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How to Start Your Own Class
Creating A Class for Minority High School Students in Your
Community
Seeing the Need
This class grew out of my desire to help prepare minority students
better for college and to recruit them to the Clark Honors College at
the University of Oregon in Eugene. Out of 150 freshmen attending the
Honors College in 2000-1, one was black, an Ethiopian (a delightful
student, by the way). There were a few Hispanics and Asians, but all
these categories (and others) were underrepresented, and I decided to
take matters into my own hands.
I had in mind creating a seminar for no more than 25 students who
would meet all year after school once a week for two hours to discuss
literature from my Honors
College syllabus. I planned to involve volunteers among my Honors
College students to serve as mentors for the high school students, to
act as role models, to invite them to UO activities, to help them
with papers, and to participate in some class discussions. I had in
mind donating my time, having my college students donate their time,
and finding someone to pay for the books, so that the students could
take the course for free. This all came to pass.
The following description of how I created this course, which will
be continuing in 2001-2 at Churchill High School in Eugene, Oregon,
is intended to recruit other Professors throughout the country to
start volunteer classes for minority high school students in their
communities
Reaching Out
I called a principal of a local public high school (now Deputy
Superintendent), and he invited me to the principals' meeting in the
summer. To that meeting I took a copy of my original description
for the class. The principals were enthusiastic about the idea
and agreed with me that I should be able to grade on an A-B curve any
student who came to class diligently and did all the required reading
and writing. Credit would be awarded through the high school where we
met (Churchill) and transferred to one of the four home schools for
the other students. Any student who faltered would show no evidence
of ever having been in the course. No harm, no foul.
The principals suggested I follow up with the counselors, and I
arranged to attend their retreat before school started. At that
retreat I passed out the same handout I
gave the principals. I also wrote down the names, phone numbers, and
emails of key counselors at the five high schools. These contacts
proved invaluable.
Recruiting Students
When school started in the Fall, I called the head counselor at
each high school and made an appointment to come to the school during
lunch and meet with students they had identified as potentially
interested in the type of course I had in mind. The most successful
trips involved counselors sending out notes to specific students,
inviting them to meet me, or in one case making frequent
announcements on the PA system and encouraging individual students to
take advantage of this opportunity.
At these meetings, usually involving 6-12 students, I handed out a
version of the information I had given to
counselors and principals probed the students about what kind of
class they thought would work (How much reading? 25 pages per class
meeting (hence per week); How much preparation time? 2 hours per
class meeting; How long the papers? 1-2 pages). I also talked about
the kind of literature I had in mind and answered their questions. I
sent them home with an application form they were to get back to me,
either directly by mail or through the counselor.
Starting Up
At the first meeting of the class there were about 15 students
from four high schools, a mix of Latinos, Native Americans, Asians,
Indians, African Americans, and others whose background I never quite
figured out. Three or four of these people dropped off, another
student had to leave school for medical reasons, and another returned
to Japan, but the kids who stayed recruited enthusiastically among
their friends, and the class stabilized at 12 for the year.
In the first class we focused on discussing Robert Browning's "My
Last Duchess", then moved the next week to a longer work, Maxine
Hong-Kingston's "No Name Woman." Once I gained their trust we
embarked on a series of canonic textsways successfully) the
temptation to lecture, and I had to sense when they needed a break.
Occasionally I assigned something so hard that they couldn't make
sense out of it (Chaucer in Middle English, the General Prologue--I
included a translatiurse of the year these mentors helped me work out
a more structured role for them in 2001-2.
Why Do This?
I wasn't sure what I would get from doing a class like this every
Monday 4-6 all year (the UO school year, that is--three ten-week
terms. I knew I could help students learn about literature, and
believe me, I did. In a sense, the work was more gratifying that what
I usually do, because the students at the Clark Honors College tend
to be high achievers who would thrive in almost any academic setting.
These high school students are also high achievers, self-selected for
this challenging program; but they are often juggling several
languages and disjunctive lives. One especially engaging
student--highly motivated, a student leader, bilingual in English and
Spanish, faithfully worked his way through readings from Homer,
Virgil, Sophocles, Plato, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Shelley,
Dostoevsky, Kafka, and Morrison and had interesting things to say
about all of them in class. Because of his verbal SAT, though, he was
not admitted to the University of Oregon. I wrote the Admissions
Office a letter describing his reading this year and encouraging them
to change that decision. They did, and I was happy.
I don't know how many stories like this one will come out of the
class, and I don't know when or if one of these students will be
admitted to the Clark Honors College. I do know that the work I am
doing as a volunteer in this class is some of the most important and
rewarding work I do.
Planning for Year II
I will be doing this class again this coming year, and a whole new
group of mentors have already volunteered. When I made my visits to
high schools to recruit students, I was able to use the students from
this year as my chief recruiters. At one school I was 5 minutes late
to the lunch meeting with potential students, and I found two of my
students from this year's class standing at the front of a classroom
telling a group of about 10 students what it was like to read Dante,
Dostoevsky, and Morrison. They also talked about the discussions and
the free books and food! I handed out the new class description
(link) and thought about how far we had already come. A number of the
students from this past year want to take the class again, and if
there is room, I think that will be great.
Sharing Information
If you would like to know more about how to set up such a class,
you can email Sharon Schuman at sschuman@oregon.uoregon.edu.
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