Features

At too many schools across the country, parents are left out of the learning equation. Ellie Canter (MEd ’12) is working to change this oversight as director of programs at Turning the Page, a non-profit that is empowering parents in Washington, D.C. to become active and effective participants in their children’s education.

Canter supervises AmeriCorps VISTA members and three partnership coordinators to strengthen relationships between teachers and families.

From an early age, Lorena Guillen felt a call to change the status quo of schooling. The Los Angeles native heard stories from family members who were scolded by their teachers and administrators for speaking Spanish in school.

Despite that treatment, her mother instilled the importance of education, and Guillen would go on to teach in a Los Angeles high school. Problems at the under-resourced school soon surfaced however.

In a fifth-grade classroom in south Seattle this May, pairs of students pulled vibrant cardboard cubes from a stack and presented them to four panelists.

The boxes were covered with neon duct tape and filled with tubes, popsicle sticks, batteries and matchboxes. While these materials might sound like the ingredients for a simple fifth-grade craft project, there were big ideas in those popsicle sticks.

Encouraging students to ask questions, to conduct thoughtful experiments and even to get a bit messy in the lab are among the many joys Erin Flynn and Gretel von Bargen experience in their biology classes.