nothin At Amistad, College Prep Doesn’t Stop For… | New Haven Independent

At Amistad, College Prep Doesn’t Stop For Summer

Christopher Peak Photo

Amistad Academy’s Isaiah Germain, Joseph Jackson and Carlos Torres, back from summer programs.

After two months constructing the set for the production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Edgerton Park, Carlos Torres said with unabashed pride, that he became a huge theater nerd.”

Through Achievement First Amistad High School’s summer internship program, which paired him with Elm Shakespeare Co., Torres learned to use obscure power tools, scanned iambic pentameter, splotched paint onto half of his wardrobe and found a passion for working behind the scenes in theater.

Ever since I had these internships, I realized I may not know a skill but I can learn it,” said Torres, a recent Amistad grad who’s starting at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania this month. Some teens with a big task would get an adult to do it, but I’ve grown up pretty fast.”

Each summer, hundreds of students from Amistad, a charter high school on Dixwell Avenue, report for gigs at workplaces throughout New Haven and Bridgeport. For 30 hours minimum, spaced out across several weeks, they staff the chambers of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the classrooms of New Haven Reads or the admissions office at Albertus Magnus College, among many others.

The program fits into the charter network Achievement First’s goal of readying students for college and careers, said Lauren Cohen, the associate director of summer programming.

Over the summer, teens start to figure out what interests them and develop the professional skills that could land them in that career field, she said. Then, once they’re back in class, students compete to keep their grades up so they’ll have first pick of next year’s internships (or the even more coveted college classes), she added.

The goal is really to have students learn something,” Cohen said, whether it’s about their areas of interests and possible careers or different skills like independence, leadership and self-advocacy.”

Amistad students earn summer opportunities based on their grades, Cohen said.

At the end of the first quarter, roughly 70 top-performing students are selected for fully paid summer courses at universities around the country. Known as pre-college,” these are the envy of the student body that can earn you bragging rights,” said Joseph Jackson, a current student.

Over the rest of the school year, another 300 students are matched with internships. Each quarter, they have a chance to qualify as long as they don’t fail a class or get in trouble. The rest do enrichment programs or remedial classes.

Achievement First sends a higher proportion of students to college than the rest of the state, keeping pace with wealthy suburbs. In 2015 – 16, the most recent year data’s available statewide, 83 percent of Amistad’s graduating seniors enrolled in college within a year. Of those, 92 percent continued to a second year.

By comparison, statewide, 72 percent went to college, 86 percent of whom persisted to a second year. And among New Haven’s traditional public schools, 65 percent went to college, 74 percent of whom persisted.

(Both systems serve a large proportion of what the state calls high-needs students,” but they fall into very different categories. That year, across all grades, Amistad’s students were 27 percent more likely to be from poor families that qualified for free lunch, while New Haven’s students were 43 percent more likely to be learning English and 136 percent more likely to need special education accommodations.)

To find the right match, students fill out a survey that asks about their interests, like what they do for fun and what they might want to study in college, along with goals for themselves, like improving time management or interacting with new people.

Along with the faculty who teach a college-readiness course called Foundations for Leadership,” Cohen tries to figure out what would be the best fit for each student. Sometimes, it’s straightforward, like pairing a student interested in criminal justice with a judge, but more often they require some creativity, like pairing a student interested in management with the Board of Alders’ legislative staff to see how rules are made, she said.

The jobs aren’t always right, but even those experiences can be lessons, Cohen said. They can teach patience and teamwork or, more simply, they can give a better sense of the type of work they enjoy, she said. Figuring out what you don’t want to do is really valuable,” Cohen said.

All the internships coordinated by Amistad are unpaid. Depending on economic circumstances, some students find work on their own, often through programs like the city-run Youth at Work or the nonprofit Leadership Education and Athletics in Partnership. Several also eventually take a paid position after the internship ends, as Torres with Elm Shakespeare Co.

On his own, Jackson, a rising senior, connected with the Student Conservation Association to meet the summer requirement. For four weeks, he maintained trails and bridges in three of New Jersey’s state parks.

Among the group students from primarily rural backgrounds, he was the only black kid. He said he had to adjust to their vegetarian cooking, and he had deal with the fallout from his trampling on mushrooms.

It was literally just us. No other groups were around, so I had to figure out how to take other people’s values even if they seemed so far-fatched,” said Jackson. I still don’t care about mushrooms, but I acknowledge that other people do.”

At one point, a sapling he’d been chopping down fell the wrong way and pinned him to the ground. I didn’t have my phone, and there was no one there to save me. I figured, I’m either going to die here or I’m going to figure something out,” he recalled. At that point, I’d experienced poison ivy and I was covered in bug bits. I’d already gone through it. I hacked at the little branches.” Then, he continued, I spent a whole 20 minutes cutting the trunk into smaller pieces until I could move from under it.”

Since then, Jackson’s been much more conscious about recycling. He told his mom they should start composting, and he’s thinking about going pescatarian. He got a job as a docent at the Yale Peabody Museum and he’s planning to focus one of his final research papers on carbon emissions.

Jackson said that some friends believed that the summer programs fit with Amistad’s reputation as a school that works their kids too hard,” extending the rigor into the summer. But he said he disagreed, finding that the internships were the payoff for all the hard work he’d put in all year. Summer vacation isn’t always a relaxing thing to waste time and money,” Jackson said.

Torres said that he’d heard similar derision from his buddies. But without the internships, he said I’d literally be doing nothing, putting off my summer homework until the last week.”

Isaiah Germain, a rising junior who helped out with City Hall’s legislative services this summer, felt the same way. I don’t want to sit around,” he said. I’m being productive, pursuing a career so I can get a job in the future.”

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