Tag Archives: Highland Street Foundation

The Twilight Saga Gets Students to Read

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If you’ve already seen the new Twilight movie, Eclipse, check out this re-post from April to get a glimpse of the positive impact of the popular series in schools. And if you’re not a fan yet, maybe this will inspire you to pick up book 1…or at least give it some credit where credit is due!

Original post by Rachel Johnson on April 22, 2010.

The Twilight Saga has transformed how my students view reading. I tutor and mentor fifth graders, and I am a new Twihard. If you visited my class last October, you would have found me forcing students to read novels. It would be an understatement to say they resisted: some students cursed me, and few thought books were worth their time. I implored them to explore new worlds in books, but they snapped that I read too much or that my books were too big. It was frustrating to see students taking the easy route by reading tiny, below-level books, so in an effort to inspire my students to see books as blessings rather than burdens, I carried and read as many as three books at once.

The breakthrough finally arrived in February in the form of a sparkly vampire family with mesmerizing golden eyes, and through dazzling me they dazzled a generation of Boston fifth graders. The week I read the Twilight Saga is one I will never forget. My students had never seen me read books like I read those. It became a game to guess how long before I would finish one book, and it was always surprising when I surpassed their expectations. This series is special because it is the first fantasy series to become popular in their generation. My students adored the movies, so I challenged them to go further and encouraged them to read the novels. The obsession began slowly, but as my fervor for Twilight increased, my students became intrigued enough to finally check it out for themselves. Two months later, half of my class is reading the Saga while the other half is either writing their own stories or reading other novels.

Many people fear the Twilight Saga negatively influences the youth who read it, but I know firsthand the power of these books. If my students begin to look at content over book size, read until they are filled, and never look back, this is a victory, and I take full responsibility for the creativity that will inevitably ensue.

With These Powers Combined

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Ironically, it started while passing notes in class. Well, maybe not class – it was a few months ago during a presentation on strategic plans for the future of City Year Boston, but close enough. Though I serve on our Civic Engagement team, the note came from Jon Hinthorne, a corps member on a Whole School, Whole Child team at the Tobin School. We were both bursting with our own ideas about how to make City Year’s programs even stronger than they already are: we’re good at many things; why not combine our powers?

Within half an hour, we found like-minded peers in City Heroes team member Daniel Caesar-Rodin and Young Heroes’ Keri Notartomaso. Over the following weeks, the four of us dreamed up a pilot service day to be tested at Jon’s school. If it were a recipe, it would look something like this:

Serves: 25-30 Starfish, 6-10 Heroes, and any interested parents/family

Ingredients:

  • 1 group Starfish after-school students
  • a few City and Young Heroes interested in mentoring and helping lead a service learning program for elementary school students
  • 9 mini physical service projects and supplies

Instructions:

  1. Plan project and get teammates invested
  2. Convince Heroes to get involved, then train them
  3. Prepare Starfish with service learning curriculum
  4. Pull tools and supplies, bring to school
  5. Mix well and enjoy!

The result was magical. Part Whole School, Whole Child, part Heroes and part Civic Engagement, watching the children paint pride murals for their school and build a bench was City Year at its best. More Starfish attended that day than any other. The spirit of the partnership continues on with a program that unites Heroes with Starfish for mentoring and tutoring. And we’re especially excited at the interest we have already received from other schools.

So what do you think? What else can we do to help unite our programs?

On Perseverance

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At the end of my service year, I feel I will say that my boots grew two sizes too big over the course of the last ten months. I will look at the size nestled into the side of my dirty, but still too clean Timbs, and marvel that those seven and a halfs aren’t flopping all over the place. At the beginning of this service year, Charlie Rose, our Dean and Vice President, challenged us to really take advantage of our 1700 hours so that when we looked back on this experience, it would be one of no regrets. I haven’t quite reached the completion mark, but at the rate at which I’m going, I can’t honestly place myself in that league of extraordinary people. Sure I show up each day on time with a smile on my face and a joke in my heart. Each day I push my students to focus and endure, but it never feels like enough, and I’m afraid the odds will defeat me.

Though things are getting better, there are still too many youth dropping out of school, and I am absolutely terrified that my students will join those ranks. To teach them to be more determined about their own lives I don’t hesitate to tell them my story of perseverance through a tough situation. I tell them how I grew up in a household with little positive encouragement from adults. I had to be very self-motivated to create a bright future from a bleak present, but I pushed through to graduate high school at the top of my class and was the first person in my family to graduate from college. I’ve known tough times, but I keep my eyes open to new possibilities and work hard to make them realities.

Ms. Amanda

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Walking into the Tobin K-8 School in Mission Hill, you can always count on seeing at least one smiling face: Amanda da Silva.  Amanda joined City Year after graduating from UMass-Amherst in 2009 with a degree in sociology and a concentration in social services.  She became interested in being a corps member when she decided that she wanted to pursue a possible career working either directly with children or in the field of social work.

Ms. Amanda, as she is known to her students, works in a third grade classroom providing small group tutoring to students, as well as assisting in general classroom support.  “I think the most rewarding part of my job is seeing the positive outcome of working directly with the students,” said Amanda.

Outside of the classroom, Amanda also serves as the mentoring coordinator for the Highland Street Foundation Team, and writes weekly lesson plans for the Lunch Buddies program.  Corps members all participate in the Lunch Buddies Program, meeting with a different student each day of the week.  The mentoring program includes themes such as behavior management, respect, and students’ goals.  Thanks to this program, Corps members have already noticed changes in students, from improved behavior and attendance to better rates of homework completion and improved quality of schoolwork.