Michael O’Neill is one of our longest-tenured volunteers, as he began tutoring at FLOC 13 years ago.  While living in Washington, D.C. in 2000, Michael had some free time during the weekends and began to search for organizations he could volunteer with.  Michael says, “Having been a tutor in Detroit, Michigan, before I moved to D.C., I felt For Love of Children was the perfect match for me.”

It was in 2007 that Michael began to tutor Kevin, who he has now tutored for 6 years. Shortly after they met, Kevin began to show interest in learning to play chess, one of Michael’s favorite pastimes. Michael loves that he has been able to see Kevin grow through his love for chess and another of Michael’s favorite games when he was young, Monopoly.  Kevin is teaching Michael how to play the latest take on Monopoly—Millionaire Monopoly.

Michael’s says his favorite part of FLOC is “the continuing education of tutors and the ability to adapt the curriculum to each student’s needs.” He also loves the blend FLOC offers its students by providing them with the neighborhood tutoring close to home while also giving them the opportunity to do something very different like go to the Outdoor Education Center in West Virginia, where students get hands-on learning experiences in the outdoors.

During his free time, Michael loves to play board games and chess, and is an avid reader. He often goes to Politics and Prose and the National Gallery of Art.

(Sarah Arango is the NTP Bilingual Program Coordinator at FLOC).

On May 1, 2013, For Love of Children hosted our annual “Beyond the Classroom” Fundraising Luncheon.  Board members, staff, volunteers, donors, partners and students gathered at the Renaissance Hotel to enjoy a delicious meal and respond to the call to action to support FLOC programs.  There wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

Remarks: Tim Payne, Executive Director

In 1965, a community of volunteers formed For Love of Children through a call to action. They joined one another, united in a sense of hope and motivated by a common mission. Theirs was a call to shutter a warehouse for wards of the state in the District, and to establish new standards of care to demand safeguards against neglect. Theirs was a call for social justice, a recognition that collective action could transform the future for these children.

Over the course of our 47-year history, our strategy has shifted to focus on education, but we are still guided by the core values of our founders: to help children thrive, to give them the opportunities they deserve. We still come together as a community united by hope, dedicated to the belief that individuals, working together, can impact lasting and meaningful change.

What, then, is our call to action today?

Current educational statistics are alarming: barely 50% of our high school students graduate on time, 89% of 11th graders perform below basic levels in reading. Too few children in this city, particularly low-income children of color, receive the excellent education that they deserve. The inequalities in our community are deep and widening.

We can’t begin to achieve social justice without guaranteeing that our children have the tools, knowledge, and drive necessary for academic achievement. There’s an undeniable power in choice, in being able to choose, and all our work seeks to provide students with choices. Our scholars reject the notion that their lives are predetermined by what ward they grow up in or what school district they’re born into. They choose different paths, ones that lead to college, careers, futures. We simply guide them on their journey.  We unite students and their families with a diverse set of volunteers who teach, empower, and, working tirelessly alongside their students, transform. We stand all together, and refuse to allow these injustices to continue. Our call may be a whisper or it may be a shout, but we say together: not in this city, not in our community, and not these kids.

All of our volunteers, from the 20-year-old college student to the 50-year-old attorney, give at least 3 hours a week to help our students develop a foundation of academic skills and a mindset of self-confidence and determination. They show the importance of setting goals and share the joys and celebration of achievement.

Our kids know the odds are stacked against them. But the thing that is distinctively different about FLOC students is that they have grit.

Grit isn’t just an abstract concept. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard are currently evaluating the impact of grit on college success. What is grit? Simply put, it is the perseverance to achieve. It’s a refusal to be overcome by anything. Someone may be more naturally gifted or have more opportunities based on circumstance, but rest assured that kids with grit work harder, longer, and smarter to achieve success.

If you’ve heard my story, you know that I started at FLOC as that 20 year old college student. I’ve learned the true meaning of grit watching Erica, my first student, grow from an inquisitive but desperately struggling 3rd grader at Garrison Elementary School into a confident 4th year student at the University of Maryland. Name an obstacle: she’s overcome it. Think of a challenge: she’s faced it.

At Garrison, we closed the nearly 3-year gap in her reading skills. At Shaw Junior High School, she fought against a culture of underachievement. She rose out of an environment, both at school and at home, where college was never a goal, let alone an option. Her high school graduation was special, but it didn’t mean everything was easy from there. Contending with unsupportive financial aid officers, the rising costs of college, being forced to transfer, working 30 hours a week while maintaining a full course load: all of these and more happened. But Erica never gave up, never lost sight of her goal, and she knew that FLOC would be there every step of the way. In December, Erica will be graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree in family studies, but she’s not stopping there. She’s considering graduate programs in education. Erica has taught me all I ever need to know about grit.

Day in, day out, our students at FLOC are developing their grit. The more than 550 of them who came through our doors this year received the full benefits of our ongoing search for the best practices, and the newest, most relevant research data. Dozens of volunteers join our efforts every week; more and more stay with us year to year. Together we transform. For the 7th consecutive year, 100% of our high school scholars have graduated on time, and been accepted into a postsecondary institution. This is fantastic, but we can do more. We must do more.

Next year the number of post-secondary scholars we serve will go up to 75, and we intend to stay with them through college and their transitions to careers. Our work isn’t finished when a student reaches grade-level, gets a great score on the SAT, or is accepted into a top-tier university. We don’t stop until our scholars earn their postsecondary degree. We’re expanding every day, both in terms of the number of students we serve, and in the variety of ways we’re serving those students. We’re working with students longer, and the long-term commitments we are making to these students means, unfortunately, we’re unable to enroll some others. We’re straining against our current capacity, against limitations of space, and staff, and resources. We’re straining to open our doors to new students. This year alone, 85 are waiting, and hundreds, thousands more who could thrive with our support, wait.

The good news is that we know what it takes, and, with your help, we can get there. We are building the strategic plan that lays the foundation for growth in the city. This is our tipping point. We are poised, ready, and eager to expand the scale of our services, to reach more kids in underserved parts of our community, to provide the mindset, the skills, and the grit to succeed.

Do you hear the call?

Join FLOC today and show your support. You can whisper, or you can shout: not in this city, not for this community, not these kids. Together, we can reach even more. Together, we transform.

On the weekend of February 22-24, our Leaders In Action students joined us at the Outdoor Education Center for our annual Survival Overnight. This interactive weekend was developed to help our students get the overall feel of the OEC in preparation for summer camp, along with introducing them to the outdoors.

We played a name game to officially begin Survival Weekend, as some of the students are fairly new to the program. One goal of LIA is to increase student’s leadership and teamwork skills, which is the first step to creating a strong team. Afterward, we hiked several of the many trails that the OEC has to offer while identifying animal tracks and playing camouflage, a hiking game fit for every age (if you know it, you love it!)

Students enjoyed our next few activities that focused on native wildlife such as “What to do when you encounter animals” where each pair of students received an animal, acted out how they think someone should react when they stumble upon this animal, and then we discussed the practical decision. This activity helped the children step out of their comfort zone while using their own originality and creativity skills. The next wildlife game we played is known as “Wildlife Headbands”. Each student received an animal card, blindly placed it on their forehead, and actively wandered the room asking yes-or-no questions about which animal they represented. To relax, we sat down to watch Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. As we watched the movie, we discovered and discussed the many specific morals. The movie follows a young man’s encounter with the Lorax, a majestic speaker to the trees. The man decides to take advantage of the environment, cut down all the trees for the product he is creating, and in the end is left with nothing as the forest is empty, and his wildlife friends abandon him. We discussed the ways he could have followed his dreams and still kept the forest intact. All the students participated with their own unique thoughts on the subject. This activity truly helped our students view the environment from an alternative perspective. The moral of The Lorax correlates directly with our environmental stewardship mission, and fit precisely with our upcoming Health and Gardening Unit.

As the weekend progressed the students also accomplished a nature scavenger hunt and a “Migrate, Hibernate, and Tough It Out” animal game. This activity awakened the students in the morning as they ran to the designated animal winter coping mechanism that they thought was correct; for example, “Skunks: do they migrate, hibernate, or tough it out?” The answer: hibernate! As the weekend went on we touched on the five basic survival skills: Signal, Water, Shelter, Fire, and Food. Students were not only interested in these learning points, but they wanted to be directly involved in the production of activities. The main skill we focused on was shelter building. Each student had the opportunity to design and create their own shelter out of natural materials. Our FLOC’s Wilderness Voyager Camp, offered this summer, will heavily cover those five vital survival skills in an exciting hands-on approach, as well as offering the students an amusing camp experience.

Each Leaders In Action student was able to form their own organic experience at Survival Night. While enjoying time with new friends, the students achieved all levels of active participation by learning about their environment, accomplishing native wildlife games, and becoming comfortable at the Outdoor Education Center.

(Sarah Nowicki is an AmeriCorps Vista at FLOC’s Outdoor Education Center).

(Alex Magnano is is an NTP Site Coordinator at FLOC).

I was equal parts nervous and excited to see how they would rise to the occasion, but I was also curious about how they would be received and responded to as instructors by their younger peers. It took them a little while to find their sea legs and gain a comfort correcting students and focusing their attention, but half an hour in they had already exceeded all of my expectations. They were able to adjust and revise their plans in the moment and defer to and lean on one another when they got stuck, all while keeping students engaged and ‘reined in’. They found a balance of sharing responsibility talking to the larger assembly and leading smaller group activities separately, and when appropriate speaking from personal experience. I resisted the temptation to offer advice or intervene and allowed them to learn through experimentation and group consensus. I was flattered to overhear and observe amidst their ‘group think huddles’ and attempts to redirect and transition between activities that they were consciously trying to recall techniques that they’ve watched me use in High School workshops. I had to muffle my laughter as I heard my name come up in their conversations, but I couldn’t keep from beaming with pride as they discerned the rhythm that worked for them as instructors in their own right.

In my opinion, one of the most lucrative pieces of Middle School curriculum are the theme workshops that invite guest facilitators to design lesson series around their passions and areas of expertise. What I was excited to imagine was the realistic possibility of engaging high school students in those roles and simultaneously fostering a sense of camaraderie within the broader Scholars community and leadership development as well as creativity in learning models and application.  I am so encouraged by this cycle of learning and teaching and convinced that there is no better replica of experiential learning. Embodied is this snapshot is everything I hope that students get out of participating in program: self-confidence, creative license, collaboration, self-efficacy, community engagement, and a desire to share their gifts. As my first program year draws to a close and I prepare to begin a second, I am so appreciative of the chance to support students’ leadership cultivation, and am newly committed to recreating similar opportunities for young people to discover their innate teaching abilities. (A big thank you to Amen and Gami for the inspiration!)

(Amanda Lindamood is a Scholars Program Instructor at FLOC).

The Scholars take a silly photo at the University of Pittsburgh.

On April 1, 2013, fourteen 11^th grade Scholars students and four FLOC staff set off on a five day journey to explore colleges and universities in New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The adventure began in Philadelphia, where students had the opportunity to visit Temple University, (a favorite among the students), to tour the campus, and to meet and talk to a current FLOC postsecondary Scholar. After visiting Temple, the group traveled through blizzard-like conditions to visit Syracuse University, where students took a snowy tour of the campus and got a good taste of what life at Syracuse University might look like if they chose to go to there. From there, students traveled to Buffalo (again through a snow storm…in April), where they spent the evening exploring the wonders of Niagara Falls and the downtown Buffalo scene. The following day, the group took a tour of Buffalo University and then traveled on to SUNY Fredonia, where students continued to gain deeper understandings of the offerings of various types of schools and refine their conceptions of the types of schools that might match what they want for their own postsecondary experiences. After visiting Buffalo University and SUNY Fredonia, the group traveled to Pittsburgh, where they visited the University of Pittsburgh (another favorite among the Scholars students) and Carnegie Melon. The group rounded out their tour of schools with visits to Penn State Beaver and West Virginia University.

Brittany, a FLOC postsecondary Scholar, gave the other Scholars a tour of Temple’s campus.

Throughout their travels, Scholars students did formal and informal advising sessions with staff to reflect on what they were seeing and learning at each school. For many students, this was their first real and intentional tour of college campuses, and they found that by exploring multiple types of schools in a variety of contexts they were better able to conceptualize their “ideal” schools. Because of this exposure to many different colleges and universities, Scholars students solidified their understandings of what it takes to get into the colleges of their dreams, and they deepened their commitments to work toward this goal.

FLOC Scholars in front of Temple’s Alumni Owl.

Equally as important as fueling students’ excitement about going to college and enhancing their commitment to strengthening their applications, the five day tour of colleges facilitated the cultivation of deeper relationships among the students. They bonded in ways that are only possible when people spend 24 hours a day for five days together. They strengthened their connections, found common ground in areas previously unknown, shared their thoughts/dreams/fears about college with each other and learned how to better support each other.

Each student and staff member walked away from this journey richer in knowledge about colleges, about application processes and about each other.

(Kelley Thompson is the Middle School Scholars Program Specialist at FLOC).

The 13.1 mile course is almost completely enclosed in Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and the preserved Civil War era towns of Bolivar and Harpers Ferry. The route includes close to 1,000 feet of total elevation gain and 2,000 feet of total elevation change. Participants will experience a mix of trail, road, and crushed, gravel paths and will be able view the confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac rivers. The steep uphill portions will test each runner’s strength and will. The fun and challenging downhill sections will be a wild ride you’ve rarely experienced in a run. Breathtaking views of the rivers, historic buildings, and mountains will stimulate the senses and inspire you to reach the finish line. To register for $50 before April 21, visit http://www.harpersferryhalf.org/Registration.html.  After April 21 the price increases to $55. A t-shirt, beverages, fruit, bagels, pizza, and a medal if you complete the half marathon are included in the registration fee. Join us after the race at River Riders to celebrate with music, food, and good company.

If you’re not up for an entire half marathon, join us for a 4-mile run! This course runs along gentle hills and trail/road mix through the lovely Harpers FerryNationalHistoricPark. The low price for this race is $25 if you sign up before April 21, and after the 21^st the rate increases to $30.

Our FREE Kids One Mile Fun Run will begin later that morning at 11:00am. Encourage your children to join us in this exciting race along the beautiful Harpers FerryNational Park. No need to pre-register, just sign up from 9:00-10:45am on race day at River Riders (408 Alstadts Hill Rd, Harpers Ferry, WV).

Be sure to check out the website (http://www.harpersferryhalf.org/) for a detailed schedule and registration. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer please visit the volunteer page at http://www.harpersferryhalf.org/volunteers.html. A huge thank you goes out to the many sponsors who are making this race possible: Pediatric Dental Center of Frederick, Grafton Integrated Health Network, Bank of Charles Town, Panera Bread, Two Rivers Treads, River Riders, and PizzaCity. This event is directly connected to the Outdoor Education Center of FLOC as all the proceeds will benefit our cause along with another local nonprofit organization, Eastern Panhandle Indigo Children (EPIC). Join us Saturday, May 11 in Harpers Ferry to help support the OutdoorEducationCenter!

(Sarah Nowicki is an AmeriCorps Vista at FLOC’s Outdoor Education Center).

It’s important to us to hear feedback from the people who use the curriculum most. We anticipate holding future focus groups to learn more about the Adolescent Reading Curriculum (Wilson), FLOC testing, and the new math curriculum.

Have feedback to provide on the curriculum? Let us know what you like or dislike. Contact the tutoring program’s Curriculum Coordinator, Kyla at kwasserman@floc.org.

(Kyla Wasserman is the Neighborhood Tutoring Program Curriculum Coordinator at FLOC).

First Book is a national organization that has local branches in many cities. The First Book DC Advisory Board raises funds locally in order to provide eligible programs high-quality, brand new books to distribute to the children they serve. Since 1992, the organization has provided more than 80 million new books to disadvantaged youth in thousands of communities nationwide. The DC Advisory Board works to promote and facilitate the distribution of new books to literacy programs in Washington, DC.

FLOC is grateful for the partnership with First Book DC so that our children and families can receive new books during the Book Festival. Although it is still a while off, this year’s Book Festival will be hosted at an offsite venue to accommodate more students and their families. Past events have included a story read by a local author, a guest speaker, arts and crafts, and an opportunity for students and families to select books that have been generously donated. Mark your calendar for this year’s event on Saturday, November 16^th, 2013.

Thank you again to First Book for your generous support! We can’t wait to select books for our students to take home!

(Kate Fleischer is the Development Assistant at FLOC).

Sadiah, Meredith and Dominic at Maga Design.

Do you love what you do?  Now’s the perfect time to share your passion for your job with a high school Scholar. Here at For Love of Children, we are working on putting together career shadow experiences for as many of our high school students as possible this spring and summer.

We have already been able to arrange a few very worthwhile experiences for students.  One 12th grade student, Alem, went with volunteer tutor Brian Persse to the Peace Corps Headquarters in DC and learned more about international humanitarian work.  Another two students, Sadiah and Dominic, accompanied tutor Meredith Kirchheimer to Maga Design in Adams Morgan.  As our high school Scholars approach graduation and begin to think about potential colleges and career paths, the chance for them to see different fields and careers firsthand is invaluable.  We would love to be able to provide this opportunity for every one of them, but we’re a little stuck on the following few careers/fields:

• Journalism (preferably print)
• Fashion merchandising
• Art galleries
• Music business
• A judge

Brian and Alem at Peace Corps Headquarters.

If you or anyone you know works in one of these fields or may have another helpful connection for us, we’d love to hear from you! There’s a lot of flexibility around what this experience could look like—the student could visit one person the whole time, check in with several staff members at different times, get a tour of the workplace and have lunch with someone(s) to discuss their career path, or something else entirely.  We’d work closely with you to put together the best plan for everyone.  If you think you could help us out, please email sdia@floc.org. We truly appreciate the time and energy you put in to making a difference in the lives of our students.

(Rachel Baxter is the Bilingual Recruitment and Outreach Assistant at FLOC).