each one, background teach one

Each One,Teach One:A methodologicalapproach fornational disasterschool response Jean Strait and Joyce JonesHamline University

Background

Hamline University, a medium sized college in St. PaulMinnesota, dedicated resources and time to NewOrleans, Louisiana in its efforts to rebuild and reclaimthe city. Days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Hamline sentstudents, faculty and staff to help with recovery efforts.The Education Club adopted Martin Luther King Scienceand Technology school (MLK) soon after to help incleaning and rebuilding the school and sent over$20,000.00 in books, supplies, merchandise gift cards,food and water to help with this effort. Still fueled by thegreat need in New Orleans for assistance, the group’sleader Dr. Jean Strait worked with Traveler’s InsuranceCompany and received a grant of $30,000 to start an on-line tutoring and mentoring program that would bestaffed by Hamline University and Avalon High Schoolstudents in St. Paul. Students traveled to New Orleans inMarch of 2008 to meet their MLK student mentees, helpwith self-esteem programming, and create relationshipsof trust and respect with the mentees. The first phase ofthe project ended in June of 2008.

Hamline Students who were part of the initial tripaccompanied Dr. Strait and Dr. Rob Shumer (Universityof Minnesota) to New Orleans in July of 2008, continuingto volunteer their services in the clean-up andremodeling of the Depot House, a historic landmark inthe warehouse district on O’Keefe Avenue.

According to a report compiled by the Cowen Institutefor Public Education Initiatives in 2008, a post-Katrinaschool system is vastly different from the previous publicsystem. Changes include:

1. The expansion of the state’s Recovery School District(RSD) to take control of over 100 Orleans Parish SchoolBoard (OPSB) schools performing below the stateaverage.

2. The RSD reopened schools initially only as charterschools run by non-profit agencies that receive publicmoney and provide free education.

3. In November 2005, the first OPSB-run schoolreopened. A number of OPSB charter schools openedsoon after.

4. In the spring of 2006, the RSD opened its first district-run schools.

The International Journal on School Disaffection © Trentham Books 2009 9

5. In all cases, opening schools in the 2005-2006 schoolyears after Katrina was a difficult and chaotic ordeal.

In addition, the public education landscape in NewOrleans has several new and, in some cases, uniquefeatures:

1. Eighty public schools in New Orleans are run by 29different operators, including the OPSB, the RSD, and27 charter school operators.

2. Fifty-seven percent of public school students nowattend charter schools, more than any other urbanschool district in the country.

3. In most cases, parents now have the choice to sendtheir children to any public school in New Orleanswhere they can gain admission, regardless of wherethey live (The Second Annual State of Education inNew Orleans Report, 2008).

It has been three years since the storm and there areseveral successes for the schools. Strong leadership hasemerged at the state and local levels, school buildingshave been brought up to basic standards and they havesignificantly more supplies. A sufficient number ofteachers were hired for the 2007-2008 school year. Thecommunity is much more involved in schools thanbefore Katrina. For example, the Broadmoor Communitywas able to save Wilson Elementary as a neighborhood

school. Without their efforts, the school would have beendestroyed and not rebuilt. Overall, there is a sense amongstudents, teachers, school leaders and communitymembers that there have been significant improvementsin most schools since last year.

However, there remain significant challenges in NewOrleans. Many teachers lack the skills or support theyneed to teach a diverse student population with veryhigh needs. Current levels of school spending cannot besustained. Both the RSD and the OPSB are spendingmore per student than they will be able to receive fromregular per-pupil funding in the coming years. Specialeducation and mental health services are severelylacking. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) tops thelist of mental health issues at unprecedented high levels.To further exacerbate an already difficult situation, orperhaps as a consequence of it, there is poor cooperationamong schools and districts, with timely and accessibleschool information for parents, students and the publicnotably lacking. In the circumstances, it is no surprisethat the current retention rate of seventh/eighth gradersinto ninth grade is 38% in New Orleans (The SecondAnnual State of Public Education in New Orleans 2008Report p. 2-3).

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Hamline University and Avalon High School students, St Paul, Minnesota

Project Design

The project’s long-term goal was to create a nationaldisaster -related education response model that could bereplicated in any city in the U.S. The program consistedof a joint on-line service-learning tutoring/mentoringprogram between Hamline University, Avalon HighSchool and grade five through nine New Orleansstudents. Hamline Students serve as tutors/mentors toboth the Avalon High School students and the grade fivethrough nine students. Hamline students and Avalonstudents were paired together to lead pods or groups ofNew Orleans students as a team. Each pod had from fiveto six participants. Prior to the March 2008 trip, bothAvalon and Hamline students took part in weeklytrainings for mentoring, PTSD, the history and culture ofNew Orleans, working with on-line technology andbuilding a culture of trust and respect with their pods.

Martin Luther King Science and Technology MagnetSchool was chosen as a partner because of its great need:located in the ninth ward, the neighborhood in which itis located was essentially wiped off the map duringHurricane Katrina. The faculty, staff and administrationfor MLK knew that this school was a vital link forcommunity survival and that it had to be back up andrunning as soon as possible. Many children were alreadytwo years behind in academic skills and closure of theschools would have made the situation worse. TheEducation Club at Hamline University adopted theschool and as well as sending students to help clean up,sent supplies to help with clean up. As the school beganto re-emerge, Hamline sent over $12,000 in donatedsupplies, gift cards from Target to help students buyclothes and cash to help rebuild the structure.

In December of 2007, Dr. Strait received a $30,000 grantfrom Traveler’s Insurance to help implement the firstphase of Each One, Teach One. The training of theproject required dialogue between university and highschool students around the following questions:

■ What constitutes citizenship skills?

■ How should we teach and involve students in acommunity project to reinforce their learning?

■ How can we measure student achievement of thoseskills?

The seemingly simple concept of asking the questionsand engaging in dialogue and decision-making aroundteaching about disaster and assessing citizenship had notbeen done before. The action component of this workwas to create a tutor/mentor system involving the high

school students and the seventh and eighth graders viathe internet to assist with reading and study skills. Inturn, these skills should increase their success in highschool classrooms.

Other goals of this program included:

1. Improving the quality of education for New Orleansstudents and increase their academic achievement byat least one grade level per academic year; encouragingstudents to finish high school; teaching students andteachers how to use technology; teaching students howto become civically engaged through service-learningprojects in New Orleans with Hamline students;

2. Using technology to create a long-standing partnershipwith the New Orleans schools in order to help studentsreceive the mentoring, tutoring and support they needto be successful while also creating a much-neededconnection to school for parents;

3. Helping Hamline students meet a graduationrequirement for community engagement, known asLEAD (Leadership Education and Development) andenabling Avalon students meet a similar graduationrequirement in service-learning.

The Project Implementation Team included the FieldDirector and Project lead Jean Strait, who has beenworking with the community and schools for two years;Avalon Lead Mentor Dr. Walter Enloe, public policy andcharter school expert; and two Hamline studentcoordinators, Tony Wilson and Joyce Jones, both of whomwere trained extensively for leadership in the project. Themajor partners included Hamline University, Avalon HighSchool (a St. Paul Public Charter School), MLK Scienceand Technology and The Depot House.

Methodology

The process for creating this program emerged by doingan informal needs assessment of MLK once the buildingwas inhabitable. Coupled with the low academicachievement rates, the drop out rates of eighth graders inNew Orleans are three times that of the rest of the UnitedStates. (Cowen Institute, 2006) The magnitude of thatfigure is substantial when put into perspective: theUnited States high school completion rate has droppedfrom 77.1% in 1969 to 69.9% in 2000 and 2007 reports areestimating around 63% (Azzam, 2007). It is also welldocumented that the retention rate varies by culture;93% of white students finish high school while only 43%of their peers of color do; and the lower the socio-economic status, the less likely a student is to complete


high school. Students report that they are lacking self-esteem and skilled teachers in their subject areas. Theyalso note that group size conducive to their learning isnot available, and that the learning they are doing isneither relevant nor fun.

The service-learning approach is reciprocal in nature: thestudent group that provides the service and the agencythat receives it gain equally from their interactions. Oneof its key components is critical reflection. Students musthave the opportunity to mentally process the service theyare providing and learn to integrate essential skills theyemploy into their strategy banks through practice. Hardskills refer to academic skills. Soft skills are moreinterpersonal in nature: listening and oralcommunication are considered soft skills (Strait, 2008).Many students access hard skills through soft skills. Forexample, it is much easier for a student to work oncontent if they can discuss it with a friend or work in asmall group. The development of interpersonal skillscreates cognitive pathways in the brain, which, whenused on a frequent basis, make it easier for students tothen access the academic skills. Soft skills are oftenreferred to as civic skills or civic competencies, which arecommonly developed through service-learning. The ideabehind this pedagogy is to develop civic professionalsthrough these new basic skills (Basttistoni and Longo,2007).

High quality service-learning teaches students problem-solving, critical thinking, decision making, publicspeaking, teamwork and how to interact with

communities that are different from their own(Basttistoni and Longo, 2007). It also teaches moralreasoning skills. Like character education, theexperiences young people go through in this processhelp focus their understanding of the responsibilities ofthe individual and the community by integrating thecognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions in moralreasoning skill development. In a recent study done bySkaggs and Bodenhorn (2006), students who wereinvolved in a moral reasoning skill curriculum were lesslikely to drop out of school. Each One, Teach One soughtto strengthen student skills through a long-term, highquality service-learning experience.

The Process Emerges

Students were involved on the ground level from the verydevelopment stage of the program. Four months beforethe training was to begin, the leadership team began toconvene on a weekly basis constructing the process ofthe project. Six major stages emerged:

1. Identifying issues

2. Forming relationships with partners

3. Identifying and training mentors

4. Face to face work in New Orleans

5. Reflections, surveys and summations

6. Evaluation/feedback (to lead back into stage 1 in thesecond year)

Identifying issues

To prepare for the training sessions, the leadership teamread Come Hell or High Water, by Eric Dyson andwatched a documentary by Spike Lee called When theLevees Broke. The team also spent a great deal of timediscussing issues with the Principal of MLK, Doris Hicksand the curriculum director, Steven Martin. Throughoutthese investigations the following pressing issuesemerged:

■ 80% of students in the ninth ward weren’t going on toeighth grade

■ Many schools were still closed

■ Students were averaging four to six grade levels behind

■ A teacher shortage emerged in charters that hadreopened

■ A resource shortage emerged in these schools andschool districts


Site of the Depot House project

The team was dedicated to finding ways to begin toaddress these issues as a part of the project. Throughcontinued research and discussion, we found that manystudents still don’t go on to eighth grade because, threeand a half years after Katrina, schools housing gradeseight to twelve were either torn down and not rebuilt, orthey were condemned for demolition, or they have notyet opened in the ninth ward. Because of the buildingclosures and the socio-economic status of the students,who were unable to travel to other areas, the option tocontinue education had been essentially eliminated.Students who were averaging two years behindacademically were now falling four to six grade levelsbehind, with no hope of ever catching up. In addition,job opportunities for students at that level were limitedor non-existent.

Forming Relationships with Partners

As the lead partner in this initiative, Hamline Universityhad in-depth discussions with MLK about what theyneeded and what the program could provide to helpaddress or meet these needs. Having these dialogueshelped to build relational trust with the partners andmade it much easier for the participants to understandeach others’ culture.

Avalon High School student levels ranged from ninth totwelfth grade and these students served as role modelsand peers for New Orleans students, showing them whatthey could expect from a high school education. Afterjoint research was compiled, the Depot House became aservice partner. Owned by Denis Hilton, The DepotHouse is a historic landmark that was severely damagedby the hurricane and in need of renovation. Apartnership was created where students would stay atThe Depot while in New Orleans, working to clean andrenovate the property so it could be used by other groups


Figure 1

for lodging and service. The other service partner in thisproject was Jefferson Parish, which was in desperateneed of cleaning up its park and open spaces. Traveler’sInsurance, the funding partner of the team, alsocontributed several New Orleans employees to the clean-up portion of the program while in New Orleans.

Identifying and Training Mentors

Applications were distributed during informationsessions held at Hamline and Avalon. Students wererequired to have two letters of recommendationsubmitted and provide evidence of their academicstanding and teamwork skills. The leadership teaminterviewed the applicants and accepted fifteen Avalonand ten Hamline students for participation in the pilotyear. Training of the group began at the end of January2008 and continued for eight weeks covering topics suchas the culture and history of New Orleans, mentoring,tutoring, PTSD, relational trust, blackboard training (on-line format) and building community. Avalon and

Hamline students each received their own copy of ComeHell or High Water. The Hamline students also receivedThe Mentoring Guidebook: Facilitating Effective LearningRelationships by Lois Zachary. All students were requiredto fill out medical forms and pre-surveys and to keep ajournal throughout the process. The group traveled toNew Orleans via bus and en route watched As the LeveesBroke, which presented people who had had first- handexperience of Katrina, many of whom would be in theninth ward.

Face to Face in New Orleans

The face to face component of the project took placeover ten days, staying and working at the Depot. The firsttwo days in New Orleans included a tour of the ninthward given by Common Ground, a non-profit grouptrying to educate about and advocate for citizens of theward. In training exercises, students were put into teamsdoing activities to help focus reflection on what theywere learning. Starting the school week, students worked


This is all that remains of one of the thousands of houses destroyed in New Orleans by Katrina

in Jefferson parish cleaning up various parks withTraveler’s Insurance volunteers in the mornings andspending afternoons at MLK doing team building, skillsbuilding, and blackboard training in the pods. Afterdinner, the entire group would gather at the depot for anend of the day reflection discussion.

Reflections, Surveys, and Summaries

Both pre and post survey data was collected using theShirella, McCarthy and Tucker (2000) Community ServiceAttitude Scale. Both Hamline and Avalon students weregiven the scale on the first day of training and again onthe bus trip back to Minnesota. The team was asked notto use the surveys with MLK students as they were tryingto focus students on preparation for the spring Louisianastandardized tests.

The pod groups worked on continued practice of studentskills for the test instead. Students were asked to completean end of experience questionnaire in May and blackboardinteractions were collected and analyzed for comments.

Evaluation

Once all data was collected, it was analyzed by theleadership team. Results were used to revise theprogram, enhance learning opportunities, andinvestigate a larger scale version of the project byidentifying future partners for further service learningwork and finding ways to secure larger funding toaccommodate more participants. It was hoped that theleaders could identify best practices, areas for growthand ways to strengthen areas of the program that showedlimitations. This phase was carried out in June and July,which included a second trip by project lead Jean Straitand eight of the Hamline students who participated inthe March project. Dr. Robert Shumer from theUniversity of Minnesota joined this group in NewOrleans in July to teach students about student- ledevaluation and begin to identify ways in which nextyear’s pods could carry out evaluation. Phase II began inJanuary of 2009.


Aerial view of the devasted 9th Ward

Data Collection

Data was collected from different sources for the purposeof triangulation of themes. A mixed method approachwas used, gathering pre and post survey information,end of trip questionnaires, end of trip final summativereflections, and three month post questionnaires. Theinitial Shirella, McCarthy and Tucker (2000) CommunityService Attitude Scale was compared for quantitativedata including descriptive statistics, a paired sample t-test(which compares sample means) and pairedcorrelations for significance( which would determine ifthe community service impacted post survey results-SeeTable 1).

Qualitative data was collected from the end of tripsummative reflection, three months post survey andvideo taped interviews of participants on the July trip. Ofthe 25 student participants from Avalon and Hamline, 18completed both the pre and post surveys. One of thebiggest challenges of using quantitative analysis is havinga large enough sample size. Our sample was small tobegin with but even smaller with survey returns.Although having pre and post data on a pilot project isrecommended, using small groups for service-learningthat involves travel is a limitation.

Quantitative Data Analysis

The mean response on the paired samples showed 15 ofthe 18 respondents increased their mean averageresponse to Shirella, McCarthy and Tucker (2000)Community Service Attitude Scale. We can infer thisincrease in means indicates a growth in the students’attitudes. However, two of the 18 paired meansdecreased, which would indicate no growth in attitudes.When asked if they could tell why they thought theirmean decreased, both students said that once the projectwas finished they realized how vital their answers wereand so tended to be far more authentic in their answersthan they were in the pre-survey. One set of pre and postpairs stayed the same. When interviewed, this studentsaid that their experience in New Orleans only solidifiedtheir previous beliefs so they weren’t surprised that theyshowed little change in response. It is also interesting tonote that all three of the students mentioned above wereAvalon high school students and all three were seniors.Again, when looking at the quantitative data, pairedcorrelations did show significance which infers a strongpositive growth in attitudes. (See Table 2) and sixty-sixpercent of the two-tailed t-test results reveal significantchange, sig<.05 (See Table 3).


Minnesota students in front of a New Orleans landmark


Table 1. Quantitative results

Qualitative Data Analysis: Post trip surveys and

summative pieces

Unlike the pre and post surveys, we did manage tocollect data from the New Orleans community: from theMLK student on-line responses; the Traveler’s Insurancevolunteer workers; the Jefferson Parish workers andleaders; the Depot House owner and staff. Below aresome of the comments.

Hamline University student:

This experience really made me aware of my self conceptand how important being able to express empathy is tome. It seems that people in the United States tended [sic]to sympathize with what happened in New Orleansrather than actually engaging in empathy. People willsay that they can’t even imagine what it was like to livethrough such a traumatic experience and so they don’teven try to put themselves in the same situation. If thesepeople were to actually go to New Orleans they wouldsee that their sympathetic understanding could nevercapture the severity of the effects produced by Katrina.Being in New Orleans really shocked me by seeing thedamage still lingering after three years, which made merealize how one can’t rely on the media for actual

representation. It made me upset to see that the UnitedStates has shifted attention and resources away fromNew Orleans when help is still needed. This project justconfirmed that I want to spend my life helping others –University student #1

High School Students

I’ve learned my different learning styles, evaluated how Ideal with new people, and how service work helps megrow so much as an individual because it gives me somuch perspective. – HS student #1

I think I’ve learned to care for not only myself [sic], butother people and places all over because it effects theoverall well-being of the global community, whicheffects me and every other human on earth. – HSstudent #2

I am really interested in investing in the communityand to learn about the major issues in a different waythan I am used to doing. I can make the positiveimpacts on people that we all talk about doing, if Iapply myself and put in effort to find a way to do so. —HS student #3

New Orleans Partners and Community Members

The most important thing is our health — you keep upthe good work. Your heart is so strong and your spirit isunmatched — we need more people in this world likeyou. – Community partner #1

I hope your return home went well and all are safe andsound. The Depot looks so much better and we trulyappreciate your contributions to our Journey House -Community partner #1

I just want to let you know that these were the bestvolunteers

I have ever worked with IN MY LIFE, they werededicated and mature.-Community partner #2

My favorite thing about the E.O.T.O visiting is that I getto meet new people, learn about new places, and learnnew things. – Middle School Student #1

Thank God people have not forgotten us like ourgovernment.-Staff member middle school

In these comments, some themes emerge. Studentsspoke about self-concept, a sense of empowerment andcontrol. They realized they can make a difference andthat they can enter careers that are focused on attainingsuch aims. There also appears to be a conscious sense of


Table 2: Paired Sample Correlations

awareness outside of their community, a sense thatcommunities are interconnected and global. The MLKstudents had initially been overwhelmed after Katrina asall the strangers rushed to help with ‘fly-by’ service. Theirtrust levels were low and building a community oflearners was essential to helping them feel comfortablewith the Minnesota students. Once the relational trustwas built, the students continued to have dialoguesabout many things. The New Orleans students wanted tocome to Minnesota to experience snow. The communitymembers expressed much sincere appreciation:everywhere the group went, sales clerks, waiters, staff atschool would pull us aside to personally thank us for ourcommitment when “everyone else forgot” them. There isan overwhelming sense that the federal and stategovernments failed to protect the citizenry and arerefusing to rebuild the community. For example, the

federal government has set aside billions of dollars tohelp schools and communities in New Orleans. However,the process is so difficult to find and follow that manyschools, agencies, and businesses can not gain access toit.

Limitations

Despite all of the preparations for our project, we stillfaced limitations. The age differences between theHamline students and Avalon students sometimescreated friction in the group. The developmental levels ofstudents aged between 14 and 25 are very different andfor the 2009 project we plan on narrowing the age rangeand providing more training about and for thosedifferences. Contact with the community partners inNew Orleans was difficult. Because so few people are


Table 3: Paired sample two-tailed t-test results

responsible for so many things, it is awkward tocommunicate within business hours. Leaders from MLKand Hamline held most of their communications on theweekend. Computer access was also an issue at MLK.The computer lab was small and difficult to gain accessto. Internet connections were difficult to maintain andthe network would crash from time to time, leavingstudents without access to their mentors for days on end.(Hamline was able to get MLK another computer stationthrough the Traveler’s Insurance grant to add to the lab.)

The leadership team hopes to have more corporationsand foundations involved in the second year of theproject to provide both technology and technicians toassist partnering schools.

Conclusion

After three years, there is still not a high school open inthe ninth ward. Levee walls are still to be repaired. Storesand businesses remain closed, sitting vacant in wasteground, so citizens can’t even get supplies and food theyneed in the area, having to travel several miles to getthem. Jobs are gone. Houses sit in dilapidated states withno one to claim them and no one to clean them up.Families have been scattered over the southern statessince the storm.

Still, a resilience in the community remains. It may seemlike too large of a problem to solve or conversely, throughmedia representation, that everything is back to normal.But it is not and estimates say that the area won’t evenbegin to reach 2005 (pre-storm) standards for a decade.Citizens have to be creative and inventive in findingsolutions for New Orleans: solutions that will be turned

to when other disasters strike in this country orelsewhere in the world. We need the next generation tobe empowered and encouraged. Service-learning showsparticipants that they can and do make a difference, atransformative difference in themselves and in thosethey help. Each One, Teach One will continue to bringstudents and communities together, empowering themto teach each other.

ReferencesAzzam, A. (2007). Why do Students drop out? Educational Leadership.

v. 64, pp. 91-93.

Battistoni, R.M. and Long, N.V. (2007). Connecting WorkforceDevelopment and Civic Engagement: Higher Education as PublicGood and Private Gain. North Shore Community College PublicPolicy Institute.

Shirella, A. H., McCarthy, A.M., and Tucker, M.L. (2000). CommunityService Attitude Scale.

Skaggs, G. and Bodenhorm, N (2006). Relationships betweenImplementing Character Education, Student behavior and Studentachievement. Journal of Advanced Economics. V. 18, n. 1 pp. 82-114.

Strait, J. R. (2008). Constructing Experiential Learning for On-lineCourses: The Growth and Development of Service-e-Learning. InDailey-Hebert, A.; Donnelli, E. Stocks, L. (eds.) Service-e-Learning:Educating for Citizenship in a Technology-Rich World. InformationAge Publishing.

Strait, J.R. (2008). Deepening Community-based Learning ThroughCollaboration and Assessment, The International Journal of SchoolDisaffection, V.6, n.1.

The Second Annual State of Public Education in New Orleans Report,2008. Tulane University Cowen Institute for Public Initiatives, pp.2-3.


Hamline, Avalon and Martin Luther King school students

each one, background teach one

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