Promising Practices at Urban Prep Charter School for Young Men
Posted: January 11th, 2010 by admin
“We believe. We are the young men of Urban Prep.”
These are the opening lines of the Urban Prep creed, a stirring statement of purpose recited by all the students and faculty at Community, a daily 20-minute gathering held each and every morning in the gymnasium. The students of Urban Prep form lines in the gymnasium based upon their “prides,” which are support groups that follow each student through his four years at the school. Community is a ceremony whose aim is the reification of togetherness and shared purpose, a chance to start each day in awareness of oneself as member of a greater whole, as strengthened by one’s beliefs and the sure knowledge that one’s peers and mentors share those beliefs. Another component of daily Community is the distribution of ties to a few students who have done exemplary work during the preceding week. On the morning of the “Seeing is Believing” event at Urban Prep on October 29th, the very first seniors in Urban Prep-Englewood’s young history to receive acceptance letters into college enjoyed special recognition during Community via red and gold ties that they are to wear for the rest of the school year. The walls echoed with cheers and music as the honored young men strode up to the stage to receive their ties. Tim King, the president and CEO of what is rapidly becoming a network of high schools, offered his congratulations and encouragement to the school and to its much-fêted inaugural senior class before handing the microphone over to co-principal Dennis Lacewell. A palpable feeling of celebration, of promise, of excitement was in the air.
Central to the Urban Prep vision for their students is the notion that college attendance and completion must be a standardized, expected norm. In their efforts to motivate the young black men that compose their student body, Urban Prep’s leaders have worked to create a model for academic and career success that motivates their students to defy negative statistics about young black men not graduating from high school or not completing college. They want to give their young men the confidence that they can and will graduate from high school, get into college, and earn a degree. With this kind of confidence and the structure and curriculum and mentoring to back it up, Urban Prep has some promising statistics to point to: 79% of their students are on track to graduate; there is a 93% daily attendance rate; and their students outperform minority males district-wide in all ACT subject areas. There is reason to believe that Urban Prep’s students will reach the goals the school has set out for them.
Urban Prep expects that 100% of its students will enter and complete college. In order to lay the ideological groundwork for that kind of group and individual achievement, Urban Prep inculcates in its young men the importance of an investment in community and self, both now and for the future. The leaders of Urban Prep—King, Lacewell, and co-principal Benjamin Blakeley—hope to motivate their young men as well as provide them with all the tools and opportunities they need to succeed. Motivation and inspiration occur through a variety of means, one of which is the one-on-one tutoring/mentoring program. While tutoring or mentoring are not uncommon at schools, what may not be so common is the sheer abundance of black male role models that comprise much of the faculty and staff at Urban Prep. Urban Prep seeks, as they note, to respond to the fact that many of their students do not live with their fathers and may lack sufficient male role models. Urban Prep hopes that the presence of black male teachers and administrators at the school will help the students believe that they too can achieve at a high level.
Another Urban Prep practice that helps to create a sense of community is the aforementioned ”pride.” A pride is one’s small group as a student at Urban Prep. Freshman through senior year, a student belongs to the same pride. The pride meets daily and provides the chance to encourage and support one another. The Urban Prep student starts out by being mentored by older senior students and by the time he graduates he will have mentored the younger students in his pride. Thus, the student at Urban Prep has support from faculty, staff, and his fellow students and feels a sense of belonging to Urban Prep as a whole as well as to his pride. To further encourage the feeling of self-worth and possibility, as well as to indicate the seriousness and respect for oneself, others, and the learning that goes on at school, Urban Prep enforces a dress code of blazers, khakis, and ties. This helps to provide a visual reminder that serious work is underway. Additionally, Urban Prep has its students and staff refer to one another as “Mr.” and that person’s surname as opposed to the standard first name address. This also helps to drive home the idea of mutual respect.
But Urban Prep doesn’t just want its students to respect one another, oneself, and one’s future; they also want to provide the structure and opportunities necessary to achieve and be ready for college. To that end, there are four arcs in their approach to comprehensive education. One is the Academic Arc, which requires twice the average number of English credits. This is in the interest of focusing on reading, writing, and public speaking skills, which are crucial to college readiness. In addition to a focus on English, there is also a longer school day, 8:30-4:30, which helps to keep students busy and safe during the time of day (late afternoon) when crime is most prevalent. Along the same lines, the Activity Arc at Urban Prep mandates that every student must participate in two school-sponsored afterschool activities per year, whether it is membership in a sports team or a club. By keeping their students in school longer, Urban Prep ensures that they are engaged, productive, and safe for a great percentage of every school day. On the safety front, there is a parent committee whose members volunteer to carpool and watch out for the students in the neighborhood.
The remaining two arcs at Urban Prep are the Service Arc and the Professional/College Arc. The Service Arc deepens the students’ understanding of and responsibility for community issues by asking them to identify community needs and problems and having them participate in volunteer programs in order to address these concerns. The leaders of Urban Prep definitely want their students to defy negative statistics and stereotypes by graduating from high school and college, but in addition to that, they seem intent on changing minds, on broadening their students’ viewpoint of themselves and those who surround them. By reciting the creed—especially the line “We have a responsibility to our families, community and world”—the students remind themselves that it’s not just about their one life and the importance that college readiness, acceptance, and completion will have for their future career success. It’s also about the impact their achievements can have on their families and communities, how they have the capacity to inspire and uplift those around them, to give back, to mentor the next generation, to set an example, and in so doing, to make a real difference for others.
The Professional/College Arc includes an offering of summer programs for students as well as access to the college application center. Urban Prep’s summer programs include academic, professional and service opportunities. One of the most exciting opportunities for Urban Prep students is the chance to take college-level summer courses at universities around the country. These opportunities give the students a chance to become comfortable with what college will have to offer them as well as giving them wonderful experience for their college applications. During their senior year, students spend a class period every day in the college center, a quiet room with banks of computers reserved especially for college applications. This is to ensure that issues like a lack of computer or time at home after school do not impede a student’s college application process.
As has been demonstrated, Urban Prep has the structure, the practices, the curriculum, the summer programs, and the inspiration and support in place to greatly increase the odds of its young men attending and completing college. The hope is that Urban Prep graduates will go to college and then go out into the world with a strong sense of their own worth, of the responsibilities they have to themselves and their families and communities, and more generally, the responsibility they have to their futures, and they will look back on a prep school experience that emphasized these things, they will look back on a place where they were their “brothers’ keepers”, where they promised to “never succumb to mediocrity, uncertainty or fear,” a place where they learned to believe. Many of these notions find their expression and their daily affirmation in the Urban Prep creed. The creed emphasizes, above all else, this belief in oneself, in one’s future, in one’s fellow students, and in Urban Prep. This is the creation of a culture of belief, but it is based not only on ideas but also on actions and principles and practices. The first cohort of Urban Prep graduates is on the horizon. The seniors are beginning to receive college acceptance letters. What does the future hold for Urban Prep? From the evidence on display, in addition to Urban Prep’s opening of two more campuses in East Garfield and the South Shore, the future looks bright for America’s first all-male charter public high school. Discipline, support, mentorship, targeted curriculum and programs, and above all, the nurturing of its students’ belief, belief that leads to self-respect and respect for one’s community and for one’s future, that, abiding belief, is the radical thing Urban Prep has taken great pains to give its students.
—Stephen Dierks