Steve Paul was passing between classrooms when he got a text message from a teacher: “Chantel has a hole in her pants and we’re not sure what to do.”
Paul was a step ahead — he had already bought a pair of khakis in the eighth-grader’s size to complete her school uniform. He got them earlier in the school year in preparation for that very moment.
Paul works as a “family advocate” at Stamford’s Trailblazers Academy, a charter middle school run by a non-profit social services group called Domus. Paul’s job is part mediator, truancy officer, and social worker, and full-time problem-solver.
As Domus prepares to replicate its model in a New Haven public school this fall, family advocates like Paul will play an important role in how the new school runs — and in how New Haven’s ambitious school reform drive unfolds.
New Haven has hired Domus to take over management of Urban Youth, a transitional middle school on Dixwell Avenue that was given a “failing” grade as part of the nascent school reform drive. Urban Youth will be closed at the end of this school year and reopened as Domus Middle School, a public school with new work rules.
Trailblazers offers a glimpse of how the new Urban Youth will be run. Both schools serve students in grades six to eight who have struggled in traditional school settings because of behavioral or socio-emotional problems.
Domus is hiring 14 new staffers to work at the new school this fall. Top leadership will come from Domus’s ranks. Trailblazers’ principal, Mike McGuire, has been selected to head up the new New Haven school. Teachers will all be new to the school: Current teachers at Urban Youth had to reapply to keep their jobs, and none were re-hired, according to Craig Baker, Domus’s chief education officer. He said Domus plans to offer four of the eight teaching jobs to brand new Teach for America participants.
Domus plans to hire two family advocates to staff the new school. They’re as essential as teachers are to Domus’s model for getting kids on track, Domus officials said.
Family advocates’ job is to remove obstacles, big and small, that get in the way of student learning.
On Wednesday morning, that meant persuading a reluctant eighth-grader to change her pants.
Domus has a strict dress code: All students wear khaki pants or shorts, polo T‑shirts embroidered with the school logo, and brown or black dress shoes. Pants must be held up with a belt, shirts must be tucked in, and sneakers are not permitted.
About a half hour before lunch, Chantel’s teacher noticed a hole in the eighth-grader’s uniform. The teacher quietly sent a text message to Paul, who was making his rounds in the hallway.
Paul, a 26-year-old Stamford native, has been working as a family advocate for four years. Wednesday, he walked the halls with his long hair in braids, wearing a sharp blue tie and dress shirt — he’s got a dress code, too. By now, he’s got the family advocate job down to a system. It involves a lot of walking through the spacious, three-story school, and a lot of messages buzzing on his red T‑mobile phone.
He got the text from Chantel’s teacher around 11:30 a.m. He stopped by her classroom and asked to see her. He sat down with her in his office, a room with a couch, a desk and a table, just a few doors down. He reminded her she’d had trouble keeping up with the school dress code earlier in the year, when she had been drawing on her pants. Now, he told her, there was something different wrong with her uniform.
“There’s nothing wrong with my pants!” Chantel insisted.
“You do have a hole in your pants, and it’s located somewhere inappropriate,” said Paul. “I just had an eyewitness account.”
The hole was near the crotch of the pants. She couldn’t circulate around school like that, he told her.
“I’m going to ask you to please change your pants,” Paul said.
Paul announced Chantel was in luck: “I’m going to give you a brand new pair of pants in the size that you told me you were.” He pulled out a pair of khakis from Old Navy: “Pretty stylish, if you ask me.”
He held them up in front of her and flashed a salesman’s smile.
Chantel’s defiance melted into a grin.
“You always make me laugh,” she told Paul, “even when I’m in trouble on the littlest thing.”
Paul left the room to allow her to change. He explained his secret behind the instant solution — he’d bought the pants earlier in the year, just for her, when she was having trouble following the school uniform. He’d been expecting this day.
“We try to stay two steps ahead of the kids,” he said.
Paul has a caseload of about 50 kids in grades six to eight. As a family advocate, he’s required to not only help kids out at school, but to pay a visit to their homes at least four times per year. He said he visits Chantel’s home once a week. He talks to her mom a lot. She calls him when her daughter acts out at home. He offers her strategies to calm down.
On average, students entering Trailblazers Academy have been suspended twice at their traditional elementary schools, according to CEO Baker. Some walk in the door on the first day of school without basic social skills, like sitting down and listening to instructions. Others have continuing behavioral problems. Teachers spend about half of their time teaching life skills, Baker said. Domus hires family advocates like Paul to tackle a lot of factors, often born from poverty, that get in the way of learning. Their focus is less to talk about problems than it is to solve them. It’s an action-oriented job.
Family advocates show up every day for eight hours in school, and are on call on nights and weekends for extra-curricular emergencies. Paul said this year, one family called him in desperation on a Sunday because there was no food on the shelf. Another called because of a domestic violence incident.
“Mr. Paul, I just got into an argument with my mom and she beat me down,” the student told him. He said he rushed to the home to defuse the situation. Family advocates are all trained in crisis intervention and mediation. They run group sessions on topics like sex and bullying. And they take an 80-hour course that prepares them for the sensitive duty of visiting families at home.
My question is when did the bid go out to find a company to replace Urban Youth? We are now bring in the Corporate Vampires Thief for American know for replacing experienced teachers and puting in Replacement so call teachers who most of the time will only stay for two years.In fact in the education circles
they are call Teach for Awhile or Teach for a Resume. I call them Union buster.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-07-29-teach-for-america_N.htm?csp=34