Impact Assembly: "First Generation"
College Culture
"First Generation" Impact Assembly
CPSELs
1.6 Leverage and marshal sufficient resources, including technology, to implement and attain the vision for all students and all subgroups of students.
3.2 Utilize effective and nurturing practices in establishing student behavior management systems.
3.4 Utilize effective systems management, organizational development, and problem-solving and decision-making techniques.
3.5 Align fiscal, human, and material resources to support the learning of all subgroups of students.
5.7 Reflect on personal leadership practices and recognize their impact and influence on the performance of others.
5.9 Encourage and inspire others to higher levels of performance, commitment, and motivation.
For my fieldwork, I wanted to organize an impact assembly that would present powerful information about students of color pursuing higher education. On January of 2012 Helene Kunkell our College Counselor sent me an e-mail with information about a documentary called "First Generation". This documentary was being screened at USC on a Wednesday night. It was very difficult for me to get out on a Wednesday night in addition to going to PLI on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I arranged for a baby sitter for my two children and went to see it with my colleague Sandra Martin. I absolutely loved the documentary it was simple yet very powerful, it "...tells the story of four high school students - an inner city athlete, a small town waitress, a Samoan warrior dancer, and the daughter of migrant field workers - who set out to break the cycle of poverty and bring hope to their families and communities by pursuing a college education." (http://firstgenerationfilm.com/about.php). That same night I was so excited about bringing it to Pali that I couldn't sleep so I wrote my principal and our College Counselor and e-mail at five in the morning expressing my desires to bring it to Pali.
The video below is the trailer of the film "First Generation"
On March 29, 2012 after hours of much problem solving and decision making about what I felt was best with the goal of bringing the screening to Pali, and after working with different parties: such as our plant manager to secure Mercer Hall, the Tech Department to make sure we had the right technology for the screening, the AP in charge the Activity Planning Sheet and Fuerza Unida teachers to send out the invitations for the screening, I brought "First Generation" to Pali.
Every part of the screening was carefully planned. I created 350 "movie tickets" and distributed 300 to Latino students, the other 50 were used to invite the Black Student Union. For Fuerza Unida and LSU is very important to work together with TVN and BSU in building a college gong culture, therefore I used this screening as a bridging activity between the two groups.
As part of the assembly I created a pre-survey and a post-survey about what student know about accessing higher education and Pali's college culture. It was very interesting to analyze the data from these surveys. One of the most shocking results I gathered was that the great majority of 9th graders stated that they have already taken the PSAT, SAT and/or the ACT. This clearly demonstrates a need to educate our 9th graders about these tests.
I was able to arrange for Adam and Jaye Fenderson the directors, producers and writers of the film for a Q & A session. They are a husband and wife filmmaking team dedicated to telling stories that inspire audiences. Adam is a northern California native who attended The University of Southern California and earned his BA in Film and Television. A former senior admissions officer at Columbia University, Jaye is the author of Seventeen's Guide To Getting Into College and the co-creator and producer of The Scholar (ABC), an unscripted television drama that gave 10 high school seniors the chance to compete for a full ride college scholarship. Jaye has published numerous articles on college admission for Seventeen, Good Housekeeping and The College Access & Opportunity Guide http://firstgenerationfilm.com/filmmakers.php
During the Q & A session with Adam and Faye students asked important questions, one of the so many was for Jaye. The students asked her that based on her experience as a former senior admissions officer at Columbia University what was the most important part of a college application. She told them that they must spend a lot of time writing their personal statement, and it would be best for them not to procrastinate and start writing it during the summer of their senior year, so that they can have enough time to revise it as many times as needed.
This is a picture of a student asking a question to Adam and Jaye.
Students felt connected with Jaye when shared with them that although people might think that she's rich just because she's white and went to an Ivy League school, she's actually first generation college graduate like many them, and that it was very difficult for her to pursue higher education because she was raised by single parent and their social economic status was very low. This created a bridge between Jaye and the students and students told me that they felt that she understands what their obstacles are in pursuing higher education.
After the Q & A session I invited all of your seniors who were admitted to a four year college to come to the front and share with their underclassmen where they got accepted, where they've decided to attend and one word of advise. It brought tears to my eyes to see all of my students in the front sharing their stories about pursuing higher education as first generation Latino students. I WAS SOOOO PROUD OF THEM!!!!!! On of my former students (my adopted child) who was in my classes for two years and one of those two years I saw him twice a day because he was also in my AVID class got into Carnegie Mellon!!!!
Picture of Pali seniors sharing their counterstory about pursuing higher education.
The night before the assembly I was nervous and hoped that the students would embrace the documentary and my hopes were that students would take with them one positive thing from the documentary on what to do to access college. However, I was very happy to see that this documentary created much more positive and powerful reactions than what I expected. LSU and I debriefed right after the screening. I was very touched and overwhelmed with emotion after listening to my students speak about how powerful this documentary was to them. I have a video that shows what a great impact the documentary was to their lives.
Based on my students' comments, I will say that this was a powerful and inspiring impact assembly that students will remember because it gave them hope that going to college can become a reality.
