I Speak of Dreams

St. Frances Academy, Baltimore

St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, is located in a district that is poor and African-American.

Potential is being Realized
 
Potential is being realized at St. Frances Academy. St. Frances Academy is proud that over 90% of recent graduates enroll and succeed within a college environment. What drives St. Frances Academy, however, is more significant than impressive college acceptance rates. St. Frances Academy is an institution that prioritizes healthy relationships within school, within families, and within communities. In tandem with a challenging academic curriculum, relationship-building empowers students to acknowledge that they are young men and women of integrity and have a responsibility to treat themselves and others with respect.

Your College Tuition Will Be Paid

There are people who reach their hands out to help those in need.  Let's celebrate one this day, Oral Lee Brown. 

In 1987, Oral Lee  Brown promised  the entire first grade class at Brookfield Elementary School (East Oakland, California) that she would pay for them to go to college.  She has kept that promise.  Three graduated last year, and three more are graduating this year.

Ms. Brown isn't the only one to have these dreams of providing dreams for inner city kids.  Gene Lang, a businessman, went to visit his old elementary school in Harlem in 1981, and was moved to make the same promise.  That promise blossomed into the I Have A Dream Foundation, which has over 175 projects in 66 cities. 

A Voice From Texas: Tangential Thoughts

I follow this young woman's blog--like a lot of my reads, I go to another blog and follow the links, rather than blogrolling directly.  She teaches middle-school history in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, in  a public school.  It's the real deal.  (I get to her place from Ms. Frizzle.)  This is what it is really like in schoolrooms across the country, folks.

We had an interesting conversation in class yesterday about being poor and poverty in the Rio Grande Valley. Most of my kids had no idea that our county is one of the five poorest in the U.S. and has the highest unemployment rate. We discussed how difficult it is to break the cycle of poverty and that the one real way to do it is through education. I told my students yesterday that although classes where they do nothing are fun, the teachers are depriving them of the education they need to get out of the cycle of poverty. Some of them actually understood it. Not all, but some of them had that look on their face when they finally understand something. Chances are that 30% or less of my students will graduate from high school. A quarter of my students this year will drop out by December of ninth grade, just seven months from now. If I can convince one of those kids that an education is important, then this year was more than worth it.