YES, A New Approach for the Inner City

Nidya Baez, Douglas Cruickshank:

Reinventing our schools with a greater emphasis on student needs and community engagement is, I believe, one of the most broadly beneficial ways to apply the "think globally, act locally" philosophy. Indeed, many students, parents, teachers, administrators and education experts would probably agree that our education system must be radically retooled to increase its relevance and effectiveness in ways that enable all individuals to prosper in what's already shaping up to be an extremely challenging century.

That was what I and some of my fellow high school students were thinking in 2002, even if we didn't express it in quite those words. Nonetheless, by 2003 we'd helped develop an Oakland high school called YES (Youth Empowerment School), part of the city's Small Schools Initiative. Last year, I graduated from UC Berkeley. I'm now working as a substitute teacher and language tutor, and I've recently interviewed for a fall 2008 faculty position at YES.

In 2002, and today, Oakland's students and its schools were coping with problems endemic to education in big cities across the United States.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 15, 2008 2:01 PM
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