Inner-city High School Research Articles

From an inner-city high school to NYU and a full-ride scholarship: It's not about how much you can do, but how much you can grow

From an inner-city high school to NYU and a full-ride scholarship: It's not about how much you can do, but how much you can grow

Implementation of a Triathlon Program for Primary School Students as part of Health and Physical Education

Introduction: The significance of triathlon is reflected in the teaching and development of motor, social and emotional skills. Because triathlon has great educational potential, this case study sought to explore whether a modified Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (PACES) survey can be used as a suitable measure of enjoyment of physical activity in elementary school children when applied to a sports-specific task such as triathlon. Methods: The sample consisted of 12 female elementary school students (10.3 ± 1.3 years) from an inner-city high school. A modified triathlon program was delivered for one hour per week over a four-week duration with a modified PACES survey distributed each week. Survey responses were coded and then averaged over the four-week duration with the children’s responses subsequently analyzed using a Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test to examine differences in the coded characteristic response scores of the survey. Further comparisons were made using a Student’s t-test and a coefficient of variation (CV). Results: A greater sense of pleasure and fun was reported by the participants at the conclusion of the four-week triathlon program while there was no change in the children’s sense of excitement (p < 0.5). Characteristic responses to ‘neutral’ decreased with a simultaneous increase in the ‘slightly enjoyed’ response when viewed over the four-week duration of the program (p <0.001) Conclusions: This PACES case study was designed as a feasible, simple, and innovative approach to monitor enjoyment levels in elementary school children who participated in a triathlon program. Overall, the positive enjoyment reported from this simple, low-cost intervention could be used to inform the development of future sport-specific elementary school programs.

Pilot feasibility and acceptability trial of BE REAL’s BodyKind: A universal school-based body image intervention for adolescents

Body dissatisfaction is prevalent among adolescents and a primary risk factor for eating disorders, yet there are few body image interventions for older adolescents that support development of positive body image. Therefore, we assessed the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of BodyKind, a four-lesson, mixed gender, teacher-led, school-based curriculum for older adolescents, that combines principles of self-compassion, compassion for others, cognitive dissonance, and social activism to address contemporary adolescent body image concerns (i.e., appearance bias, comparisons on social media) and strengthen positive body image development. The sample contained 147 adolescents, predominantly racial/ethnic minorities (>95%), 54.8% male, 41.5% female and 4.1% gender-minority students aged 15–18 years (M=16.24, SD=.96) from a low-income, inner-city high school in the Midwestern US. Two teachers received training and delivered the curriculum to students. This single arm, mixed methods trial assessed student and teacher acceptability, teacher fidelity and student intervention outcomes. Despite reasonable teacher fidelity, recruitment/attendance rates, post-intervention data loss (35% attrition) limited evaluations of program effectiveness and study feasibility. Important learnings regarding study feasibility will inform optimisation for future school-based trials. Findings demonstrate high acceptability of BodyKind among teachers and adolescents in a lower socioeconomic school setting, and further randomized controlled effectiveness trials are required.

Educating and Empowering Inner-City High School Students in Bleeding Control

IntroductionUnintentional bleeding is the leading cause of death in people 1–44 years of age in the United States. The Stop the Bleed (STB) campaign is a nationwide course that teaches the public to ensure their own safety, call 911, find the bleeding injury, and achieve temporary hemorrhage control by several techniques. Although the national campaign for the training course was inspired by active shooter events, the training can be applied to motor vehicle accidents and small-scale penetrating and gunshot wounds. Extending the audience to inner-city high school students in a violence-prone neighborhood has the potential to save lives if they are first on the scene.ObjectivesWe hypothesized that students would have a greater degree of comfort, willingness, and preparedness to intervene in acute bleeding after taking the course.MethodsThis was a prospective, interventional pilot study in one inner-city high school in Brooklyn, New York. Students were given the option to participate in the STB course with pre- and post-surveys. We recruited 286 students from physical education or health education class to take a 50-minute bleeding control training course. Mean age was 15.7 years old. Students were divided into groups of 20–25 and taught by 2–3 emergency medicine, pediatric, or trauma surgery STB instructors. Each course included 2–3 skills stations for placing a tourniquet, wound packing, and pressure control.ResultsPrior to the course, only 43.8% of the students reported being somewhat likely or very likely to help an injured person who was bleeding. After the course, this increased to 80.8% of students even if no bleeding control kit was available. Additionally, there were significant improvements in self-rated comfort level from pre- to post-course 45.4% to 76.5%, and in self-rated preparedness from 25.1% to 83.8%. All three measures showed statistically significant improvement, P <.0001.ConclusionTeaching the STB course to high school students from a community with high levels of violence resulted in increased comfort level, willingness, and preparedness to act to control bleeding. If these opinions translate into action, students’ willingness to act could decrease pre-hospital blood loss and empower youth to perform life-saving interventions.

Algebra-based high school physics

About 60% of all physics majors chose the field because of their positive experience in high school physics courses, according to a study by the American Institute of Physics presented at the 2018 summer meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers. In most US public high schools, only the upper 35% of the student body is allowed or encouraged to enroll in algebra-based physics classes. Such restrictions often exclude many otherwise bright and capable youngsters—of all races and ethnicities—from that formative first step toward a future in physics.At one time, weakness in elementary mathematics, including fractions, decimals, and long division, and in basic algebra prevented even higher-level students from being successful in algebra- and trigonometry-based high school physics courses. Those mathematics deficiencies also have prompted a number of public high schools to discontinue entire physics programs. As a certified high school physics and chemistry teacher who taught mostly in Chicago inner-city high schools, where a majority of students were Black or Hispanic, from 1975 to 2001, I initially found a severe deficiency in elementary arithmetic skills. However, inexpensive electronic hand calculators have made it possible for many students to properly solve basic algebra problems that are common in physics and chemistry.Drills and practice with standard physics formulas helped my physics students remember their first-year algebra, if not learn those algebra skills in the first place. Many high school algebra-based physics texts have only a few problems of the same type, which often does not provide good learning experiences for students of any level. To enhance their learning, I would have students do about 10 physics problems per formula; I would go around the room and show the students how to do the first problem and then allow them to solve three more of the same type using the same formula. By solving for all the formula’s variables in the same manner, students learn or reinforce their algebra skills as they master their scientific problem-solving. After I retired I learned that Black students I had taught at Carver Area High School and Paul Robeson High School who entered nearby Chicago State University passed their university chemistry courses, and some even graduated with degrees in chemistry.I believe that inner-city Black and Hispanic students have great potential for majoring in physics and chemistry in higher education. About two-thirds of US high schools do not have a teacher who majored in physics or physics education.11. S. White, J. Tyler, Focus On: Who Teaches High School Physics?, American Institute of Physics (2014). Also, collegiate physics programs are being eliminated because of low enrollments. If high schools open algebra-based physics to all students and provide extra physics help—including mathematics remediation, which is done everywhere in the world except in the US—not only will many student lives be enhanced, but more students will major in physics, thereby helping rescue higher-education programs at risk of discontinuation, and there will be many more competent, certified high school physics and chemistry teachers.ReferenceSection:ChooseTop of pageReference <<1. S. White, J. Tyler, Focus On: Who Teaches High School Physics?, American Institute of Physics (2014). Google Scholar© 2021 American Institute of Physics.

Elemental composition of indoor and outdoor coarse particulate matter at an inner-city high school

Paired PM10 and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) samples were collected indoor and outdoor at a fully mechanically ventilated high school in the ultraindustrialized ship channel region of Houston, Texas over a two-month period. The primary foci of this research are to measure the elemental composition of ambient outdoor and indoor coarse particulate matter (PM10-2.5), characterize aerosol infiltration/ventilation, and obtain clues to their origins. Several metallic hazardous air pollutants were detected inside the school but at concentrations lower than even the most rigorous indoor air quality benchmarks. Only chromium may have potentially posed a hazard based on indoor air quality standards set by the California Environmental Protection Agency. Indoor-to-outdoor (I/O) mass abundance ratios for some metals (Li, Be, Si, Ti, Cr, Co, Ni, Zn, As, Se, Zr, Cd, Sn, Sb, Hf, and Pb) were significantly greater than 1 in PM10-2.5, suggesting corresponding indoor sources in the PM10-2.5 size range. Some other metals (Al, K, Ca, V, Mn, Fe, Cu, Ga, Rb, Sr, Y, Mo, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Gd, Dy, Yb, and U) in PM10-2.5 had I/O ratios close to one suggesting they had predominantly outdoor origins. Enrichment factors of several metals including light rare earths (e.g. Cu, Sb, Pb, Mo, Cd, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, and Sm) with respect to local soil were overall the highest both indoors and outdoors, illustrating their anthropogenic origins. Several lines of evidence including light lanthanoid ratios, simultaneous La–Ce-Sm variations (ternary diagrams), and correlations with cracking catalysts indicated that petroleum refineries are principally responsible for the elevated lanthanoid concentrations. Rare earth element analysis revealed shifts between transient catalyst releases from petroleum refining operations and windblown soil resuspension as their dominant sources.

48 Educating and Empowering Inner-City High School Students in Bleeding Control

48 Educating and Empowering Inner-City High School Students in Bleeding Control

Using Video Game Development to Motivate Program Design and Algebra Among Inner-City High School Students

Introducing inner-city high school students to program design presents unique challenges. The typical assumptions of an introductory programming course, like students understand what variables and functions are, may not be safe. Therefore, asking students to define functions as part of the program design process may be an overwhelming task. Many students do not understand that a function is an abstraction over similar expressions and that parameters represent the differences among these expressions. This articles presents a novel approach to teaching program design to high school students while simultaneously reinforcing high school algebra. The approach is based on a design recipe to help students develop the abstractions that lead to functions. Using a bottom-up approach, students are taught how to abstract over similar expressions. They are then taught how to use high school algebra concepts, like compound functions and function composition, to also design functions. In addition, the article also presents empirical data collected from students to measure their reaction to the course. For the students in the course, the empirical data suggests that high school algebra concepts are successfully reinforced and that students feel they become better problem solvers, find programming intellectually stimulating, and walk away with an interest in programming.

Patchwork capital and postsecondary success: Latinx students from high school to college

ABSTRACT In scholarly conversations of college readiness, the academic performance of Latinx students largely hinges on questions of culture. College success necessitates fluency in dominant cultural capital and community cultural wealth. Inner-city high schools, however, inadequately endow Latinx students with dominant cultural capital and are often subtractive of community cultural wealth. Nonetheless, many Latinx college students are enjoying academic success. To understand how Latinx students from inner-city high schools are succeeding in college in spite of insufficient preparation, I introduce the concept of ‘patchwork capital’ grounded in interviews and observations of twelve Latinx students from high school to college. As opposed to middle- and upper-class students who seamlessly apply robust collections of college-ready capital to postsecondary transitions, low-income, Latinx students adopt a more piecemeal approach. Through scattered experiences in and out of school, Latinx students produce a patchwork of dominant and nondominant cultural resources, tenuously assembled and applied towards college success.

Sustainable Consumer Choices: An Outreach Program Exploring the Environmental Impact of Our Consumer Choices Using a Systems Thinking Model and Laboratory Activities

A summer workshop was offered to inner-city high school students to explore the sustainability of their consumer choices using a systems thinking model. Students learned about related environmental...

Empowering care in the inner-city: meeting standards with high expectations

ABSTRACT This paper provides a narrative account describing how a first-year teacher’s empowering care in her mathematics classes in an inner-city high school in Southern California contributed to better student learning and helped raise district-wide test scores. The purpose of the article, chronicled from a practitioner’s point of view, examines how teacher beliefs that “all students are capable of learning,” operationalised concretely in terms of empowering care, enabled students to achieve impressive academic performances as measured by the district standardised tests during the recent school year. Through applying the research methodologies of narrative inquiry and conversation analysis to interpret the data, this study focuses on how students from impoverished, urban neighbourhoods started to believe in themselves. As a result, these students demonstrated that they could improve their learning in Algebra I and consistently perform better on district tests, outperforming other classes at their school and other schools within the district.

Student Perspectives on the Common Core: The Challenge of College Readiness at Urban High Schools

The Common Core State Standards were designed to prepare all students for college and careers. Using theories of cultural capital and culturally relevant pedagogy, this study of 54 college-bound, inner-city high school seniors seeks to determine how students perceive their college readiness during the implementation of the new standards. While the Common Core promotes the development of higher-order thinking skills and cultural competence, students reported that their schools struggled to meet both of these goals. The findings call into question the capacity of the Common Core to prepare all students for college due to challenges of implementation.

Near-Peer Teaching Outreach Programs to Increase Minority Physician Recruitment

Problem Health disparities among racial and ethnic groups exist in the United States despite improvements in health status and access to care. These inequalities may be reduced by increasing minority physician recruitment; however, how best to recruit these physicians remains unclear. Approach Near-peer teachers are not professionally trained, but have recently learned material that they themselves teach. Near-peer teaching in minority student outreach programs may be effective in increasing minority physician recruitment. The authors used a near-peer teaching model to promote interest in medicine, specifically ophthalmology, as a potential career path for both volunteer near-peer teachers and minority high school students participating in an educational outreach program. Twenty-one college and graduate-school near-peer teachers of various racial and ethnic backgrounds participated to teach 31 inner-city high school students. The program was evaluated using pre- and posttest surveys assessing students' knowledge about and interest in science, medicine, and ophthalmology; analysis used pairwise t-test comparisons. Qualitative responses and an end-of-training survey also assessed students' and near-peer teachers' satisfaction with the program and perceptions about medicine as a career. Outcomes Students' knowledge about and interest in medicine and ophthalmology increased significantly after participation. Near-peer teachers agreed that teaching in the program was beneficial to their careers and made it more likely that they would enter medicine and ophthalmology. Next Steps The authors will track the near-peer teachers' career paths and, in the next iteration, will increase the number of program days. This intervention may serve as a model for outreach for other specialties beyond ophthalmology.

Addressing Minority Representation in Dermatology

This study uses course evaluation responses and anecdotal feedback to assess a pilot program that includes direct mentorship to encourage inner-city high school students from populations underrepresented in medicine to consider careers in dermatology.

The Devolution of the Inner-City High School

Over the past century, the inner-city high school has devolved from a place that was indicative of progress and social betterment to an institution that is severely challenged by structural poverty and racial inequality. Exploring the connections between education and the process of demographic, economic, and political change in Philadelphia, this article considers white resistance to the presence of black people in white neighborhoods and black students in their public schools and, ultimately, the white workplace itself. The typical inner-city high school is no longer widely perceived as a “cathedral of learning,” an engine of upward mobility, and a center of civic pride; it now symbolizes many of the ills of the ghetto. As black and increasingly impoverished students replaced those who were white and middle and working class, public investment in the school declined; it lost the moral authority, political power, and finances so vital to fulfilling its educational mission.

Hospital-based, Multidisciplinary, youth mentoring and medical exposure program positively influences and reinforces health care career choice: “The Reach One Each One Program early Experience”

BackgroundAccording to the National Center for Educational Statistics, underrepresented minorities (URMs) are more likely to leave science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields at higher rates than their peers during undergraduate studies. Many institutions of higher learning have implemented pipeline programs aimed at preparing and inspiring high school and college aged students in select careers in health sciences with varying levels of success. Research has shown that a health care workforce that mirrors the community they serve is more effective in reducing health disparities and increasing positive health outcomes. We hypothesize that a hospital-based, multidisciplinary youth mentoring and medical exposure program will enhance the decision of URM high school students to choose healthcare careers. Materials and methodA retrospective analysis of the Reach One Each One Program (ROEO) was performed. ROEO is a hospital based, 11-week multidisciplinary youth mentoring and medical exposure program for inner-city high school students. The analysis was based on a phone survey of the twenty-six (26) seniors who completed the program and subsequently graduated from high school between May 2013 and May 2015 to assess the following: 1) College enrollment/attendance, 2) Health profession majors, and 3) Pre-med status. The study was approved by the Morehouse School of Medicine Institutional Review Board. ResultsOf the twenty-six students, 23 were female and 3 were male; 25 (96%) of the students were African American and one student was a Caucasian female. Twenty-four (92.3%) of the students were enrolled in college and 2 (7.7%) were scheduled to begin in the spring semester of 2016. Twenty-one of the 24 attending college at the time of the survey (87.5%) were enrolled in a health science degree program and 16 (66.7%) confirmed that they were enrolled in pre-medical (Pre-med) curriculum. ConclusionHospital-based, multidisciplinary medical mentoring programs can have a positive impact on the lives and health care career decisions of aspiring URM high school students. Further study will be necessary to validate the most influential components needed for the success of such programs.

Backtalk

Discussions and research on the achievement gap and equal opportunity rarely consider the amount of time that students from different income groups and from different race and ethnicity groups are engaged with education-related activities. Students in inner-city high schools spend about 25 hours a week in school; students in private schools may spend triple that amount. The amount of engaged time may have a much closer relationship to school outcomes than other considerations. The contrasts among student experiences in inner-city, suburban, private, and boarding schools illustrate how dramatic the differential is and how these differentials relate to college and career success.

Asthma and subjective sleep disordered breathing in a large cohort of urban adolescents

ABSTRACTObjective: Sleep disordered breathing (SDB) has not been well studied in urban adolescents with asthma in community settings. Nor has the association of SDB symptoms and asthma severity been studied. We characterized self-reported symptoms suggesting SDB and investigated the association of SDB symptoms, probable asthma, and asthma severity. Methods: 9,565 adolescents from 21 inner-city high schools were screened for an asthma intervention study. Students reported on symptoms suggesting SDB using questions from the 2007 NHANES, if they were ever diagnosed with asthma, and on asthma symptoms. Using generalized linear mixed models with logit link with school as a random intercept and adjusting for age, gender, and race/ethnicity, we examined associations of SDB symptoms, and demographic characteristics, probable asthma, and asthma severity. Results: 12% reported SDB symptoms. Older and bi-racial participants (compared to Caucasian) had higher odds of symptoms suggesting SDB (p <.001). Compared to those without probable asthma, adolescents with probable asthma had 2.63 greater odds of reporting SDB symptoms (p <.001). Among those with probable asthma, the odds of reporting SDB symptoms increased with asthma severity. When exploring daytime severity and severity due to night wakening separately, results were similar. All results remained significant when controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity. Conclusions: In a large urban community cohort of predominately ethnic minority adolescents, self-reported SDB symptoms were associated with probable asthma and increased asthma severity. This study highlights the importance of SDB as a modifiable co-morbidity of asthma.

A Case Study of Positive Behavior Supports-Based Interventions in a Seventh-Grade Urban Classroom

Struggling with frequent off-task behavior, a teacher in a midwestern inner-city high school requested assistance in her social studies classroom. A study was designed to investigate if a combination of positive behavior supports-based interventions such as behavior-specific praise and reduced teacher reprimands might improve on-task behavior. A classroom-wide, explanatory embedded case study was carried out over three months in a high-poverty urban 7–12 high school. The intervention resulted in increased on-task behavior classwide. Implications for culturally responsive practices for students in an urban classroom setting are discussed.

Why Dancers Should Care About Colonialism--Because It's the Gift That Keeps on Giving. Find out how by looking at "Save the Last Dance"

Why Dancers Should Care about Colonialism—because it’s “The Gift that Keeps on Giving Do you absolutely love those Hollywood movies where a ballet dancer encounters hip hop and ends up dazzling everyone? Read on…. by Julianna Cressman After a long day of dancing at UC Irvine, I told my roommate over tea that I could absolutely ruin the 2001 dance film Save the Last Dance for her. You know, the movie starring Julia Stiles in which a young, fragile, white ballet student named Sarah is suddenly forced to transfer to a primarily black, inner-city high school. There, she faces both racial tension and the loss of her suburban childhood comforts, yet still triumphs in her audition for Juilliard with the fresh hip-hop skills she acquires from her new peers at school. We dancers tend to love this film in general. We get excited when we see modern or ballet, our high-art practice, represented in popular film. The narrative of a dancer getting into a performing arts conservatory resonates with all of us, because we all audition and we all want to succeed. As my roommate expressed her zest for the film, I was reminded of my own dancer nostalgia, remembering the first time I saw Center Stage or the first Step Up movie. I felt galvanized by these films; they made me feel confident and proud of my dance world. These movies were also a major adhesive for my social life at my home studio, because we all agreed how absolutely awesome they were, and repeatedly indulged in these popular romance, high- stakes competitive dance narrative spectaculars. But, this light-hearted perspective did not last long when I left my ballet studio behind and enrolled at UCI. In my Screening Race class my freshman year, a research course devoted to Race and Media studies, I finally decided to take a critical look at the Stiles movie, and subsequently “ruined” it for myself. But it was an important step in making me a more informed dancer—and person. Through my research, I found that Save the Last Dance tries to put forth a progressive, anti-racist message by portraying a triumphant interracial relationship featuring hip hop dance, and showcasing a primarily black cast, but ultimately, it fails at this mission. The film prioritizes the personal losses suffered by Stiles’ character, Sarah (her mother has just died), as she appropriates hip-hop and blackness to help her heal and serve her Eurocentric dance goals of joining the Juilliard elite. It struck me that the melodramatic portrayal of individual triumph and romance appeals to the hip-hop generation, but the movie ignores the larger issues of structural racism embedded within the story. Save the Last Dance assumes a post-racial sentiment that allows for and embraces appropriation, and it also recapitulates stereotypes of the black community. When examined with a critical lens, the film is a Eurocentric pop piece that ends up highlighting the supremacy of whiteness and high-art. The film accomplishes this in its narrative and in its subtle camera techniques and music choices. Using the theme of hip-hop versus ballet, the film makes the statement: Ballet, equated with whiteness, always wins. To be clear, when I say I can “ruin the movie for you, I really mean “deconstruct. This is not a negative thing; it’s a powerful tool for navigating our modern world. Deconstruction is a