Project Pinstripes Dresses Detroit Students for Success

Everyone's talking academic success in Detroit, it seems. In April, Detroit Public Schools announced the "Neighborhood-Centered, Quality Schools" initiative to improve quality of education and life for under-served students and schools. Businesses are coming on board to help fund DPS's community extension services. JPMorgan Chase granted $1.5 million to nonprofits working in economically disadvantaged schools in Southwest Detroit, says the Detroit News. One group, Minority Males for Higher Education (MMHE), is thinking school (and life) success at the wardrobe level with its Project Pinstripes program, says the Detroit Free Press.

Project Pinstripes

Success is about educational achievement, self-confidence, and forward thinking. It's about looking the part, too. Look at any gathering of leaders, and what do you see? Well-groomed people, suits and ties, professional attire -- these are the accessories of success. But if you're a young, disadvantaged, minority man, you probably have little chance of accessing those. Happily, a helping hand may be all it takes. Minority Males for Higher Education has been hosting an annual Project Pinstripes suit giveaway since 2005. The group collects gently used business suits and clothing, tailors and cleans them, and distributes to area boys. Young men are taught how to wear, maintain, and clean garments.

Confidence and Empowerment

Suits are distributed to boys at YouthVille Detroit, an inner-city youth outreach center. With new clothes and style tips, students get mentoring, support, and encouragement. Styling for success won't automatically guarantee it, project coordinators tell students. Clothing is the paint job. The real work happens under the hood. And kids are rising to that challenge. Some who weren't planning to attend college after graduation are rethinking it, reports the Detroit Free Press.

Student Supports

MMHE provides a network of educational upward mobility boosts to youth with fewer supports. Edmund P. Lewis Jr., the man behind MMHE, explained, "The mission is to expose African American males to opportunities that decrease high school dropouts while simultaneously increasing college enrollment and retention. To help our young black men become successful, we (older black men) must exemplify what it means to be successful, while also letting them know what it takes to get to where we are."

Other Projects

Lewis recently received Crain's Detroit's prestigious "Twenty in Their 20s" award, which recognizes young self-starters, movers, and shakers. Lewis is owner/operator of Style Guy'd, a fashion consulting/public speaking organization. Lewis credits positive male role models with lighting his educational spark. Now, he's paying that forward. MMHE's Facebook page lists employment opportunities, educational and scholarship opportunities, partnerships, internships, motivational speakers, networking opportunities, and events. It connects minority boys with specific resources based on need. Crain's says Lewis brought in $1.1 million in funding and coordinated 250 volunteers to build a playground at Rouge Park.

Changing Clothes, Changing Minds

Along with new suits, boys got insight into what drives success with Project Pinstripes. Lewis clued them in that "success is uncomfortable," says the Detroit Free Press.

DPS Emergency Manager Roy Roberts spoke to that theme, too, when he announced the district's new initiative. The district's new community schools model, he said, should "dramatically change our mindsets." He linked change-oriented thinking with improved academic outcomes. He exhorted communities to be courageous and step beyond comfort zones.

A certified teacher and Michigan native, Marilisa Sachteleben writes about educational issues in her state's most pivotal city of Detroit.

View the original article here

Clinton, Bloomberg unveil new project

Clinton and Bloomberg at a 2009 CGI meeting (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)NEW YORK—Former President Bill Clinton and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a new climate initiative Monday to help cities measure their risk for severe weather and natural disasters. The hope is to help curb the impact of deadly storms like Superstorm Sandy, which devastated parts of New York City last October.

The project will be run through C40, a coalition of major cities around the world that united to study the impact of climate change on their municipalities. The group, chaired by Bloomberg, merged two years ago with the Clinton Climate Initiative—an offshoot of Clinton’s philanthropic foundation.

Known as the C40 Risk Assessment Framework, the "climate risk" project, as Bloomberg referred to it, would develop a consistent set of measures by which cities could assess their risk of a natural disaster, including hurricanes and floods.

“Cities simply cannot afford to close their eyes and hope for the best,” Bloomberg said, as he and Clinton unveiled the project during a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Manhattan.

“If you can’t measure a risk, you can’t manage it,” Bloomberg added, warning that a damaging storm like Sandy could happen again.

Bloomberg and Clinton argued that having a consistent measure of risk would help lawmakers prioritize on where to spend money to ward off natural disasters and sell voters on why infrastructure is necessary. Among other things, the framework would examine a city's potential for flooding or other issues related to the environment.

A framework "gives legislators something to hang their hats on ... an independent measure of what the risks are,” Bloomberg said.

The mayor added, “It’s like a rating on your bonds. People will believe it.”

Their joint appearance also had the feeling of a political lovefest. Before Bloomberg took the stage, Clinton praised Bloomberg for his work in trying to combat climate change and for his leadership before, during and in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. Bloomberg, for his part, praised Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had appeared on stage a few minutes before to announce that she and her husband plan to hold a CGI meeting in Brazil this fall to focus on development in Latin America.

To wild applause, Hillary Clinton noted that this CGI meeting was her first “as a private citizen.”

Afterwards, Bill Clinton took the stage and praised both his wife and their daughter, Chelsea, for taking greater roles in his philanthropic foundation. And he was followed by Bloomberg, who also paused in his remarks to praise Hillary Clinton, a former Democratic senator from New York whom he reportedly courted to be his successor at City Hall when he leaves later this year.

But Bloomberg made no mention of those overtures as he praised Hillary Clinton "as the real star of the show" at the meeting. "I am honored to welcome Secretary Clinton back to New York City," Bloomberg said.

View the original article here

Can a School Project Make a Difference In a Community?

The Industrial Revolution isn’t exactly the sexiest of topics for high school students.

“In education today, kids want to see the practicality of what they are learning,” says Andrew Holly, a social studies teacher in Grand Rapids, Mich. “The Industrial Revolution obviously isn’t that engaging in its historical sense to kids, so we tried to make it about things they care about in their lives.”

Holly and his fellow teachers embarked on a project at Kent Innovation High School  to create a school-wide project using the Industrial Revolution as a link to 21st century social and political problems.

It was a perfect project for Kent Innovation High School, a school that focuses on project-based learning in a team environment. At Kent, which first opened to 108 ninth graders in September 2011, students spend two thirds of their day at the new school focusing on four cores: English, math, science and social studies. The classes use projects, which depart from the age-old conception of the boring school project, as their learning tool.

Students return to their home school for lunch, electives and extracurricular activities. This year, the school added sophomores.

One of the key parts of the innovative project was for teachers to integrate freshman and sophomore students on projects and then have them team up with a community partner, an expert in a field or a non-profit.

“The community involvement was a big part in order to help the students and make sure they had their project moving in right direction,” Holly said. “The goal was to authenticate the work they were doing.”

Fifty groups with 50 projects embarked on the three-and-half week assignment at the start of this semester.

One project called “Political Watchtower” examined how in unseen ways corporations funnel money to politicians. Their theory, said Holly, was that corruption was in the public record and could be obtain.

“They wanted to create a website and compile data, analyze it and see who was donating to whom and put it on website so everyone could see,” Holly said.

The group teamed up with a local website creator to assist them.

Another group of students decided to promote recycling, which has low rates in Grand Rapids, for elementary school students. They created the character “Recycle Ralph” and wrote his story in books that could be passed out at elementary schools. Recycle Ralph and his friends also appear on informational posters.

Perhaps, one of the most unique projects, Holly said, involved a group of four teenage girls who got off to a slow start but uncovered something wonderful. Holly may be a bit partial to the project, he said, because he oversaw it.

The girls had an idea to do something involving water pollution. But what? After struggling for an idea for a few days, they happened upon something called “nurdles,” a microplastic pellet that is about the size of a pea. Nurdles are a major part of ocean pollution especially in the Great Lakes. They are found in cosmetics, toothpaste, facial cleansers and shampoos. Fish ingest nurdles, and in turn, they become toxic.

The group created an awareness campaign around nurdles, and it was selected as a final winner in last month’s competition.

The great thing about the Industrial Revolution projects, Holly said, are the students will continue to execute their ideas, thanks to the award money.

Next up? Projects about the Great Depression.

“There will be driving questions just like with the Industrial Revolution project,” Holly said. “Whose fault is poverty? Why are people poor? And what can we do to fix it? The first two questions are focused on the historical aspect, the last one addresses the larger arguments of today, and we’ll leave the students to form their own opinions and arguments using projects.”

More on Education and Innovation from TakePart

Will These 6 Technologies Change the Education Landscape Forever?

Are iPads and Other Classroom Gadgets Really Helping Kids Learn?

The 10 Most Bizarre College Courses You Wish You Took

---

Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com 

View the original article here

Students Get Satellite Time: Inside the Mars Student Imaging Project

A project that puts middle and high school students in charge of an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter received a top prize from the journal Science today (Feb. 21).

The journal recognized the Mars Student Imaging Project, which allows young scientists to request time on the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument aboard the satellite after developing and proposing their own research. But the benefits go beyond learning about Mars.

"The underlying premise of what Mars Student Imaging is about is helping students to learn the process of science, the nature of science and how it works," Sheri Klug Boonstra, director of the Arizona State University Mars Education program in charge of the project, told SPACE.com.

"They're going to be able to apply that understanding in every other class they take."

Science announced today that the project is the recipient of its Prize for Inquiry-Based Instruction, which seeks to recognize programs that promote active learning, where students are engaged in collecting data through resources or experiments. [Gallery: Students Use NASA Satellite to Study Mars]

"We're very humbled by it," Boonstra said. "It's been a great honor."

A growing project

After Odyssey launched in 2001, THEMIS principal investigator Philip Christensen, also at Arizona State University, began to think about a novel and innovative way to utilize the instrument. Christensen, a major proponent of education, met with Boonstra to determine how the camera could be used to engage people in the learning process.

"We thought, as a kid, I would have loved to participate in this kind of exploration, but it just wasn't available," Boonstra said.

They pitched the concept of adding students to the Mars team to NASA, where officials "loved it," Boonstra said.

"It's a collaboration between working scientists and education," she added.

When the Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP) started in 2002, around 500 students were helping to beta test it. Today, more than 5,000 students a year are involved. In the last decade, more than 35,000 students in 33 states have participated, ranging from fifth-graders to undergraduate college students.

"We expect it to grow even more," Boonstra said.

While classrooms make up most groups, Boonstra emphasized that the opportunity was open to all sorts of teams. Home-schoolers, museums and after-school groups have all participated in the project. MSIP offers online training, virtual office hours and recorded seminars to adult leaders who will guide students in the program.

Studying the red planet

Participants in the project start off with a basic introduction to Mars. They become familiar with the surface of the Red Planet, and study orbital images of it. The students then develop a research question that can be tested by THEMIS, and figure out where and how to collect the appropriate data.

After the ASU Mars Education Program, which manages MSIP, accepts a proposal, the students use the Java Mission-planning and Analysis for Remote Sensing (JMARS) tool to study the planet's surface. Comprised of data sets of the surface taken by other researchers, JMARS is used by professional scientists as well as the student groups to take a closer look at the features in the planned target region.

The next step is in the hands of NASA, which uses Odyssey to capture the requested image of the Martian surface and sends them to the students. The teams, ranging from eight to 200 students, analyze the data they receive, creating graphs and collecting additional data. Finally, the teams present their findings to Mars scientists at Arizona State, either in person or over the Internet.

Occasionally, the student discoveries make headlines. In 2010, a group of middle school students discovered a never-before-seen Martian cave.

"These are seventh-graders that made that kind of contribution, that kind of discovery," Boonstra said. "That's where the kids get that this is real."

Other students may go on to present their findings at professional conferences or in scientific journals.

"These kids are stepping it up to be able to stand toe-to-toe with real researchers in presenting their findings at real conferences," Boonstra said.

"The nature of science"

As students follow the same route that professional scientists follow, from making proposals to analyzing data to presentations, they learn how the scientific process works.

"The kids know this is not a canned project," Boonstra said. "We don't have the answers. They're the ones with the answers at the end."

That kind of authentic science resonates with them, she said. Teachers have reported students wanting to stay later, skipping recess and going the extra mile.

"This project really does capture the imagination of these kids because it's so outside of the classroom worksheets and the regular stuff that you find in the classroom," she said.

And while Martian science may not be a large part of the curriculum, the lessons learned from the program transfer readily across science classes. A growing understanding of planetary science directly relates to Earth's formation and features.

Even more importantly, the students realize that science isn't always cut-and-dry.

"It's not a linear process," Boonstra said. "It's much more inquisitive."

She said questions often lead to more questions, and random-seeming tangents can grow into a whole new project.

"The nature of science is the nature of science," she said. "It works that way no matter what you're studying."

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook & Google+. 

• Mars Odyssey: Pictures from Longest Mars Mission
• Mars Myths & Misconceptions: Quiz
• Occupy Mars: History of Robotic Red Planet Missions (Infographic)

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

View the original article here