FHS After School Academy Back In Action
After a bit of a hiatus, the After School Academy is up and running again at Falmouth High School.
The program is intended to assist students who may be struggling academically or socially by pairing them with teachers to get after-hours help in their classes, and even provides meals for the students while they listen to the various guest speakers brought in to speak about post-graduation opportunities.
The brains behind the program, acting diversity, equity and inclusion officer George Spivey and Ronald Clark, avid boatbuilder, sailor and educator, explained the inner workings of the After School Academy.
“The main mission is to identify students who have the ability to go on beyond high school, to higher learning, a higher set of skills, but oftentimes have not been informed by the people at home, their parents or relatives or neighbors that they have, the ability, and there are opportunities out there for them,” Mr. Spivey said.
Guidance counselors and teachers at the high school help identify students who could be receptive to the program. They also contact the students and their parents or guardians to gauge interest.
“We let them know, we’re going to challenge your son or daughter to do well academically, and also we’re going to be talking to them about what are their aspirations, what do they see themselves doing after they graduate from high school, and letting them know about the opportunities that are available to them that they may not know,” Mr. Spivey said.
Mr. Spivey, who has experience running alternative education programs, explained that students who may feel out of their comfort zone in the classroom are the target group, and the goal is to foster their abilities in a different environment and help guide them toward new opportunities.
“We’ve been doing this for a number of years,” Mr. Spivey said. “We want to get back to helping our kids because the needs are as great now or greater than they were three, four or five years ago.”
Mr. Clark is president of Concerned Black Men of Cape Cod & the Islands, which is a national mentoring organization dedicated to caring for under served youth. Through this, he said, he has seen firsthand the influence a mentor can have in a person’s life and hopes to do that for students through the After School Academy.
Growing up in the South, Mr. Clark attended a segregated school, something he said was never allowed to be a hindrance to his success.
“As a matter of fact, going to a segregated school, our teachers told us that failure's not an option,” he said. “They inspired us to do our best and to give back to the community. So basically what we're trying to do with the After School Academy is to change young people’s lives, change the direction of their lives. And if we can do this, if I can share what I've learned sailing and boat building, the skills I've learned in life, if we can share those skills with young people then I feel, honestly and truly, it’s a chance to change the direction of their lives.”
Mr. Spivey himself has experienced this, recounting the time the principal at his south New Jersey high school approached him to ask about his college plans. Mr. Spivey told him he had been eyeing Rutgers, but when asked if he knew about Dartmouth College—from which he later graduated—Mr. Spivey said he had never heard of it.
“We both know that one person can make a difference in an individual's life,” he said. “If it were not for my principal telling me about Dartmouth, I never would’ve gone to Dartmouth. So one of the things we want to do is to make students aware of the opportunities that are out there for them that, maybe like myself, they had never heard about before.”
Working with students is something both Mr. Spivey and Mr. Clark have been doing for a long time, and both men had plenty of anecdotal evidence about what can happen when educators employ alternative education approaches and give a bit of extra attention to students who might at first seem disadvantaged.
“One young man a number of years ago, I told him, ‘If you keep your grades up, if you get As and Bs, you can get a scholarship and you can go to college for free,’” Mr. Clark said. “And he said, ‘Is that true? That if I study hard and pass, I can go to college for free?’ And I said ‘yes, that’s a fact.’ Last year, this young man graduated from law school. That’s the kind of difference we’re talking about.”
“Now we try to tell the kids, hey, wait, we have high expectations for you and even though you may have had many negative experiences in the past, we're looking forward now and we have these high expectations for you and we're going to help you along,” Mr. Spivey said.
Now that the After School Academy is back in full swing Mr. Spivey, who coordinates the program, said there will be even more input and assistance from high school teachers and administrators along with Mr. Clark, who assists largely with mentoring.
The program will take place a couple of times a week at the high school and provide students with a health-conscious meal of sandwiches and juice prepared by Saint Barnabas's Episcopal Church. Guest speakers from a variety of backgrounds will come to talk to the students about career paths, colleges and the many other opportunities that await them after high school.
In addition to helping students with academics and prepping them for post-graduation life, Mr. Clark expressed interest in reviving their enrichment programs, which in the past have included trips to museums in Boston and visits to New York City to see plays.
“We’ve slacked off in the last few years because of the pandemic, but now that that seems to be waning, we're ready to jump back in and roll again and do everything we can to help every young person we can,” he said.