Transcript TRIAGE: A NEW VISION FOR SUSPENDED AND EXPELLED …

TRIAGE:
A NEW VISION FOR SUSPENDED
AND EXPELLED STUDENTS
Maxine Mimms Academies
Zero Tolerance
Academic Failure
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7% of students nationally suspended or expelled
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25% of African-American male students suspended or expelled
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In inner-city schools, more than 65% of all students suspended or
expelled.
Drop-out rates exceed 50% in inner-city neighborhoods.
Almost 100% of incarcerated youth have been suspended or expelled.
Over 80% of all incarcerated adults have dropped out of school.
Suspension is used disproportionately with students who are male, of
color, poor, and of low educational achievement
Suspended students in 26 states have no form of education.
There is no evidence that African American students act out more than
others. Studies show that the disproportionality in school discipline is
not due to characteristics of African American students, but to bias and
discrimination in the system. School characteristics are differentially
related to suspension rates, rather than student behavior.
Middle School
Hormones kick in. Girls can get pregnant.
Boys can become fathers. Mobility becomes
part of the classroom experience.
It’s “The proving stage” : Emergency
expulsions increase by a factor of 1500%
over elementary school; short term
expulsions triple. Juvenile arrest rates in
lower income neighborhoods are double and
triple those in higher income neighborhoods.
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Over one million African-American students
are being suspended each school year.
Over 100,000 African-American students are
suspended from schools in the I-5 corridor.
It is an epidemic, and there
is a need for emergency
treatment
TRIAGE
With over 40 years of experience with
suspended and expelled students,
throwaway children, and special
education, Maxine Mimms, and the
Maxine Mimms Academies offer a triage
approach to efficiently and effectively
treat the epidemic condition of
suspended and expelled students.
EXPANSION
Following a tremendously successful
program with the Tacoma Public
Schools in the 2003-2004 school year,
the Maxine Mimms Academies are
expanding to over 200 sites throughout
the I-5 corridor in the states of
Washington, Oregon, and California.
This expansion begins on
September 1, 2004.
The Maxine Mimms Academies
are not alternative schools;
The academies are an extension of the
school, another room in the school house
with a collaboratorium of resources to
engage the child in teaching and learning;
and to extend educational involvement
opportunities to parents.
Students are not suspended from a school;
they are suspended to the Maxine Mimms
Academy.
School districts and schools
are jumping on board:
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Bethel School District
Tacoma School District
Kent School District
Portland School District
. . . The list grows daily
Reaching the goal of
producing healthy families
and healthy children
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Intake
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Orientation
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Academic Immersion
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Return (Truth and Reconciliation)
INTAKE
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The taking in process is simple.
No child is turned away
No child’s behavior is judged
All are included
None are excluded.
ORIENTATION
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Isolation is reduced with the immediate assignment
of mentors who are available 24 hours a day
Mentors remain with the child until graduation from
middle school.
Parents participate in a collaboratorium of extended
family programs.
Families receive counseling.
The student and their families are allowed unlimited
opportunities to re-image their relationship to
teaching and learning, unlimited opportunities to
become hungry and thirsty for knowledge
ACADEMIC IMMERSION
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School is in session from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00
p.m.
Total immersion in reading and math.
Educational leaders partner with teachers to
cross cultural divides.
Clinics in music, art, science and health
provide expanded spaces for psychological
healing
RETURN
(Truth and Reconciliation)
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Daily debriefings with children, teachers, educational leaders
and parents provide a safe place for the expression of daily
feelings, positive results, fears, experiences and the
integration of truth and experience with perception.
Facilitators skilled in allowing criticism as well as positive
feedback lead this daily process.
At the end of the suspension, the home school participants
are invited into the conversation to complete the return to
the original classroom.
The goal: internalizing that no one is guilty and no one is
guiltless; we are all good, and we are all right. We cannot
blame the victim, and the victim must be able to be
victorious.
Educational Collaboratorium Services
for suspended and expelled students
Dads
Workshop
Teachers
Moms
Workshop
Parents
Public
Middle
School
STUDENT
Maxine
Mimms
Academy
Family
Counseling
Mentors
Site
Directors
Educational
Advocacy
Workshop
Forgiveness
Workshop
STUDENT
Public
Middle
School
The Educational
Collaboratorium
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The collaborating community is a place where we
all learn from each other.
It focuses on teaching, learning, facilitating,
serving, leading, giving, receiving, loving,
forgiving, and reconciliation.
It recognizes the uniqueness, gifts, talents, and
purposes of each participant, the rightness and
goodness of each, and the importance of the ALL.
It continually offers an invitation to participate in
success, in rightness, in the ALL.
Collaboratorium Members
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Parents are invited to become active participants in their
own success, and in the success of their children.
Educational leaders who live a hip hop culture are servant
leaders to the community.
Certified teachers are also required to be able to share
their life experience and knowledge
Mentors are the guides and teachers who work through
inspired language and knowledge of survival
The multidimensional geniuses that are available as
resources in the community are recognized and funded.
Teachers MUST BE
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highly tolerant of ambiguity
pleased that they are tolerating fools
gladly
thrilled to discover that there are
oxymorons around
able to marry the culture of hip-hop
with the culture of submission.
Mentors:
Carriers of Community
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The word “mentor” refers to ‘lived knowledge’ and comes from
the old myth in which Mentor is a guide and teacher who
works through inspired language and knowledge of survival.
Through training, mentors discover ways of clarifying what
they have to offer in the way of teaching, guiding and passing
on living skills and essential arts for surviving the challenges of
contemporary life.
Mentoring skills extend to reimagining meaningful elders and
the importance of legacies for individuals and groups.
Training outcomes include a deepened sense of identity and
awareness of inner resources for both individuals and groups;
a spiritual connection to something bigger; and new and
extended relationships as ‘carriers of community.’
Collaboratorium Partners
We take in the child, and we reach out to the parent.
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All fathers are required to attend a workshop series for
male parents
All mothers are required to attend a workshop series for
female parents.
Each family receives a minimum of 12 hours of counseling.
Each family is required to attend a forgiveness workshop
series.
All parents are required to attend a workshop series in
educational advocacy.
Reaching Out
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Workshops are held on the weekends and in the evenings
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If the parent does not come; the facilitators go to them – to
the bars, the clubs, the corners – wherever the parents are,
their community reaches out to them.
When the child returns to school, the parent is prepared to
fully support the academic experience.
Sitting in the classroom, speaking with the teachers, meeting
with Vice Principals, parents are assisted by educational
advocates to clearly communicate their role as educational
partners with the schools.
Collaboratorium Sites
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Each academy is located at an external school site.
The parent site is located at the Oasis of Hope in
Tacoma. It has classrooms, gymnasium, auditorium,
workshop facilities for parent training, reception area,
office, and a commercial kitchen with food service.
Several blocks away is the technology center at the
Vision Center.
Both facilities have completely furnished spaces for
music and art clinics.
Nearby facilities with culturally oriented library and
museum activities are scheduled for student use.
Higher and higher
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Each site is connected with one or more
university and college.
Evergreen State College and Antioch
University Masters Teachers Program offer
services to every site in the state of
Washington
Universities in Oregon and California will
similarly provide partnership services to sites.
Leadership and Vision
Most importantly, each site is managed
by a site director who is able:
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to provide counseling, consulting, planning,
facilitating and teaching services
to be a truth keeper
to believe and see good
to provide educational leadership for the
immediate neighborhoods so communities again
become extended family.
Management and Staffing
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The Maxine Mimms Academies are
directed by Dr. Maxine Mimms, a leader in
the design and implementation of a
transformative education model for
underperforming students, a model that
includes partnerships between faithbased and public schools.
Dr. Maxine L. Mimms
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As a Professor at Antioch University, she designed and
implemented a Master’s Program with a site-based
model for experienced educators.
She has provided educational consulting services
throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California,
as well as New York.
Her consulting focus includes the areas of curriculum
design and instructional methods, and particularly on
the development of basic skills in reading and math.
She has served on the Governor’s Committee for
Educational Reform in the state of Washington, with
an emphasis on assessments and budget
revitalization.
“Enter to Learn,
Depart to Serve”
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Dr. Maxine Mimms pioneered the creation of highereducation campuses in inner-city communities with
the founding of The Tacoma Campus as part of the
Evergreen State College. These campuses are known
for an interdisciplinary academic program, small class
sizes, faculty and student diversity, and a curriculum
that integrates studies with life experiences and goals.
With it’s motto “Enter to learn and depart to serve”,
the educational philosophy model has been
responsible for hundreds of graduating students who
have changed the face of the community in which
they live.
Corporate Status
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Maxine Mimms Academies are a major
programmatic component of Koinonia
Community Services, which also operates the
Maxine Mimms High School in Seattle,
Washington.
Koinonia is governed by a seven member Board
of Directors, and is a non-profit 501(c)(3)
Washington state corporation.
Separate funding is dedicated to the Maxine
Mimms Academies.
Student Advisory Board
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A 12 member Student Advisory
Board consists of Maxine Mimms
Academy students who have
successfully returned to their
middle school classrooms.
Exceptional Leadership
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Rev. Robert Penton
Family Service/Mentorship Director
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Eba Laye
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Planning and Development Director
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Rob Rieder
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Development Coordinator
Mary Johnson
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Pastor Lawrence White
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Elder Daniel Montgomery
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Administration Director
Site Director, The Vision Center
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Site Director, Oasis of Hope
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Sheyan Selah
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Isa Nichols
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Educational Leader
CPA, Accountant
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Pastor, Social Worker, Disarmament
Expert, Biblical Revolutionary
Attorney, SDLC Systems Designer,
Business Consultant, Economic
Development Planner
Community Translator, Storyteller,
Marketing Guru
Human Resource professional, Office
Manager
Corporate Marketing Director, Strategic
Planning Consultant, consultant,
counselor, facilitator, teacher
Facilitator, Consultant, Leader,
Transportation Guide
Founder and Executive Director of
Brave New World Production company
of hip-hop culture
Fortune 500 Professional and Servant
Leader
Organizational Chart
KOINONA
Community
Services
CPA/
Accountant
Administration
Director
Program
Director
Planning/
Development
Director
Development
Coordinator
Family
Service
Director
Moms
Workshop
Consultant
Mentor
Dads
Workshop
Consultant
Mentor
Site Director
Family
Counseling
Consultant
Mentor
Mentor
Forgiveness
Workshop
Consultant
Mentor
Teacher
Educational
Leader
Educational
Leader
Programs
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The Maxine Mimms Academies offer five
programs: 1-3 day suspensions, 4-7
day suspensions, 8-10 day suspensions,
long term suspensions, and expulsions.
Expelled students will remain in the
Academy classroom until graduation and
their entry into high school.
Enrollment and class size
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The maximum number of students in a class is 12,
who are served by a certified teacher and two
educational leaders.
Each student has a mentor
Each family has 24 hour access to an educational
advocacy coach.
Each site has at least one cohort of short-term and
long term suspended and expelled students that
operates 12 months a year.
A minimum of 144 students and families will be
served annually at each site.
Outcomes and Evaluation
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Both academic and behavioral
challenges are addressed,
with specific attention to pass
state standardized tests.
Why the Maxine Mimms
Academies are unique:
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The black male has no entry into the world of
academic success
Parent understanding of how to advocate for their
child’s education is the answer to a system is
unable to cope with cultural differences
Self-efficacy is the answer to a system of
suspension and expulsion over which the child has
no control.
The development of self-efficacy can only occur in
a place of safety, an oasis of hope, where students
can reflect and begin to tell new stories.
Self-efficacy is developed
by a shift in language
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“I do not go to a failing school; my
school is the greatest school”
“Maxine Mimms Academy is the only
solution for me because I am the
solution for the world”
“I return to my school as a success
because I am the solution for my
school.”
A new language
A new conversation
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The reality of the hip-hop culture must meet the demands of a
future; the absence of hope must transcend into the ability to
forgive, dream, and tell new stories.
Community institutions must speak a new language: the
language of WASL, of standardized tests. Business owners must
preach it from behind the cash register; Pastors must preach it
from the pulpit; Doctors and nurses must preach it in offices and
emergency rooms; police officers must preach it from squad cars.
Parents must speak a new language: the language of zero
tolerance, why my child, and WASL
Parents, children, community institutions must cross the cultural
barriers to welcome each other, to have a conversation, to take
in, to love, to forgive, to become healthy.
Each child is valuable
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The child, the parent, the pastor,
the business owner, doctor, lawyer,
and governor must know that each
child is valuable.
Each child is good.
Maxine Mimms Academy
The Vision Center
Oasis of Hope
1937 South M Street
Tacoma, WA 98405
253 272 3399
1937 South G Street
Tacoma, WA 98405
253 383-0077