You want something, go get it. Period.

This is my voice...

GYSD

aserrano2011's photostream on Flickr.

Pictures from Global Youth Service Day!

‎"I never needed eyes to see, never. I simply needed vision and belief. If you truly believe, and I mean believe from the bottom of your heart, you can make change happen."

Trey Songz? Alicia Keys? Who will it be?!

So aside from the $30,000 in scholarship money, the new counseling library, and free one-year access to online SAT prep, the Get Schooled Challenge is also rewarding Collins Academy with a day with a celebrity! They will come to Collins to be principal for the day, teach a class, and also put on a concert! Around 900 people can fit in our gym. Our school has only 400 students which means there are about 500 more spots to fill and my principal has a great idea. Aside from inviting some students from other neighboring schools and the school that we share the building with, he is going to invite the incoming freshmen! I think this is a great way to introduce the incoming freshies to Collins and give them a little taste of what our community is like. Now we're just waiting to hear back from Get Schooled about what celebrity its going to be and its between two...

Trey Songz

or...

ALICIA KEYS!!!

I can only hope and wish its ALICIAAAAA!!!! :D

COLLINS ACADEMY WON THE ATTENDANCE CHALLENGE!!!

From the Get SchoolED website:

http://www.getschooled.com/and-the-school-who-improved-attendance-the-most-is%E2%80%A6-collins-academy

AND THE SCHOOL WHO IMPROVED ATTENDANCE THE MOST IS...COLLINS ACADEMY!

That’s right, Collins Academy in Chicagoshowed that if you focus on accomplishing a goal and work together, real change is possible. The 400 student school saw an almost 7% increase in attendance over the course of the last six weeks and is this year’s Get MotivatED Challenge winner! That gain reflected the commitment of every staff member and volunteer in the school. With help from a team of City Year Corps members, the administrators opened the gym for free play – basketball, hang time, etc.; kids came early to school to meet up with friends. Teachers and staff plastered themselves with information and encouragement about the challenge so that they became walking ads. And the students responded – they came to school, they got their friends to come, and they used their voices in videos and teacher nominations to recognize a school that was working for them.
Research shows that if students have more than 10 absences in a year their likelihood of graduating on time drops significantly. And students who are more involved in school activities, are more likely to attend school regularly and graduate on time.
The 25 Challenge schools (with an average free or reduced price lunch rate of 86 percent) represent 24,000 students and more than 1,000 school teachers and staff. Schools used a variety of tactics to engage their students and staff throughout the six week challenge, including participating in one of the Challenge’s motivating components (teacher nomination effort, video contest, pep rallies, taped celebrity messages, etc.).
While every participating school that was engaged during the challenge will be recognized for their work through a variety of ways (school trophies, awards for students who led and championed the challenge in their schools, media outreach to help publicize the school’s progress, etc.), Collins will be rewarded with a very special treat. Since they were the school with the greatest percent increase in attendance over the six week period, Get Schooled and Comcast will award three $10,000 college scholarships to students who showed tremendous leadership during the challenge. The College Board will also donate a new counseling library to the school and provide one-year of free access to SAT prep on-line for every junior and senior in the class. All of this will be awarded at an all-school, celebrity-led celebration in May.

Selling drugs on the corner...

After school today, Nicole and I walked to the bus stop to head home. Little did we know we were in for an adventure. BG, BJ, Kevin, and Aaron were conducting their business on the corner. I had always been curious about how exactly being on the corner works, and found myself very curious about this group of boys. BG is currently attending high school, and got kicked out of Collins recently for fighting. BJ is still in school and heads to the corner after he gets out at the end of the school day. Kevin was very quite and pretty much stood on the side. Aaron graduated high school and wants to be a business man when he grows up. I kept talking to them, in the back of my mind thinking about Big M (he's told me before that he stands on the corner with his uncles frequently). It was very clear what they were doing out there, yet Nicole and I still wanted to take the time and effort to talk to them and get to know them a little bit rather than just ignoring them. Hopefully we'll run into them again in the future and maybe even spark just a little bit of an interest in doing more than just dealing. In the 10 mins that we were waiting for the bus, there was at least 6 dealings, one with a mom and her young daughter. "Keep walking, baby girl, keep walking," she tells her daughter as they walk by. We locked eyes for a moment and I thought she was trying to walk away from the boys and protecting her daughter from the smoke, but as she passed by me, she pushes her daughter to continue walking as she hands money to Aaron and he in turn hands 2 baggies of weed. The little girl just kept staring in confusion. The most interesting part to me was how obvious it was. Instead of saying hello to people passing by, Aaron says "Weed?" and as quickly as that, the person accepts or declines. Most of them waiting until they pass back again to hand over the money and receive their product. Now don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed talking to these boys, I liked them. It's just unfortunate that they feel they can only do that to get ahead. "Why did you get kicked out of Collins?" "Because of fighting?" "Why were you fighting?!" "Well, because I'm black! You know how it is!" In some way, I really hope having a normal conversation with them can in a way make them realize people aren't against them, there are other ways. We'll see. All I know is that I'm trying my best to remember their names, so next time I see them, I can show them that there are people that care about them and how they are doing, what they aspire to do, their past, their present, their future,...anything really, I want to have some sort of positive connection to them, something they may not have with too many people.