six basic questions: who, what, when, where, how, and why. They built the club on a simple idea that the most interesting stories are the stories of our lives, and the job of journalists is to tell those stories.

This final issue of the 2009-2010 school year is The Virtual Journal‘s “Why? Issue.” In it, our students explore why journalism matters — to tell stories like Ms. Sheri’s of everyday heroes whose lives sacrificially benefit others around them — and more specifically why Journalism Stars matters. Stories like Ms. Sheri’s take place everyday at PS 102, and someone has to tell them. What better storytellers than the students who live them alongside caring adults like Margaret Sheri?

Thanks, Margaret, for your leadership enriching the lives of 1,100+ students, parents, and staff at PS 102. New York City’s 1,500 public schools would be in much better shape with 1,500 parent coordinators just like you.

It’s time for a confession. Even before launching 20/20 in 2008, despite being known is some circles as the 20/20 Vision guy, my work on education reform was mostly theoretical. My passion was real, but day to day, aside from designing and architecting 20/20, my personal involvement actually living 20/20’s engagement paradigm was non-existent.

Why? I haven’t run a community group or helped lead a congregation in almost four years, which means I couldn’t commit an organization to adopt a school for service and advocacy. Nor have I been involved in direct youth work since 2005, so I couldn’t directly empower student leaders to become change agents within their schools. Finally, until this year, my son attended private schools, so engaging a school as a volunteer was difficult.

Then this fall everything changed. 

Within weeks, he was tutoring ESL students in his son’s classroom, and before the Christmas break he helped start a journalism club with the parent coordinator and another volunteer parent. They launched a student blog last week, and fourth graders are discovering their voice as they learn to live life out loud.

Jeremy is just one parent (of potentially 2 million) who was activated by 20/20′s Vocational Calling to use his talents and access as a parent to add value to a local public school. What’s your story?

This decision to hire Jeremy aligns with the Action Plan crafted with the input of 120 multi-sector leaders convened on September 18, 2008, for “An Urgent Appeal to Engage a Generation at Risk: Helping Everyone Reach their Highest Potential.”

Executives from the business, government, religious, education, and social sectors – including Newark Mayor Cory Booker; former congressman and pastor of Allen Cathedral Rev. Dr. Floyd Flake; former president of the Girl Scouts of America and founding chair of the Leader-to-Leader Institute Francis Hesselbein, Former Philadelphia Mayor and Amachi founder Dr. Wilson Goode, Service Master founder William Pollard, and many more – gathered explicitly “to initiate an actionable plan and model to help New York City school-aged youth reach their highest potential.” Organizations represented included the United Federation of Teachers, Teach For America, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Cornell University, New York University, Deutsche Bank, M&T Bank, WMCA Radio/Salem Communications, Dow Corning Corp., Princeton Theological Seminary, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, American Express Business Travel, The West Paces Hotel Group, World Vision, Latino Pastoral Action Center, Pomeroy Capital Hedge Fund, and others.

Together, they concluded that America’s crisis in public schools is first and foremost a crisis of leadership. A systematic refusal to accept accountability for chronic underperformance has permitted decades of institutional failure, which has placed current and future generations at risk of social unrest and decay. Comprehensive reform requires multi-sector, collaborative strategies led by men and women willing to commit, as Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone says, “to fix this problem … to put politics aside and do what’s right for America’s children.”

Students who began first grade in September 2008 are the high school graduating class of 2020 – the generation for whom 20/20 intends to make good on the promise of public education. But to manifest sustainable, systemic change requires catalytic and creative leaders who are empowered to champion the movement moving forward. The consensus of 20/20 Vision’s founding partners, The New York City Leadership Center and The Coalition of Urban Youth Workers, is that Jeremy Del Rio is such a leader, and we welcome him into his new role.

Download the article pdf here.

In September 2008, Jeremy Del Rio launched 20/20 Vision for Schools in New York City with one idea in mind: What would happen if church leaders activated the people in their churches for “good deeds” within public schools?

Here, Del Rio shares how 20/20 Vision has succeeded and why he believes churches are called to this backyard mission field.

If the moral test of a society is how it treats children, America has failed the same test year after year for decades. Specifically, we have failed to educate the urban poor despite promising equal access to quality education for all. This educational inequity–where the place of one’s childhood determines the quality of one’s education–has been called our nation’s greatest injustice and the Civil Rights issue of our day.

And churches have watched it happen.

As we looked at what it would take to accomplish comprehensive reform, we knew it would require multi-sector, collaborative strategies led by men and women willing to commit. And churches are uniquely positioned to lead this effort.

First, the God we preach requires us to care about justice (Micah 6:8, Isaiah 61:1-8). The prologue to Proverbs 31’s Wife of Noble Character describes the Bride of Christ at her most noble: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9).

Second, Jesus activates us as salt and light, that the world “may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16). Salt that loses its preservative and flavoring effects–or remains inside the saltshaker of our churches–is useless.

20/20 Vision is bent on activating churches. Our vision is that first graders of September 2008—the graduating high school class of 2020—would reverse decades of chronic underperformance and graduate in record numbers, equitably across demographics and neighborhoods, with the skills and character necessary to achieve in life.

Mobilizing congregations for scalable engagement requires a plan, and 20/20’s school adoption paradigm moves congregations from no relationship to holistic, transformative relationships. It begins by committing to pray for a specific neighborhood school as often as the church prays. If America’s 300,000 evangelical churches actually prayed for its 100,000 public schools, dare we expect God to answer?

It continues as congregations overcome generational mistrust by cultivating personal relationships at the school. Next, churches become answers to prayer by responding to felt needs with meaningful acts of service such as beautification efforts or event sponsorships. Then they develop an ongoing presence by volunteering as coaches, mentors or tutors, or coordinating leadership clubs. Finally comes the credibility to affect policy both at the school and district level.

To date, nearly 200 New York churches have adopted schools through 20/20. Together, these churches have open-sourced a multi-sector effort to transform education in America. Because the problems are too vast for one person, group or community to overcome on its own, sharing ideas, best practices, funding solutions, evaluation methodologies and reform strategies represents the best way to engage the best minds in transforming public education in this country.

If it’s “about the kids,” 20/20 reminds us to share.

And to lead.

–Jeremy Del Rio

ONLINE: JeremyDelRio.com; 2020Schools.net

Rev. Jeremy Del Rio, Esq. is the lead architect of 20/20 Vision for Schools.

Jeremy Del Rio @ Reload NY (1/17/09)

“Adults promise children that if they stay in school they will be equipped to succeed in life, but we have failed to make good on that promise for generations — with high school graduation rates in some cities hovering at or below 30%. First-graders in Fall 2008 will graduate high school in 2020. Come explore how urban ministries can transform public education within a single generation of students by activating congregations, adopting schools, and becoming answers to prayer.”

• Written and presented by Jeremy Del Rio.
• PowerPoint and lecture notes available here.
• Recorded at Reload New York by Brian Coday (National Network of Youth Ministries)