Diplomas Count - June 5, 2014 - 21

EDUCATION WEEK JUNE 5, 2014
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tendance monitor, recalled cornering one girl who was
starting to skip school regularly, only to find that she
had become the primary caregiver for her younger
brothers and sisters while her mother was in the
hospital. The school identified volunteers to help her
family with child care and allow the girl to do schoolwork
at home.
"I could send her to court or something, but what
good would that do?" Ms. Ford said. "It's a good thing
that she's the kind of kid who cares about her family,
and we need to find ways to help her and support her."
Similarly, students who become pregnant-about
eight to 12 a year-continue to attend school full
time, with half their days in regular courses and half
spent in parenting classes, as well as participating in
a child-care cooperative with other teenage parents at
the school. The program has reduced the number of
students who drop out of school because they become
parents-one of the top reasons young Latinas leave
school.
Healthy Start
Fernandez, an 11th grader at San Ysidro. "Most of our
parents and families didn't have a good childhood, and
we're very motivated to do more than they did."
As often as possible, the school ties its curriculum
to its community culture, Mr. Espinoza said. The language
department, for example, offers Spanish for
native and non-native speakers, as well as American
Sign Language for deaf and hearing students. "At the
high school level, we're philosophically motivated to
do it," Mr. Espinoza said. "We really want to immerse
them."
During one morning here in November, the school's
concert orchestra practiced along with a student
mariachi band that performs at local festivals. In the
next classroom over, a physical education class practiced
exaggerated horse-like prancing and cowboy swaggers
associated with the caballitos dance of Mexico's northern
Baja peninsula-part of the school's 200-student ballet
folklórico program.
Many students also come from very close-knit and extended
families, and staff members have learned to build
on those connections rather than trying to fight them.
Belia Ford, a student-program facilitator and atOne
of San Ysidro's flagship programs evolved out
of efforts to involve students in addressing health
and social problems in the community: the medical
pathway.
The lead instructor for the program and a former
nurse, Sheila Krotz, said it developed out of conversations
with a mobile health clinic that provides
checkups on campus. Local doctors and parents complained
about the lack of bilingual health workers in
the mostly Spanish-speaking region and the paucity
of health care in general. The nearest hospital is a
30-minute drive away, and many families do not have
reliable transportation.
"This is a poor community; they need well-educated
health-care professionals, so that's the goal here," Ms.
Krotz said.
Throughout the year, students volunteer at both the
local health clinic and a campus-based "teen clinic,"
where students can come for confidential advice on
health issues.
Each summer, students take an interim course in
which they identify pressing community health issues
with local doctors and plan potential solutions to
tackle during the next school year. In 2012-13, when
1,000 new cases of HIV were diagnosed among local
14- to 21-year-olds, the students organized health
fairs and lectures at local schools and community
centers to promote AIDS testing and prevention. This
year, after students found that dental problems were
one of the top five causes of absenteeism among
elementary students in the district, they went
through a short course to conduct short dental
assessments for students in the lower schools.
The medical pathway now draws 450 students a
year for an intensive four-year science strand, including
medical biology, biotechnology, medical chemistry,
and honors anatomy, as well as phlebotomy and other
medical-assistant training electives. In 2013-14, the
University of California, San Diego, adopted the program
and now offers dual credit for several courses.
"In high-poverty areas, it's very unusual for students
to have four years of science, and I really
wanted them to be competitive," Ms. Krotz said.
"Though it's a college-prep program, we have a lot of
poverty, and we need to be realistic that a lot of our
students will not be able to go directly to college; they
need to be able to work first. These [students] get a
certificate and a lot of work experience, too."
In the six years since the medical pathway has
been offered, none of the participating students has
dropped out of school, and Ms. Krotz said students
who go on to college directly after graduation have
so far been twice as likely to complete their first year,
30 percent versus 16 percent of peers throughout the
district.
Jennifer Sanchez, who graduated from San Ysidro
in 2012 and now attends San Diego State University,
said completing medical-assistant training while
still in high school gave her a leg up in college, both in
knowledge and in cost-savings. But just as important,
she said, "I think the program really helped me see
that this is something I really wanted to do, because I
got so many experiences," from talking to fellow teenagers
about pregnancy and disease prevention in the
teen clinic to shadowing doctors at a local hospital.
"I see a lot of people come in. Sometimes, they don't
even know they qualify for health care, and I see patients
walk out very grateful because they get help
that they didn't even know they could get," Ms. Sanchez
said. After graduation, she returned to work at
the San Ysidro Health Clinic and plans to become a
health-care worker in the community after college.
"I think people have begun to realize that school
learning is about more than school," said Mr.
Blank, the community school researcher. For
example, "investigating crappy food at bodegas
and why there isn't fresh food in
some neighborhoods is legitimately
connected to parts of the [Common
Core State Standards],
and it makes the common
core come alive for
many kids." I
Ms. Sanchez administers a flu shot to a patient
at the health center. She returned to the clinic after
graduating from high school and now works there
while attending San Diego State University.
"
Making meaning
of their lives is particularly
important for low-income
students. If you treat them like
they have nothing, you won't
get very much. You have to
leverage what they do have."
MARTIN J. BLANK
President
Institute for Educational Leadership
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Diplomas Count - June 5, 2014

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