Cities in SChools, Inc. is a DC_based organization that strives to bring
community business resources into the local schools. It is set up with a
corporate headquarters in DC and "branch" offices in each state, county,
and community in the US that is interested in trying this approach.
Unfortunately, efforts such as CIS are not seen by all communities as
practical endeavors with reasonable returns on time and money invested.
Therefore, there are a limited number of CIS offices and programs in
existence. However, there ARE CIS programs in every state.
This program works at the local level along the lines of business
volunteers coming into the local school and "mentoring" selected students,
who have been segregated into special classes for one class period, at the
school. Activity usually starts with a tutoring relationship with the
mentoring relationship growing out of that.
Results have been mixed. There have been some really good success stories
and some where nothing apparent is going on. The biggest drawback to this
program is that the mentoring relationship will typically last only one
year. It is possible for a pair to keep their relationship over two or
more years by requesting each other. Also, contact outside of class is
apparently somewhat rare for some fairly obvious reasons (liabilities,
perseptions within the community, etc.). Also, such programs may not
exist within Elementary Schools, Middle Schools AND High Schools. If a
student enters such a program in Elementary or Middle School, they may
well not have access to the same when they hit High School.
CIS corporate deals with national level efforts such as their Community
Leadership Camp. This is a fairly new effort that started a couple years
ago. I helped design the first camp held in Scotland, PA. The intent is
to provide the attendees (from all over the country) with coping skills
and a vision of community that they can use when they return to their
community. The adults who attended established some positive
relationships which often endured long after the camp was over. However,
the strains of daily adult life can make a continued mentoring
relationship difficult, especially a long distance relationship.
Many of the CIS programs seem to gravitate toward what are called Career
Academies which are umbrella efforts for JROTC programs (HS level). This
provides a source of funding, as well as a potentially good foundation of
discipline and leadership training, that allows the program to run better
than if it is simply dependent upon local corporate funding and volunteer
time.
--Clyde Howell orgpsych@csra.net
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>