The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

YES stands for Youth Engaged in Service

October 29, 2009 by Jeremy Jones

Youth Engaged in Service is what we help our students become, and this year it is my responsibility to assist in leading the engagers of our youth at YES Prep East End by connecting their grade levels with service organizations in our area. It’s a simultaneously daunting and thrilling charge, to say the least. How does one lead a 14-year-old, egocentric adolescent to the local homeless shelter, elementary school or food bank as an authentically invested and caring member of his or her community? I’m excited to be poised, along with an incredible team, to improve the way we do that this year.

Jump Starting the Service Learning

The East End campus recently got its first taste of service learning and the classroom got off to an inspiring start as each grade level’s service liaison and homeroom teachers jumped into action. Students were researching immigration as a human rights issue, environmental concerns in the East End, and, in the 9th grade, the achievement gap between economically disadvantaged and advantaged students that exists in our country.   My 9th grade students, however, were acting just like the post-8th-period-on-Friday versions of themselves, and were having an extremely difficult time focusing on the achievement gap. I was frustrated; my entreaties for their calmness and quiet were falling on deaf ears.

From Ignorance to Outrage

At first, they didn’t believe it.  They didn’t think the achievement gap was real. “But Ms. Windham, we work so hard here! Why would anyone say we can’t achieve?” One student asked. The concept of a child receiving a poor education was a little lost on them.  After working to rein them in, the beauty of the moment unfolding before me finally bubbled up to the surface of my thoughts:   because they’ve been YES Prep students since 6th grade, they no longer experience the effects of the achievement gap. Their 99% passing and 67% commended scores on the 8th grade reading TAKS are just two of many metrics. They are free, already, from the shackles of low expectations and the toxins of tracking. They can take what they’ve been given and use it to learn independently, think critically, and serve meaningfully.   Their teachers in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade have in three years closed the gap for them and equipped them for success in high school, college, and life. I saw their distraction in a new light.

My students’ initial blissful ignorance, as refreshing as it is, cannot negate the importance of teaching them what they are up against and what they have overcome. Ultimately, they used words like “outrage,” “disappointment,” and “shame” to describe their reactions to the inequity that exists between economically disadvantaged students and their advantaged contemporaries.  They brainstormed ways that they could “close the achievement gap” in the East End by tutoring at other low-income schools or raising money to buy school supplies for other needy students, even though some of them can’t afford their own. 

Weigh In

I ask the same question to you: Why would anyone say they can’t achieve? They, alongside some of the most dedicated teachers in the country, demonstrate each day, week, year, that any child and every child can think, can learn, and can serve.

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