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www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=224746&src=76
North Central's scholars program gets at-risk students into college
By Susan Dibble | Daily Herald Staff
Published: 8/2/2008 12:05 AM
During Roy Aguilar's freshman year at East Aurora High School, he was an average student. He didn't think about his future or about what he might do after he graduated.
"No one would tell me anything about college," he said.
That changed after he was enrolled in the Junior/Senior Scholars, a college readiness program at North Central College that reaches out to students in impoverished neighborhoods in east Aurora and Chicago.
By the end of his junior year in high school, Aguilar was applying to colleges and he received his acceptance at North Central in the fall of his senior year. He graduated from the Naperville college in spring 2007 and will pursue a master's degree in journalism at Columbia College this fall.
"I probably would not have done that either (pursue a graduate degree) had I not participated in Junior/Senior Scholars," Aguilar said. "I would have probably have gone to a community college or I would have started at a public school and have not done so great."
Record of success
Junior/Senior Scholars celebrated its 20th anniversary last week with a track record of expanding students' horizons. The Illinois State Board of Education recognized it in 2003 as an exemplary program. Mentored and tutored by North Central students, more than 140 of the scholars have gone on to attend college over its 20 years.
In 2007, 90 percent of the program's graduating seniors enrolled in college immediately following high school, independent evaluator Anne Deeter found.
"They have a lot of outcomes they purpose for those students," she said. "Those students are choosing more selective colleges than they might have done on their own."
Janis Fitzsimmons, the program's founder and coordinator, couldn't be more pleased with its success.
"It's been an extraordinary experience both for our college students and the students from the community. It's been life enriching," she said.
Fitzsimmons said Junior/Senior Scholars was founded after Amoco Research Center in Naperville contacted North Central about its desire to see more young people involved in math and science. The program started with a summer camp for students from the James Weldon Johnson Elementary School in Chicago's North Lawndale community. That first summer convinced founders that bringing impoverished kids to a college campus was a powerful experience, Fitzsimmons said.
Three years later, the program expanded to include Oak Park Elementary School in east Aurora. Cheryl Lockhart Smitter, Aguilar's former teacher, remembers hearing about the scholars program at North Central and that some of the college students involved in it couldn't travel to Chicago. She stepped forward to suggest that her school also could benefit from the visits of the North Central students.
Only a limited number of students could be selected for the scholars program, but the entire school was included when the program's volunteers put on special events at Oak Park Elementary, she said.
"One of the wonderful things about this program is that it has been ongoing," Smitter said. "It got to the point that everyone wanted to be a junior scholar."
The program has continued to operate with the financial support of North Central College and a variety of business and corporate sponsors.
Student to student
Fitzsimmons said about 400 students from first grade through high school are enrolled in Junior/Seniors Scholars each year through its year-round and summer camp programs. Two hundred North Central students are involved as tutors, summer camp interns and program coordinators. Students from other colleges also may serve internships at the summer camp.
North Central students visit the two elementary schools in Chicago and Aurora weekly during the school year to tutor the children in the program. Middle school and high school scholars are transported to the North Central campus after school on Thursdays for tutoring and homework help. Middle schoolers are prepared to transition to high school, and high school students receive help in ACT preparation and other steps they need to take to get ready for college. Once a month on Saturdays, the high school students also visit other college campuses in Illinois.
During the five- to-six-week, full-day summer camp, fun is combined with more instruction in math, science, reading, speech and extracurricular activities. Older students also do internships on campus and off.
Katrina Lizarazo of Aurora has three daughters in the scholars program. When her youngest was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, she received help with reading and comprehension in the program that was not provided through her school, Lizarazo said.
"I love this program," she said. "Without this program, my kids would be behind."
Fitzsimmons said the ideal is to enroll the students in the program in first grade and continue with them through high school. Students who drop out usually do so because their families move, but some of them still stay in touch, she said.
For Nicholas Bounds, the program was a guiding star that got him through the challenges of his unsettled family life. After getting involved with the scholars program in eighth grade, Bounds had to leave twice to live with relatives in Mississippi and Ohio. With an absent father and mother who was a drug addict, he didn't have family to take him in here.
Finally with the help of a mentor in the scholars program, Bounds found housing in a teen shelter on the south side of Chicago and completed his senior year of high school in November 2007. He's had one semester in a community college and is looking forward to transferring to a four-year school.
"I never gave up," Bounds said. "The support they had for me motivated me. Somebody cared. I didn't want to let them down."
The program also has been a constant in the life of Eric Knox, a North Central student entering his senior year. Knox said he grew up in a bad neighborhood in Chicago and became a junior scholar in fourth or fifth grade. After high school, he discontinued his education for a few years to take care of his now 10-year-old daughter. But he is determined to complete his education and has served a volunteer in the scholars program.
"One thing I've learned through education, you can make your dreams come true," Knox said. "Just to have that college experience is more than words can say."
Fitzsimmons said the program is life-changing for the college students who work in it as well as for the scholars they tutor.
Amber West, a North Central graduate, said she first got involved in the scholars program to fulfill the requirements of an education class, but she continued to volunteer through four years of college. She met many Hispanic students from Aurora through the program and is now a bilingual teacher in Bolingbrook.
"This program is what got me started thinking of bilingual education," West said. "It also gave me the desire to work with high needs students."
The students themselves won her over, West said. Although guarded at first, they warmed up once they saw their tutors were going to be a constant in their lives, she said.
"If you are willing to give the time and effort, you end by receiving the reward, the smiles and the hugs," West said.
Raising expectations
Fitzsimmons said students chosen for the program are largely self-selecting. They must be recommended by their teachers and principals, but they are chosen more for their willingness to cooperate and get along with people than their academic credentials.
"The kids know it's going to be a lot of extra work. That's something they want to be part of or don't want to be part of," she said.
Parents play an important role in supporting their children's involvement in the program. Fitzsimmons said it is often eye-opening to suburban college students to see how much the parents care.
"Parents who come from impoverished communities have many, many economic challenges that take them away from the home and their children," she said. "(But) these are parents who love their children dearly and want the best for them."
The program sets milestones for the students, Deeter said. During their freshman year in high school, the students learn to set a good academic plan to prepare them for college. As sophomores, they take standardized tests. They narrow their search for colleges during their junior year, and apply for college admission and financial aid as seniors.
Pamela Cascleberry of Aurora has two daughters in the program. Her oldest, Kienston, graduated from high school this spring, received a Golden Apple Scholarship to attend DePaul University this summer, and will begin studies at St. Xavier University in August to become an elementary school teacher.
"This program has done more than their actual high school to get them in college," Cascleberry said.
Marlo Sails, co-director of the scholars summer camp and a special-education teacher and case manager at Johnson Elementary School in Chicago, said students in her school look forward to the college students coming out.
"They look at them as role models," she said. "(They feel) if they can do it, I can too."
North Central's scholars program gets at-risk students into college
By Susan Dibble | Daily Herald Staff
Published: 8/2/2008 12:05 AM
During Roy Aguilar's freshman year at East Aurora High School, he was an average student. He didn't think about his future or about what he might do after he graduated.
"No one would tell me anything about college," he said.
That changed after he was enrolled in the Junior/Senior Scholars, a college readiness program at North Central College that reaches out to students in impoverished neighborhoods in east Aurora and Chicago.
By the end of his junior year in high school, Aguilar was applying to colleges and he received his acceptance at North Central in the fall of his senior year. He graduated from the Naperville college in spring 2007 and will pursue a master's degree in journalism at Columbia College this fall.
"I probably would not have done that either (pursue a graduate degree) had I not participated in Junior/Senior Scholars," Aguilar said. "I would have probably have gone to a community college or I would have started at a public school and have not done so great."
Record of success
Junior/Senior Scholars celebrated its 20th anniversary last week with a track record of expanding students' horizons. The Illinois State Board of Education recognized it in 2003 as an exemplary program. Mentored and tutored by North Central students, more than 140 of the scholars have gone on to attend college over its 20 years.
In 2007, 90 percent of the program's graduating seniors enrolled in college immediately following high school, independent evaluator Anne Deeter found.
"They have a lot of outcomes they purpose for those students," she said. "Those students are choosing more selective colleges than they might have done on their own."
Janis Fitzsimmons, the program's founder and coordinator, couldn't be more pleased with its success.
"It's been an extraordinary experience both for our college students and the students from the community. It's been life enriching," she said.
Fitzsimmons said Junior/Senior Scholars was founded after Amoco Research Center in Naperville contacted North Central about its desire to see more young people involved in math and science. The program started with a summer camp for students from the James Weldon Johnson Elementary School in Chicago's North Lawndale community. That first summer convinced founders that bringing impoverished kids to a college campus was a powerful experience, Fitzsimmons said.
Three years later, the program expanded to include Oak Park Elementary School in east Aurora. Cheryl Lockhart Smitter, Aguilar's former teacher, remembers hearing about the scholars program at North Central and that some of the college students involved in it couldn't travel to Chicago. She stepped forward to suggest that her school also could benefit from the visits of the North Central students.
Only a limited number of students could be selected for the scholars program, but the entire school was included when the program's volunteers put on special events at Oak Park Elementary, she said.
"One of the wonderful things about this program is that it has been ongoing," Smitter said. "It got to the point that everyone wanted to be a junior scholar."
The program has continued to operate with the financial support of North Central College and a variety of business and corporate sponsors.
Student to student
Fitzsimmons said about 400 students from first grade through high school are enrolled in Junior/Seniors Scholars each year through its year-round and summer camp programs. Two hundred North Central students are involved as tutors, summer camp interns and program coordinators. Students from other colleges also may serve internships at the summer camp.
North Central students visit the two elementary schools in Chicago and Aurora weekly during the school year to tutor the children in the program. Middle school and high school scholars are transported to the North Central campus after school on Thursdays for tutoring and homework help. Middle schoolers are prepared to transition to high school, and high school students receive help in ACT preparation and other steps they need to take to get ready for college. Once a month on Saturdays, the high school students also visit other college campuses in Illinois.
During the five- to-six-week, full-day summer camp, fun is combined with more instruction in math, science, reading, speech and extracurricular activities. Older students also do internships on campus and off.
Katrina Lizarazo of Aurora has three daughters in the scholars program. When her youngest was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, she received help with reading and comprehension in the program that was not provided through her school, Lizarazo said.
"I love this program," she said. "Without this program, my kids would be behind."
Fitzsimmons said the ideal is to enroll the students in the program in first grade and continue with them through high school. Students who drop out usually do so because their families move, but some of them still stay in touch, she said.
For Nicholas Bounds, the program was a guiding star that got him through the challenges of his unsettled family life. After getting involved with the scholars program in eighth grade, Bounds had to leave twice to live with relatives in Mississippi and Ohio. With an absent father and mother who was a drug addict, he didn't have family to take him in here.
Finally with the help of a mentor in the scholars program, Bounds found housing in a teen shelter on the south side of Chicago and completed his senior year of high school in November 2007. He's had one semester in a community college and is looking forward to transferring to a four-year school.
"I never gave up," Bounds said. "The support they had for me motivated me. Somebody cared. I didn't want to let them down."
The program also has been a constant in the life of Eric Knox, a North Central student entering his senior year. Knox said he grew up in a bad neighborhood in Chicago and became a junior scholar in fourth or fifth grade. After high school, he discontinued his education for a few years to take care of his now 10-year-old daughter. But he is determined to complete his education and has served a volunteer in the scholars program.
"One thing I've learned through education, you can make your dreams come true," Knox said. "Just to have that college experience is more than words can say."
Fitzsimmons said the program is life-changing for the college students who work in it as well as for the scholars they tutor.
Amber West, a North Central graduate, said she first got involved in the scholars program to fulfill the requirements of an education class, but she continued to volunteer through four years of college. She met many Hispanic students from Aurora through the program and is now a bilingual teacher in Bolingbrook.
"This program is what got me started thinking of bilingual education," West said. "It also gave me the desire to work with high needs students."
The students themselves won her over, West said. Although guarded at first, they warmed up once they saw their tutors were going to be a constant in their lives, she said.
"If you are willing to give the time and effort, you end by receiving the reward, the smiles and the hugs," West said.
Raising expectations
Fitzsimmons said students chosen for the program are largely self-selecting. They must be recommended by their teachers and principals, but they are chosen more for their willingness to cooperate and get along with people than their academic credentials.
"The kids know it's going to be a lot of extra work. That's something they want to be part of or don't want to be part of," she said.
Parents play an important role in supporting their children's involvement in the program. Fitzsimmons said it is often eye-opening to suburban college students to see how much the parents care.
"Parents who come from impoverished communities have many, many economic challenges that take them away from the home and their children," she said. "(But) these are parents who love their children dearly and want the best for them."
The program sets milestones for the students, Deeter said. During their freshman year in high school, the students learn to set a good academic plan to prepare them for college. As sophomores, they take standardized tests. They narrow their search for colleges during their junior year, and apply for college admission and financial aid as seniors.
Pamela Cascleberry of Aurora has two daughters in the program. Her oldest, Kienston, graduated from high school this spring, received a Golden Apple Scholarship to attend DePaul University this summer, and will begin studies at St. Xavier University in August to become an elementary school teacher.
"This program has done more than their actual high school to get them in college," Cascleberry said.
Marlo Sails, co-director of the scholars summer camp and a special-education teacher and case manager at Johnson Elementary School in Chicago, said students in her school look forward to the college students coming out.
"They look at them as role models," she said. "(They feel) if they can do it, I can too."