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MAPCS High School Graduate, Jonathan Hardy Featured on WUSA9
Jonathan Hardy, Maya Angelou Public Charter High School Graduate, was featured on Great Day Washington- WUSA9 for his incredible journey and success working as a young mechanic with Gearin’ up Bicycles. Jonathan is now completing the Home Builders Institute workforce training program at Maya’s Young Adult Learning Center. Congratulations on all your continued success, Jonathan!
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Founder, David Domenici, and Maya Angelou Academy Featured In Ozy
It’s a cold March morning in the nation’s capital. My fingers are stiff, and in the end, useless as I fumble to open the door to David Domenici’s battered 1992 Honda Civic. But with a sturdy shove and then a yank, the wiry 50-year-old reassures me that it’s not me. We’re headed less than a mile away, so Domenici can show me where he used to work.
“It was vile,” he says, nodding to the remnants of a juvenile detention center. Inside, he takes me to a stale, moldering complex where he used to teach the lockup’s student body, kids as young as 13 and as old as 21. In 2009, after allegations of abuse and decrepit conditions, a judge closed the facility. But in a new detention hall just down the road, named New Beginnings, Domenici has managed to build a model school for young inmates. On the day I visit, the classrooms are decorated with colorful murals, encouraging slogans and pictures of grinning recent grads. Teachers and security officers greet the tattooed scholars with warm handshakes and hugs. The ambience is downright optimistic. “You never would have seen anything close to this before,” Domenici says.
The question that remains, will we see others like it? Read full article
—By Meghan Walsh, Ozy.com
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YALC’s Jenny Nauss Named as Winner in JSTOR Lesson Plan Competition
Frankenstein is one of those stories every young person knows, even before reading Mary Shelley’s famed novel. When students do approach the book, they often read with preconceived images in mind – cue lurid green monsters and frizzy-haired madmen.
Our very own Jenny Nauss, Maya Angelou Young Adult Learning Center Instructional Manager, recently won the first JSTOR Lesson Plan Competition—which is awarded for creative and reproducible lesson plans that incorporate content from the digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources into teaching at the secondary school level. In a lesson plan she created for an Ethics and Literature course at the Maret School, Jenny challenges her students to see beyond the surface of Shelley’s science-fiction tale.
The lesson is as follows: students read and summarize several peer-reviewed academic articles related to Frankenstein, then work on analyzing the author’s text through the lens of these articles. The articles are both intellectually stimulating and difficult—ranging in topic from cloning, to genetic engineering, to genetically modified foods. Frankenstein’s story thus becomes more than just a wacky science experiment; it becomes a lesson on moral decision-making, modern bio-ethics, and philosophical history.
One of the key skills students learn in this lesson plan is the ability to succinctly summarize, in their own words, a challenging text. As Jenny put it, “If the only way you can summarize a text is by using the words of the original, then you don’t truly understand the text.” This is a skill Jenny hopes to foster in students at the YALC, as it is crucial for success in the GED exam, as well as in the professional world. Explicit summarization forces students to think critically about what they are reading and extract the main ideas of the text.
Jenny has been the Instructional Manager at the YALC since June 2015 and came to the Maya Angelou Schools from a 23-year career in teaching. She was most recently an Upper School English teacher at the Maret School, where she developed the Frankenstein Lesson Plan. As her JSTOR award proves, her experience is a wonderful asset to the Maya family, and we look forward to hearing more about her innovative curriculum plans in the months to come!
To learn more about the JSTOR Competition, click here: http://teach.jstor.org/blog/announcing-lesson-plan-award-winners
-Yifan Zhang
Capstone Institute Partners with Maya Angelou Young Adult Learning Center
The Promise Program
https://vimeo.com/128608373
The Capstone Institute at Howard University has partnered with Maya Angelou Young Adult Learning Center (MAYALC) and the See Forever Foundation to implement a violence prevention program targeting young men 12-25 years old. This important research initiative is supported by a five year, multimillion-dollar award from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and disseminated by Hampton University’s Minority Men’s Health Initiative (MMHI).
The Hampton University – Howard University Men’s Violence Prevention (HU2-MVP) project titled The Promise Program is a strength based, culturally relevant, and family-centered violence prevention program for African American males. The program accommodates sixty participants who reside in Hampton or Newport News, Virginia and sixty who reside in Washington, D.C. The overall goal of this program is to help these males to achieve their greatest potential as healthy, self-sufficient and productive members of their communities and to avoid violence.
This 6-month long intensive personal development and violence prevention program focuses on providing these young men with knowledge, skills and resources that will: 1) build upon and increase their individual and cultural strengths, 2) improve their family relationships and 3) increase their exposure to strategies proven effective in other evidence-based programs.
In workshop sessions participants learned, discussed and participated in activities that focused on topics such as: what it means to be a Black man in America; community responsibility and support; anger management; effective communication and conflict resolution to name a few.
The cooperative project involved creating a Public Service Announcement (PSA) that was conceived, developed and produced by the participants. The PSA will help to create awareness, show the importance of understanding the impact of violence in our communities and promote nonviolent behaviors.
Participants were mentored in small groups with elder and younger mentors. The mentors served as real life role models of behaviors encouraged in the workshops and helped to reinforce what participants have learned in the workshop sessions.
In an effort to give back to their community Promise Program members served as volunteers for the Food & Friends program, preparing, packaging and delivering food to District of Columbia residents with life challenging illnesses.
Other program activities included outings to a career and vocational preparatory academy and social trips that were designed to build confidence, and foster relationships and trust. Together the components of this evidence-based program are designed “to reduce the disproportionate number of African American males who are involved in violence”.
From the COO: 2015 Construction Updates
After closing a monumental year for the Maya Angelou family, we are delighted to begin the school year with new additions to our campus. Last November, the High School moved into a fully renovated space on the third and fourth floors of the Maya Angelou Learning Center. The new MALC has a brand new media center, lots of natural light, and fully provisioned science labs and classrooms. Over the past several months, we have had visits from city officials, donors, families, alumni, and many others, all of whom have seen our students hard at work and hard at play in their new academic home.
This summer, Forrester Construction Company returned to campus to complete Phase Three of our renovation, which replaced the roof over the building’s academic core, built new classrooms and offices on the second floor, and installed air conditioning in the cafeteria–a long-awaited and much-needed improvement!
Our newest addition includes a spacious Parent suite to allow students’ families to have a place to engage with teachers and faculty. Make sure to stop by and say “Hi” to Ms. Holley, and check out the brand new space!
We look forward to having a great year at MALC with new amenities in place. As always, please let our team know of any way the building or its operations can improve!
—Chris Tessone, Chief Operating Officer
Chris Tessone is Chief Operating Officer of the See Forever Foundation and the Maya Angelou Public Charter Schools, where he directs day-to-day operations for the organization, develops and systematizes human resource policies, and has primary oversight in the areas of financial management, technology, security, and facilities.
Congratulations to the Class of 2015!
We would like to congratulate the Class of 2015 from Maya Angelou Public Charter High School and Maya Angelou Young Adult Learning Center and Maya Angelou Academy! The entire Maya family is so proud of all the graduates. With $1.34M in scholarships and acceptance to over dozen colleges and universities, our scholars are ready for the next step in their journey. We have created a brand new Alumni portal to help support all of our students beyond graduation, and to ensure a successful transition to adulthood. Be sure to browse the galleries below to see our scholars on their on their special day. Good luck, Alumni!
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Shedding Light
This past summer, the Home Builders Institute Program (HBI) at our Young Adult Learning Center (YALC) was busy putting their construction and entrepreneurial skills to good use. Working under the leadership of our HBI instructor, approximately ten students participated in the âShedding Light Project,â where students built four sheds over the course of the summer. As part of a culminating project, two of the sheds were available for at a community event hosted by the students. The third shed was graciously donated to Washington Parks and People, for their Riverside Park community space.
While students will certainly gained construction skills leading up to the event, they also learned valuable interpersonal, leadership and teambuilding skills as they played an active role in planning and coordinating the community event/ auction. Students worked together to prepare a presentation describing their work, what they gained through the process, networked and took questions from guests. Additionally, the YALC team played an active role in determining which non-profit would receive the shed, and be honored as a part of their program. The event was attended by members of our Maya Community, including partners, local businesses, board members, parents, funders, neighbors. Shedding Light was the first of its kind for the Young Adult Learning Center, and we were excited to see the benefits, both to our students and to our community.
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Graduate Spotlight
Graduate Spotlight: Ngozi Anderson
By Jeran Moultrie
I would like to take a moment to congratulate one of the Young Adult Learning Centerâs 2015 GED graduates, Ngozi Anderson! Mr. Anderson joined the program in January 2015, while employed at Steele Foundation LLC. After being informed he would need to obtain High School credentials in order to sustain employment with the company, Ngozi decided to join the Maya family to complete his studies.
With the new exam being rumored to be very difficult, Ngozi was excited to take on the challenge. Possessing a consistent and determined work ethic, coupled with help from the YALC academic team, he was able to gain the skills needed to successfully pass all four sections of the GED. Ngozi has even become a great motivator for other students seeking to pass the test and overcome other hurdles.
I am excited to mention that Ngozi has already enrolled in the Workforce Development Program at UDC. He plans to concentrate on the Electrical Certification Program. Ngozi is a pleasant and respectful young man who is a pleasure to spend time with. I speak for the entire staff at Maya Angelou YALC when I say: we wish you the best in your future endeavors!
Summer 2014 Construction Update
Thanks to the generous support of our Capital Campaign donors, we were able to move our Young Adult Learning Center into a beautifully renovated space last November. The new YALC includes a student lounge and library, a fully-featured computer lab, and a large space for our building-trades program run in cooperation with the Home Builders Institute. New windows on the west elevation bring natural light into the space, greatly improving the learning environment for teachers and students alike.
We began Phase Two of our major renovation in April and are now several months into the process of transforming our High School space into a state-of-the-art learning facility. The new space will include upgraded network infrastructure, bright, new finishes, an expanded healthcare suite, and more space for individualized instruction and wrap-around services. Over the summer, the construction team will also be building two new science labs for the chemistry and biology classes.
When the project is completed this fall, the Maya Angelou Schools will benefit from a revitalized building ready to serve our families and the neighborhood for decades to come. Everything from computer networks and intercoms to parking and windows will be improved.
We are grateful to our supporters, partners, staff, students, and families for making this project possible. The entire organization is looking forward to spending the 2014-15 school year and beyond in a facility that was truly built for and supports the Maya Way.
– Chris Tessone, Chief Operating Officer, See Forever Foundation