They built wildlife guzzlers and set up motion-triggered cameras to record activity at the site and gather data. (Watch some of the footage they captured!) They also partnered with natural resources professionals to help them with the data collection methodology and analysis.

To determine the effectiveness of students’ real-world work on their academic achievement, Chance W. Lewis, Ph.D., the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair of Urban Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, surveyed teachers, mentors and students involved in Preston’s Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project.

“[A]fter evaluating the teacher, mentor and student survey responses from 2010-2012 for this specific program, it appears that the ITP program has been highly successful in assisting students to become more ‘proactive learners.’ With a large number of teachers, mentors and students involved in this program, all data indicates that this program is doing very well in relation to impact on student growth,” Lewis said.

Read Lewis’ full report about how this  ITP project has impacted student learning or a summary of his evaluation of ITP overall.

Some people avoid evaluation, fearing less than satisfactory feedback. (It’s much like why  some people avoid going to their doctor; they are afraid they might hear bad news.) To have the most effective program with the highest possible outcomes, however, it’s necessary to periodically review methods and processes to determine what’s working well and make refinements in areas that need improvement.

Dr. Chance Lewis of UNC Charlotte

At the International Telementor Program, we are grateful for the recent evaluation of our work by Dr. Chance Lewis, director of The Urban Education Collaborative in the College of Education at The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte. Lewis collected quantitative and qualitative data by surveying participants about their ITP experience. Read a just-released, special issue of Telementor, The Journal of the International Telementor Program to learn how we fared. It summarizes Lewis’ findings and recommendations for improvements, as well as comments from teachers and students.

We are taking the results to heart, and celebrating our successes and making adjustments where necessary—because we believe where teachers and mentors are supporting students to engage in authentic work, tackling real issues, collaborating with real professionals and creating viable solutions, the gains in math, science, English and other subjects are stellar.

Our Founder and Director David Neils, says, “The more authentic the work, the greater the program benefits accrued for all participants. Our education system must move from a content- and test-focused classroom (sage on stage) to authentic learning (guide on the side). It’s not a hands-off approach, but actually requires more effort. And the results of this type of instruction are compelling. The level of student retention that occurs when students are tackling real issues is basically 100%, while the retention rate in a test-focused classroom hovers around 13% after one year. That’s not good enough.”

Students and teachers thrive in classrooms where authentic learning is taking place. This is the focus of ITP.

Amy Schmer has

“We now have 3,000+ acres on which to conduct science research,” says David. “This is a dream come true for me. I’ve been looking for an opportunity where students are tackling real wildlife issues, improving wildlife habitat, and collaborating with real professionals every step of the way. That dream is now a reality thanks to the ranch owners and many others who have stepped up to the plate.”

The students have now installed the ranch’s first wildlife guzzler—a stock water tank for wildlife. Sixth graders were literally swinging pick axes and setting up fixed movement-triggered cameras to document their studies. A few weeks later they already had their first thirsty visitor (check out more videos and photos here).

When David visits the classroom, he says, there are never less than five hands in the air at a time. “It’s electric,” he says. “Students thrive when they’re learning math and science in a way that makes a difference. This kind of learning will be something they remember for the rest of their lives.”

From a teacher’s perspective, Amy’s class is working on real science projects in collaboration with professionals in the workplace who are mentoring them through the secure, web-based messaging system provided through the International Telementor Program. Students are getting help beyond their teacher and their parents from concerned professionals who are listening to what they have to say and guiding them forward in more depth than possible through the usual route.

Amy shares more of her thoughts here:

Personal Traction: How’d you hear about the program? 
Amy: I heard about the program while teaching a class with David Neils [David is the Founder and Director of the International Telementor Program].

Personal Traction: What prompted you to get involved?
Amy: I got involved because I knew that this was a one of a kind opportunity for me and my students. I knew that I wanted my students to do something special and this was what I was looking for.

Personal Traction: How does it support your teaching goals?
Amy: One of my goals was for my science students to do more writing, and they are doing a ton of writing in Science class. They are also hearing from their mentors that it does not matter what area you go into after school, you will have to know how to read and write.

Personal Traction: What have been the value and benefits of the program for you/your students?
Amy: The mentors. The mentors give so much time to my students that I could not give them. The students are learning about collaboration and time management. When I ask that an assignment be looked at twice by your mentor before turning it in, the 6th graders know that they need to manage their time wisely. They can not wait until the last second for their mentor to give them feedback. This is a piece of information that I could not teach without this program. Also, my students now have connections outside of Preston in a field that they are highly involved in.

Personal Traction: What are some highlights in working with the mentoring program/mentors?
Amy: I have many highlights….The feedback the mentors give is amazing. The time the mentors give is astounding. The quality of the messages that the mentors write is wonderful. It really gives the students an example that writing and communicating after their school years is still important. The mentors really take the time to get to know their student. I get many emails from mentors asking about their student. How they are, how can they help them, Are they staying on task, and many, many more questions.

Personal Traction: What are your thoughts on education these days?
Amy: I know that the students at Preston Middle School are getting to do things that I never got to do even in college. The students at Preston are working very hard and love coming to school.

Personal Traction: Anything else you care to say or add about the mentoring program?
Amy: I have felt supported all the way!

CAMERA, ACTION! “We set up the first camera on Friday morning,” says David. “Friday night we had our first thirsty visitor.” Have a look at two bears as well as a mountain lion.

PICTURE THIS. Check out all 93 photos of the Preston Middle School Wildlife Project.

As a tip

1. Students are making a real-world difference working with leaders to address local issues (or in some cases, specific state, regional or international issues) as identified by those leaders.

2. Examples of excellence are known, shared and students set the bar high for quality work.

3. All student work goes through a process of mulitple iterations, the practice and process of student draft, mentor review, refined student draft, and so on.

4. Student-mentor collaboration is required for students to move forward with their projects.

“This is as much a journey for the teacher as it is for his or her students,” says David. “It’s a rare classroom where these attributes are flourishing. But we’re making headway thanks to our mentors and a handful of pioneer teachers and students,” he says. David writes more about what authentic learning means here.

(from Cathy, to her student)

“It is better, and like you said, a rough draft. I definitely do not think you should start over, because the second draft is so much better than the first. All the suggestions I made are just to get it to the point where it will be the real deal. Don’t give up. Actually, this reminds me of how I think of cooking; I figure I’ll be 90 years old before I get everything right, if I get to live that long. But it’s fun to work on. Anyway, just keep trying, you’ll get it. Kind of like sports in a way too, you don’t start out a pro, you have to keep working on things. Thanks for writing and talk to you again soon.”

Is it possible to realistically maintain such educational environments? We want to know. Tell us what you think and what makes you think that way. Include your name, company, your city and state. Write to us at: staff@telementor.org

Source: International Telementor Program

WE ARE SEEING the value of authentic work on a daily basis as student develop and leverage relationships near and far to articulate their interests and pursue their ambitions. As we look at each student in the program as an individual with a panoply of strengths, weaknesses, aptitudes, and interests, we can’t help but marvel at the complexity of human beings and the infinite variables that come to play in any person’s life “pathway.” In the midst of this complexity lies incredible potential energy that when set in motion is astonishing. In recent years, I have been most amazed to see how mentors living thousands of miles away from our schools can encourage students to take important actions within their local communities. Sometimes the catalyst is a student who just needs an opportunity to think big getting a chance to network with big thinkers and sometimes it is a matter of a student needing a mentor to help her communicate those big thoughts to the people who live right down the street or just across the river from her.

Two years ago, Nicole ran away from home and dropped out of high school for over a year. She returned to school with a passion for helping kids, like her now one year old who nearly outweighed her. With the help of a telementor and support from a teacher and her parents, she began to fashion a career and education plan that would allow her to graduate from high school and pursue certification for child care work at the post-secondary level. With a plan and network of support behind her, she found an internship at a local church daycare willing to help her launch her career.

Last school year, Jasmine impressed us with her natural ability to work with celebrities and promote their work through social media. She leveraged a scholarship to a summer leadership workshop to showcase her gifts and develop more practical experience at project management. Last fall, she collaborated with a telementor to develop a career and education plan that she then presented to Millenium Studios who immediately made her the first intern of any kind, high school, college, or graduate level, to work for them. Last week I got to hear her boss talk about how Jasmine had opened up opportunities for talented students who will come after her. That was a powerful experience!

Sam, from the first time I met him in middle school, has impressed me with his ambitions. Not many seventh graders can let teachers know that their passion is linguistics, especially psycho-linguistics. As a freshman in high school, he took courses at the local college in sociology and psychology, and was not afraid of the challenges. He wanted more challenges, in fact! It was no surprise then, when he worked most effectively with one of most talented telementors in the program. Together, they connected Sam’s intelligence and passion for learning to a community of learners that included national and international experts. In fact, when they managed to correspond with Noam Chomsky, one of the most prolific linguists, political activists, and radical intellectuals of the 20th Century, I let Brian and Sam know that they had set a new standard for networking in the program.

As an eighth grader, Kevin began articulating with the help of a telementor his love for plants and animals as well as agriculture and conservation. His 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens project included the creation of an action plan that connected his interests with genuine opportunities to develop his natural abilities independently and within collaborative ventures. As a high school student, he is building networks of support that people doing important conservation work in our community, state, region, and nation. His volunteer efforts on public lands included marking trails, renovating a farmhouse that would become an educational site, cleaning up a neglected graveyard, and presenting at a state environmental education conference. His passionate regard for conservation was included in a Spring 2011 report to Congress prepared by the Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement (CARE), a national coalition of 21 wildlife, sporting, conservation, and scientific organizations. It’s no wonder that his work also landed him a job this summer with Americorps, where he is engaged in conservation work in our region.

We work with all students, including gifted and talented students and students with disabilities and talented students with disabilities and gifts we just don’t know about yet. I am blessed to get to see each day that mentors and relationships are catalysts for student action or that student actions can be the catalysts for the formation of new relationships and mentor/protege relationships. Some days a mentor in California helps an autistic student in Louisiana with a passion for the logical systems that run computers develop a career and education plan. Other days it’s a shy student in Louisiana taking a plan he made with his mentor from Pennsylvania to share with the hiring manager of a local grocery store. It is quite humbling to watch student aspirations and ambitions move forward in great leaps or grow in even small increments, sometimes after years of inaction or paralysis or dysfunction, or simple unrealized potential. I am grateful for every opportunity that we have had to link students with adults who have faith that the next generation of adults will be substantially better than the current one!

——-

Zac Burson is the Program Coordinator for the International Telementor Program and a teacher at Bossier Schools in Louisiana. Write to: staff@telementor.org

I’M GRATEFUL FOR the opportunity to help youth maximize their potential through our International Telementor Program (telementor.org). It’s humbling and inspiring to see what happens when teachers and mentors work together to encourage, support, and challenge youth. After witnessing the results of over 45,000 students being served since

1995, patterns have emerged that are worth sharing. These patterns have been substantiated within and outside the program. One pattern that is as obvious as the law of gravity is the value of authentic student work.

What is authentic student work? It’s an environment where students are tackling real issues, where the bar of quality is set high and set collectively by professionals, teachers, and students, where students go through an iterative cycle with every outcome throughout the project (draft, refinement, new draft), professionals in that issue space are as interested in the process and what’s discovered as the students are, students have an authentic audience for their work, and finally, the results of this collaborative work have a real impact that lasts for months or years.

A ‘CONTRIBUTING’ ATTITUDE

Authentic student work changes lives. We are all hard wired to derive joy and satisfaction from contributing in a positive, powerful way. When we know we’re making a real difference it not only lightens our step but changes our perspective about people and what’s happening around us. Back in 1993 I was interviewing high school students for scholarships in Walden, Colorado, a small rural town in Northern Colorado, and noticed that many of these students were way ahead of their urban peers in maturity, self knowledge about interests and abilities, and their ability to communicate with adults. As I reviewed their applications, I noticed most of the students were involved in one or more of the following programs: scouts, 4-H, and church youth groups. The strongest students were involved in at least two of these programs. As I reflected on why these programs made such a difference I was drawn to the fact that these environments were places where youth were contributing, making a difference, collaborating with healthy adults who care about youth, and where the contributions had a lasting impact.

A high school student in our program from Northwest Louisiana tackled an authentic project where he was the focus of the experiment. He wondered whether he could control his insulin level better giving himself shots versus using an insulin pump. This was an issue that affected many diabetic individuals in his community and around the world. His mentor from Merck helped him connect with local diabetic professionals as well as the LSU medical research team. These professionals had a keen interest in his findings. His work was of exceptional quality because the bar of quality was set at the beginning of the project collectively with input from him, his teacher, the mentor, and local professionals.

THE VALUE OF AUTHENTIC WORK

We are seeing the value of authentic work on a daily basis as student develop and leverage relationships near and far to articulate their interests and pursue their ambitions. As we look at each student in the program as an individual with a panoply of strengths, weaknesses, aptitudes, and interests, we can’t help but marvel at the complexity of human beings and the infinite variables that come to play in any person’s life “pathway.” In the midst of this complexity lies incredible potential energy that when set in motion is astonishing. In recent years, I have have been most amazed to see how mentors living thousands of miles away from our schools can encourage students to take important actions within their local communities. Sometimes the catalyst is a student who just needs an opportunity to think big getting a chance to network with big thinkers and sometimes it is a matter of a student needing a mentor to help her communicate those big thoughts to the people who live right down the street or just across the river from her.

THIS IS REAL-LIFE

Two years ago, Nicole ran away from home and dropped out of high school for over a year.  She returned to school with a passion for helping kids, like her now one year old who nearly outweighed her.  With the help of a telementor and support from a teacher and her parents, she began to fashion a career and education plan that would allow her to graduate from high school and pursue certification for child care work at the post-secondary level.  With a plan and network of support behind her, she    found an internship at a local church daycare willing to help her launch her career.

Last school year, Jasmine impressed us with her natural ability to work with celebrities and promote their work through social media. She leveraged a scholarship to a summer leadership workshop to showcase her gifts and develop more practical experience at project management. Last fall, she collaborated with a telementor to develop a career and education plan that she then presented to Millenium Studios who immediately made her the first intern of any kind, high school, college, or graduate level, to work for them. Last week I got to hear her boss talk about how Jasmine had opened up opportunities for talented students who will come after her.  That was a powerful experience!

Sam, from the first time I met him in middle school, has impressed me with his ambitions.  Not many seventh graders can let teachers know that their passion is linguistics, especially psycho-linguistics.  As a freshman in high school, he took courses at the local college in sociology and psychology, and was not afraid of the challenges.  He wanted more challenges, in fact!  It was no surprise then, when he worked most effectively with one of most talented telementors in the program.  Together, they connected Sam’s intelligence and passion for learning to a community of learners that included national and international experts.  In fact, when they managed to correspond with Noam Chomsky, one of the most prolific linguists, political activists, and radical intellectuals of the 20th Century, I let Brian and Sam know that they had set a new standard for networking in the program.

THE HUMBLING EFFECT

We work with all students, including gifted and talented students and students with disabilities and talented students with disabilities and gifts we just don’t know about yet   I am blessed to get to see each day that mentors and relationships are catalysts for student action or that student actions can be the catalysts for the formation of new relationships and mentor/protege relationships. Some days a mentor in California helps an autistic student in Louisiana with a passion for the logical systems that run computers develop a career and education plan. Other days it’s a shy student in Louisiana taking a plan he made with his mentor from Pennsylvania to share with the hiring manager of a local grocery store. It is quite humbling to watch student aspirations and ambitions move forward in great leaps or grow in even small increments, sometimes after years of inaction or paralysis or dysfunction, or simple unrealized potential.  I am grateful for every opportunity that we have had to link students with adults who have faith that the next generation of adults will be substantially better than the current one!

Authentic student work is project-based learning on steroids. It’s all the right stuff without the fluff. It ensures students are really making a difference. When I ask students in our program what determines the amount of energy they put into work at school. The answer is, “Is it real, or is it fake?” “If it’s real, I’ll put in real effort.” “If it’s fake, I’ll put in just enough effort to get by.”

By helping teachers take the curriculum requirements and turn them into authentic student opportunities, the students will be able to apply the concepts real time, and develop skills that are impossible to develop any other way.

AN INVITATION TO RESULTS

I invite you to share in the results of our students and mentors at www.telementor.org as well as our news site: www.personaltraction.org. We have incredible mentor professionals from 22 countries who have years of experience. They created matches with students again today for a summer project in Topeka, Kansas where students will receive career and education research and planning support that leverages their unique interests and natural abilities. Mentors chose students at the rate of one every three minutes.  If we can help serve youth in your community, please send an e-mail to davidn@telementor.org or call 970-481-9795.

For youth,

David Neils

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David Neils, founder and director of the International Telementor Program, has made it possible for more than 44,000 youth to receive academic mentoring support from hundreds of professionals representing a variety of fields. Write to: davidn@telementor.org