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Youth Worker Spotlight

Meet Reginald Griffin from Horn of Africa Services!

Reginald Griffin

 

Amber Jenkins

"We try to overcome that stigma that it is not cool to be black and smart".

Welcome to the Youth Worker's Spotlight for May 2010!

King County is home to so many amazing organizations and youth workers!  The Youth Worker Spotlight will highlight one of these people each month.  If you would like to nominate someone to be spotlighted please send an email to kcydn@childrenandyouth.org.

View past spotlights here

 

Amber Jenkins

Program Manger for the Urban League Scholars @ Garfield High School

Amber Jenkins

Our program serves African American 9th through 12th grade students.  We start with 30 students in their freshman year and they stay with us for four years.  Currently there are 130 students at Garfield even though our capacity is only 120.  We don’t want to turn anyone away that really wants to be in the program.  Original program started 6 years ago requiring kids to double up on math in year one so they can take calculus in their last year and qualify for schools like Yale and Harvard that require this level of math.  This grew into the current program in place today.  We are entering our third year in current capacity which involves after school programming and helping kids with the college application process.

Our focus is on academic support, life and leadership, college prep, and community involvement.  We also emphasize family and community involvement to make sure the parents are more connected with the school.  This becomes a problem as kids get to high school and talking to mom and dad about school is no longer cool.  We try to keep the parents informed about what is going on with their kids at the school.  Our goal is to mend the holes in the public education system through individualized education.   We try to overcome that stigma that it is not cool to be black and smart.  One way we do this is through the development of a cohort that gives the students support.  The cohort helps deal with the cultural isolation of being the only student of color in AP and advanced classes.

Access to resources is a huge piece.  There is so much out there that is not clearly communicated in a way that our community knows it is there.   Understanding the norms of communication is a huge reason that kids cannot succeed in this system.  The kids love it and hate it all at the same time.   There is always somebody “watching them” via shooting an email to check in on them or noticing if they are not at school and calling home to check up.  Although they feel like we are always watching them, at the end of the day they appreciate it.

To date 100% that have graduated high school and gone on to college.

Questions

1)      Why is your program amazing?

  • The kids make it amazing.
  • As a former teacher and what I do now, I’ve never met kids who didn’t want to succeed academically.  We think those who don’t make it, don’t want it, but there are so many components to the system that make it difficult.  Thus, it is so important to personalize it and be a hub of resources for students that will help them get answers and get through whatever the challenge may be for them, emotionally, socially etc.  We build a core group and develop the feeling that somebody is always there for me and that makes it so special.
  • Also, we get to see the end.  We bring them in and get to see an acceptance letter at the end of the day.

2)      What is your favorite program resource?

  • I’m not about reinventing the wheel.  There is tons of great stuff in the community
  • YMCA black achievers weekend programs
  • MESA has programs for Freshman, so I make my days for Freshman certain days so as not to conflict with MESA
  • We also have a great relationship with the local colleges and universities.  UW, Western, Eastern, WSU, SMU (Saint Martin’s University), SPU and Seattle U and UW Bothell
  • College access is a program that we work with.  Currently at Garfield, Franklin and West Seattle this program does college readiness for grades 11 and 12.

3)      Why is connecting with other youth workers important to the work you do?

  • It is so important to connect with other youth workers because we all have the same mission and there is a lot of great youth workers that are not about making sure their name are on it. 
  • We participate in an informal happy hour (with upward bound, NELA, and others) each month.
  • From the old saying it takes a village to raise a child, I think, it takes a village to turn around our community.
  • The more we want to work together, the more it will help our kids.

 

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