Live from the Tish WNET studios at Lincoln Center
and from public television stations across the country, this is American
graduate day,
a special broadcast focused on the high school dropout crisis,
the solutions in action, and how you too can help make a difference.
Though the United States once led the world in high school graduation rates,
recently the high school completion rate among 25- to 34-year-olds
has dropped to 21st out of the 26 nations that belong to the
organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
We're here today celebrating the organizations working to change that
number and bring us up in the standings.
Next up, YMCA of the USA, an organization that currently brings its programs to
more than 10,000 neighborhoods across the country,
working to strengthen communities across the nation by focusing on youth development,
healthy living, and social responsibility. Let's take a look at one of their
branches in San Francisco.
When I grow up, I want to be a baseball player.
I want to be a preschool teacher.
I want to be a doctor.
I want to be an architect.
I want to be a counselor.
I want to be a pianist.
I want to be a vet.
I want to be a basketball player.
The Y has always been about helping young people grow.
The heart and soul of San Francisco is that we have a community that
really cares. People come together they want to make a difference.
About 95% of all of our homicide victims under the age of 25 were high school dropouts.
Well over a third of our prison population dropped out of
school. Bottom line is that we have many, many kids today
that are being raised in an environment where there's a lack of support and understanding at home.
This is where the Y comes in and builds bridges.
I come to the Y every day. I love coming. I come here almost every day.
I get to play basketball here and soccer here in peace.
I get to do a lot of stuff here. This is like the safest place
in the neighborhood I live in other than the library.
Coming here I feel free. I feel like I can be myself.
I feel like I'm okay here.
In order to make a difference, you have to make a difference every day.
Out of school time I'd say is a really critical
period of time during the day for young kids, especially
in urban environments. You look at the reductions in the budget
for the school districts and the fact that many other programs,
the after school programs are gone.
So we have these kids now out there from 3-4 hours at a time every day,
and no productive activity to engage them.
Kids need to play. You know, we get to get down on their level
and play with them and model to them the way to play fairly
and to play hard. One, two, three, tigers!
Their body and their mind and their spirit come together as they grow
through adolescence to have a strong sense of themselves.
Teamwork is very important to me.
I think that's a big skill that you can take in different arenas.
Aim for them to be as much as they can be, you know.
I like playing at the YMCA.
We're teaching them how to read because when they go to the next grade,
they're going to learn how to read,
and it's gonna be easier for them.
Once I became involved with the Y, I was able to kind of identify
what things I did like and what things I would like to change within my neighborhood.
I learned to write a good essay, I can practice on my jump shot in P.E. I just learned how to be a man here, basically.
Eventually they're going to move on, probably as a direct result of being
involved with some of these programs.
They'll graduate from high school or earn a degree.
Just because we
dealt with a group of kids today and they're doing well now,
doesn't mean that the mission ends. The legacy will always
be in the core values and in helping young people define
their own values and their own strengths and their own way to contribute back to
humanity.
YMCA rocks!
The world is often presented as an experience
reserved for those who can afford it, without acknowledging
that it is something that we should all have a right to.
This world is ours--
ours as people,
as organizers,
as movers and shakers, as artists
as ambassadors
of our own communities.
As strugglers.
We are all important in this movement,
and we need each other to build global communities together.
I'm here with Jarrett Royster, National Director of
Urban and Educational Development at YMCA of the USA.,
and also the Demaris Figueroa, a YMCA scholar and a senior at Gramercy Arts High School
in New York. Well, Jarrett Royster, a lot of people probably associate the Y with
the after school clubs, basketball,
day care--a lot of things that the Y has taken on in
modern urban life, but not necessarily educational programs. Tell us what you're up to.
Yeah, so the Y is actually very committed to nurturing the potential of every child and teen,
and we take a very holistic perspective on that.
And a critical element of that, a component of that, is education.
And education has been sort of a staple
of many of our programs. Today we serve more than nine million children
in a pipeline of programs from birth through high school completion.
We also work every day with 10,000 schools, and look--both Demaris and I are both
evidence of the Y's commitment to education.
So, if you're a kid in an urban neighborhood somewhere across the country and
you may be behind a grade level in reading or math,
what might my local Y offer me?
Yeah, so we're doing a lot of things. What we realize is that
what happens outside the school impacts the performance of children
in the classroom. We know low-income children lag behind because they
don't have access to those high quality experiences
that we we call learning, so the Y is committed to doing three things:
left the first thing is we're intentionally deepening our relationships
with those 10,000 schools that we work with to align both our
curriculum and our approaches and identifying the kids who are most at risk.
The second thing we're doing is we're committed to building out a continuum of
evidence-based programs--programs that a proven
to achieve both academic and non-academic outcomes,
things that we know are important, like the kids' self-identity
motivation, and character.
And third and most important, we're focused on four critical areas:
early learning, high-quality out of school time programs,
college and career readiness, an addressing summer learning.
Our aim is to have more than a million kids one day in our pipeline of services.
Demaris, what's a Y Scholar, since you are one? Well, the Y Scholars program in my
school runs during lunch,
so it's pretty much just a way for high school students to just get out of the high
school atmosphere for at least
45 minutes a day, which we all desperately need sometimes.
And through the program, we're able to prepare for college and prepare to graduate.
During the spring and our spring break, we go on college road trips where we
are able to visit colleges in other states,
and it really makes college a more realistic view for us
because we're there in the college, we're exploring it, and we're making it a goal for us.
And in the summer, we have a CIT program where we become counselors in training,
and in this program, we learn how to work with kids, and we learn these skills that
we're going to need later on
when we graduate, when we go off to college. And the staff that we're with
every day is what really keeps me and many of the students there to keep going
to the Y Scholars Program
because they see that potential in us to pass all our classes, to pass two regions
to graduate, go to college and then get a career. You seem like a pretty good kid, like you
wouldn't have been
causing all kinds of trouble and ditching school and all that absent the program.
Does it give you what, a leg up, a chance that
for information that you wouldn't have been able to get some other way?
Yeah, definitely. There was a time in my life when I thought I'm not going to
college. I think after high school, I'll be done.
but with the staff, and our advisers, and the interns we have
in our Y Scholars program within our school, we're motivated to keep going, don't
give up yet,
and just to keep going, pass our classes and view college as something that can happen.
If someone has not necessarily a lot of money, but has some time to give kids, can
you put them to work?
Yeah, we know young people need caring adults, and the more, the better.
Right? So what I encourage you to do is go onto ymca.net
and spend some time volunteering or
mentoring a young person like Damaris.
Do you have to jump through a lot of hoops, or are you going to make it possible and give
somebody the coaching and training they need to help out? We will give them the
coaching and training they need and
have them jumped through very little hoops. Well thank you both. Great to have you with us.
If you'd like to find a Y in your neighborhood, connect with any of the
organizations featured here today,
or become an American graduate champion, please visit our website
or call. Jarrett, Damaris, great to have you with us. Thank you for having us. Thank you.