Guayanilla

Help Us Support School Rebuilding in Puerto Rico

Dear Friends of Arete Education,

Arete Education is committed to the mission of community service and stewardship, and experiential learning that challenges the status quo with academic, social, and emotional support for students in the school they attend. In our Mott Haven community of the South Bronx, many families were deeply impacted by the recent earthquakes in the south of Puerto Rico. Numerous students and staff have families in the communities of the south of Puerto Rico, including Guayanilla, Ponce, Yauco, Guanica, and more. As part of our commitment to social-emotional dialogue in our existing programs, many of our students have spoken to their concern for the conditions facing family and loved ones in the south of the island.

Through dialogue with community advocates in Guayanilla, we learned of La Escuela Solidaria SE, an emergency community school that is currently being designed and set up by community volunteers in Guayanilla with the support of members of our Arete staff and staff at our partner school, MS/HS 223 The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology. Our Assistant Director of Middle School Programming (Supervision and Operations Support) and Dual Language Director, Ms. Ariadna Phillips, has been supporting the community advocates in the development of this temporary school site as schools in Guayanilla have been closed since the initial quake and subsequent hundreds of seismic events since late December 2019. Ms. Phillips will be traveling to Puerto Rico in mid-February 2020 to further support delivery and distribution of materials  to community teachers and volunteers at La Escuela Solidaria SE. 

As a community in partnership with our families in the Diaspora, we ask our friends and supporters of this work to consider donating to sponsor needed school supplies and temporary classroom shelters for our friends at La Escuela Solidaria in Guayanilla. Direct sponsorship of needed supplies can be done through our Amazon Wishlist (please ship to Arete Education c/o Ariadna Phillips-Santos and Walter Echevarria P.O. Box 560477 Guayanilla, Puerto Rico 00656) . A donation can also be made through Arete Education's donation page with the designation "Guayanilla School Sponsorship". Donations can also be made towards the cost of shipping donated books and supplies to Puerto Rico that have be sent to us by our school community with love for La Escuela Solidaria SE.  

 

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Practice Makes Perfect?

Many people use the phrase "Practice makes perfect" to depict the process of learning. Ulrich Bose pointed out that this is a remarkably ill-defined expression. Does practice mean endless repetition? Does practice involve feedback and reflection? Should practice be hard or fun?

Learning is a complex process. A growing body of research has shown that practice alone is not enough. We also need learning strategies. We need to be smarter with the practices by designing and utilizing strategies. Many research studies have consistently suggested that learners are not born but made. We are ALL able to be good at something through the dedicated practices and constantly refined strategies.

Research is making it clear that when it comes to become expertise, learning strategies can be more critical than raw smarts. Marcel Veenman found that people who closely track thinking and continuously reflect learning will outperform those with high IQ levels in terms of learning new things. His research also revealed that focusing on how we understand is 15 percent more important than innate intelligence when it comes to develop mastery. Learners are made, not born. IQ is not the only answer, EQ has to be concerned and actively be engaged in the learning process.

Areté has been strategically employing emotional intelligence in our after-school programs. Emotional Intelligence simply denotes being smarter with feelings. We provide students ample opportunities to understand emotions, to develop self-awareness and to reflect about their learning. By being smarter with feelings, students are able to identify their thinking, feeling and action patterns in learning, design and refine learning strategies and adjust the practices accordingly. Through this iteration process, they gradually get better at learning.

We do not simply urge students to practice and practice all the time because we believe practice is not enough for making perfect. We help them to learn smartly by employing strategies. We believe it is not enough to give them fish, but more importantly, teach them how to fish.

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New Research Revealed Positive Impacts of Community Schools Initiative (NYC-CS)

With the launch of the New York City Community Schools Initiative (NYC-CS) in 2014, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has increased its focus on the implementation of a holistic strategy of education reform to address the social consequences of poverty as a means to improving student outcomes. NYC-CS is a strategy to organize resources in schools and share leadership among stakeholders so that academics, health and wellness, youth development, and family engagement are integrated into the fabric of each school.

Areté has been serving as the major Community Based Organization (CBO) for our partner - The Laboratory School of Finance and Technology (MS/HS223), one of the Community Schools in School District 7.

This week, a new research study titled “Illustrating the Promise of Community Schools: An Assessment of the Impact of the NYC Community Schools Initiative” was released by the RAND Corporation, which examines the first three years of the Community Schools initiative and compares the performance of students in community schools with the performance of students in demographically-similar non-community schools.

The research has revealed several positive outcomes of NYC-CS, including but not limited to the following:

  • Students in community schools tend to have better academic achievement.
    • NYC-CS had a positive impact on math achievement
    • NYC-CS had a positive impact on credit accumulation for high school students
  • Students in community schools are more likely to graduate on time.
    • NYC-CS had a positive impact on on-time grade progression, and on high school students' graduation rates.
    • In 2017-18, graduation rates in community schools were 7.2 percentage points higher than comparison schools.
  • Students in community schools miss fewer days of school.
    • NYC-CS had a positive impact on student attendance for students in all grades and across all three years of the study.
    • Chronic absenteeism was 7.3 percentage points lower in community elementary and middle schools, and 8.3 points lower in high schools.
  • Students in community schools feel safer and more supported.
    • For every 100 students in elementary and middle community schools, community schools had 10 fewer disciplinary incidents per year.
    • NYC-CS was found to have a positive effect on students' sense of connectedness to adults and peers for middle school students.

It has been an honor for Areté to work closely with MS/HS 223 on this initiative. We are looking forward to utilizing this initiative and continuously making positive impacts to our students and the school community.

NYC Community Schools Work! from NYC Public Schools on Vimeo.

Journaling in Self-Care Club

"Journaling has made me even happier than usual. I journal whenever I have time, in between my homework breaks, when I feel like getting things off my chest, or just any random time I have my journal near me. I journal because I want to expose any patterns that may appear throughout my life. For example, when I have journaled for awhile I will be able to read over any patterns that caused me to feel a certain throughout the day. Even further, journaling helps me keep track of my thoughts. Sometimes I have a bunch of things going on in my head and its hard to keep track of everything and writing it down is a great way to cleanse your mind. As a teenager, we experience lots of ups and downs, emotionally, and journaling is a great way to balance your mental health. All in all, journaling is a good way to put all the micro details from your day on to paper, and helps to formulate your thoughts in a coherent matter that makes you understand why you feel a certain way. Bottom line, I recommend journaling for whenever, you feel sad, happy, excited, passionate, etc. JUST PUT IT ON PAPER! "

- Genesis

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10 Ed Tech Tools for Your 2020

The year of 2019 is coming to an end. To prepare you for a fresh start in the new year, here are 10 Ed Tech tools that can make your school life more interesting and effective.

1- Anchor.fm

If you are interested to create podcasts in the new year, you may want to try out this platform. It makes easier for distributing the podcasts to all the major networks such as Apple Podcasts and Google Play.

2- Canva

Want to make your poster/flyer/newsletter/infographics/cards/brochure look more professional and eye-catching? Canva is always your best friend! There are thousands of free templates on their website! Moreover, most of them are FREE! Best of all, teachers can get all of the pro features of Canva for free at canva.com/education.

3- Padlet

Padlet allows you to make beautiful boards, documents, and webpages that are handy to contribute and easy to read. The collaborative nature of the tool allows you to organize shared notes, gather ideas and opinions from different people at the same time, etc. You can always exercise your creativity and make the tool useful to you! See a great example for SEL resources created by Areté's executive director.

4- Slido

This new tool enables you to easily add interactive poll questions and quiz to your Google Slides presentations!

5- Educandy

Trying to design and create games to make the learning process more engaging and interesting? Try out Educandy! You can create interactive learning games through this tool! All you need to do is to enter questions and answers, Educandy will turn the content into cool interactive activities in minutes! Once the activity is created, a code will be generated. Share the code with others and PLAY!

6- BoClips

BoClips houses more than 2 million curated and copyright-cleared educational videos by minimizing the distractions typically associated with YouTube. They have 160+ content partners and the video content spans over 40+ academic subjects. You can find suitable videos for all age levels from their database.

7-ClassTools

This is a powerful website to help you create free games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! In 2019, they have added an interactive image generator template and more new game templates!

8- VidReader

This service allows you to generate a transcript of any YouTube videos containing spoken English! Transcripts created are hyperlinked with timestamps and printable.

9- Glide Apps

Trying to develop an app but having no previous knowledge about coding? No worries! Glide makes it possible for you to easily create an app from a Google Sheet and customize it on your needs. Create easy-to-use apps without writing a code! Most importantly, it's FREE.

10- Microsoft's Immersive Reader

This tool has been making reading more friendly than ever. It offers numerous reading support functions, including but not limited to read-aloud functions, font spacing and enlargement, syllabus highlighting and line focus. It was first designed to support students with dyslexia and dysgraphia, but can also support anyone who simply wants their reading experience on devices more enjoyable and convenient.

Post content adapted from Richard Byrne's newsletter (richard@byrne.media): Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week - Best New & Updated Tools in 2019.

SEL & Leadership Club - Sad Songs Playlist

 

Do you tend to feel sad when it is a rainy day ☔️? It has been raining and snowing a lot in New York City recently. Our students from SEL & Leadership Club have created a list of sad songs for you, a perfect playlist to match your moods --

Lovely- Billie Eilish & Khalid

 

Grenade- Bruno Mars

 

It's You- Ali Gate

 

Medicine- Queen Naija

 

Wide Awake- Katy Perry

 

Let You Down- NF

 

Headstone- Defeater

 

Princesses Don't Cry- Carys

 

Fly Me to The Moon- Frank Sinatra

 

Too Good at Goodbyes- Sam Smith

No Idea- Don Toliver

 

Someone You Loved- Lewis Capaldi

 

Angel of Darkness- Nightcore

 

Wrecking Ball- Miley Cyrus

If you want to feel happy again after going through the sad songs, don't worry, we have a happy playlist prepared for you as well - Check it out in this blog post .
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Self Care Club Update

The first session of Self Care Club went perfectly. Twenty students came, and they thoroughly enjoyed making the glitter jars. The students were from different grades, so everyone was able to meet someone new through the activity. Students learned how to make glitter jars and how to use it mindfully. After the first session, many more students have expressed interest. The next session will be held on Friday, January 10, 2020, in room 223, beginning at 2:30 pm. The theme of the next session will be on how to use journaling and coloring in an effective way to help teens mentally and emotionally. Below are pictures of the first Self Care Club session. 

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Posada 2019

December 18, 2019 | 18 de diciembre de 2019

5:15-6:45 pm

 please fill out the volunteer request form here | por favor complete el formulario de solicitud de voluntario aquí

Posada ticket sign up | inscribirse para boletos

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