KENTUCKY

In Kentucky, the problem of student motivation can be ameliorated by: 

1) Intensifying Outreach: We at St. Francis feel that an outreach tutoring program, like the one we now have with Centennial Olivet Baptist Church in West Louisville, helps address the problem of student motivation.  It helps by both combating negative peer pressure and poor parenting.  The kids that we tutor through Centennial Olivet have many negative influences in their lives, and our helping them with their homework shows that someone does care and values school.  The tutoring also helps pick up the slack of parents who cannot or will not help their children with school assignments.  We feel that our program should be used as a model which other independent schools in Kentucky can replicate.  Here’s a more complete description of our outreach tutoring program: 

As eighth graders at St. Francis School in Goshen, Kentucky, we have a special opportunity to help out our community through a tutoring program with Centennial Olivet Baptist Church in Louisville’s West End.  Students, teachers, and parents from St. Francis contribute, helping out children who do not have the same privileges that we enjoy.  The tutoring program with Centennial Olivet is very important to us as individuals and as a school community because we are able to reach out and “pay forward” our gifts.

Each week on Mondays, a sign-up sheet makes its way through a group of kids eager to help.  When Tuesday rolls around, middle schoolers from St. Francis go to Centennial Olivet in inner-city Louisville with parent and teacher volunteers.  While there, we tutor underprivileged children from the city’s West End.  We teach students of a wide age range the following skills: reading, writing, and math.  Supplied with worksheets and books, we ensure that they know these skills.  In addition, we make sure that the students finish their homework assignments.

The children get to the church on a bus that goes around the West End and picks up children that want to attend the tutoring sessions.  The church does not turn anyone down unless the child has some violence or uncontrollable behavior problem.  When they arrive at the church, the students are given dinner provided by the church and then are paired with one of the tutors.  The children have an age range from 3 to 15, but the majority are under 10. 

Those at St. Francis who do not participate in tutoring at Centennial Olivet often tutor at a new charter school in Louisville’s Clarksdale neighborhood.  After school on Mondays, St. Francis students help tutor the school’s seventh graders during their after school study hall period. 

Some of these children that we tutor, despite having difficult and often abusive home lives, have great promise academically.  The main thing that holds them back is a lack of opportunity caused by poverty.  It pains us to see intelligent young people held back in life simply because they do not have enough money and support from family and peers.  Our tutoring program does not solve this huge problem, but it certainly helps.

2)  Energizing Public Schools:  This old and difficult problem has traditionally been tough to crack.  However, lack of student motivation which results from uninspiring schools can be addressed by: 1) making instruction more student centered and interactive, staying away from the lecture format, 2) hiring more teachers to improve the student/teacher ratio in the classroom, thereby reducing class size and increasing the opportunity for individual attention, 3) finding ways to boost faculty morale and thus keep teachers motivated, and 4) ensuring that students have natural light (important psychologically) and recess time with proper outdoor or gymnasium facilities. 

KWAZULU-NATAL

In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the problem of insufficient teachers and resources can be ameliorated by:

1)  Political Leadership: The South African students, recognizing that the current post-apartheid government is currently ill-equipped to deal with the country’s educational problems, believe that a combination of concerned politicians and capable experts must be found to address the problems in the future.  They see a leadership vacuum.  The lack of leadership to address South Africa’s educational needs has resulted in part from the country’s transition from a white-dominated government to its current post-apartheid government. 

2)  National Service in Teaching: In speaking with their headmaster, Phil Hawke, the South African students also endorsed the reintroduction of National Service in South Africa.  After qualifying, teachers would spend one year in rural areas of the country teaching underprivileged students.  This form of national service would help mitigate the staffing problem of rural schools which are currently stretched to the limit, not having enough qualified teachers to teach classes that sometimes have as many as 60 students.

3)  Intensifying Outreach: The South African students also proposed outreach as a solution, noting that outreach can only be beneficial if done on a large scale and only if the participating schools are fully committed.  They write, “We believe that in order to breakdown cultural differences and help less privileged schools, a carefully monitored outreach program needs to be implemented.  If every “privileged” school could adopt at least one underprivileged school, education in South Africa would take a turn for the better. There is a great deal that we can offer in terms of both physical and educational assistance:

Physical: This involves practical action like cleaning, repairing, and painting school buildings and furniture (see pictures on the team web-site).  There is nothing more depressing than having to spend six hours a day in a dreary, lifeless classroom.  If we could assist in creating an environment which stimulates creativity and learning, that would improve the education that the pupils receive.

Educational: This would involve the actual teaching for a day of the rural students by the so-called privileged students.  This would enable the rural students to meet and interact with students who are enthusiastic about education, and hopefully impart some of this enthusiasm.  Sometimes concepts are more easily grasped in a school setting when they are taught by peers of the same age, and not by an “older” teacher.  

Kirsty Kankowski of Creston College offers this description of her school’s outreach program: 

Our main objective is to develop our outreach programmes into historically disadvantaged and under-represented areas of the community as well as to continue education programmes with local schools and groups.  It is our main aim to encourage and lead other schools in our area to reach out in communities and help promote education as a vital, participatory, necessary, and fun part of children’s lives.  Also the importance of our unique environment and the participation of all its citizens is completely interwoven with our outreach programme. 

We have outreach programme every term.  We pair up with a rural school, Gamalakhe High, and together tackle the following topics:

• wetland preservation
• water conservation
• river and ocean pollution
• pollution effects on marine life
• the effects of cholera and balhaza 

With the students at Gamalakhe High, we did the following activities:

• made games
• made posters
• prepared oral reports
• took outreach field trips to the beach
• learned about different habitats and marine life 

The purpose of this programme is to share our knowledge with a rural school that does not have the resources that we do at Creston College.

The above solutions have implications for both St. Francis School and Creston College.  The schools will obviously be called upon to bolster their current outreach programs.  In addition, they will be required to serve as models for other independent (fee paying) schools.  In other words, St. Francis and Creston College will assume leadership roles, spearheading an outreach movement.  Students at both institutions will become more aware of the challenges facing underprivileged children.  As they participate in outreach, they will also learn to become mentors and instructors, assuming responsibilities that promote empathy and maturity.  The growing awareness of students at St. Francis and Creston College will motivate them to influence governmental decisions that are not directly in their control.  Some of the proposed solutions described above require support from elected representatives.  Graduates of St. Francis School and Creston College, having participated in outreach and having been exposed to regional educational problems, can pressure representatives to back identified solutions.

The South African part of the team added the following comments: “If our proposal were to be successful, we would like to see the enthusiasm and motivation in less fortunate schools for education increase to the point where they too would be able to pass on their knowledge to others, and cause a snowball effect to take place through the education system. If we can be successful in providing the initial momentum for these rural schools in getting them positive, it can only improve the education problem in South Africa and around the world. Once we all start looking beyond our own little world and lend a helping hand to others less fortunate than ourselves, we can together improve the education for all.”