Making a Difference - The Why: Why We Need the SOS Classroom Project (Paper #4)

From the moment I became involved with contributing to the SOS Classroom Project, the need for such a project gripped my attention. It was clear that the SOS would be a lifeline in offering an alternative solution to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s closure of its summer school classrooms. Being involved in the SOS project with my fellow students has felt like working in an academic ambulance. Our job has been a kind of rescue mission to get this much needed project up and running in time to stem the hardship and pain hemorrhaging from thousands of children who have been shut out of their schools. In many ways, the SOS Classroom Project can’t arrive fast enough.The educational crisis has taken a serious toll in diminishing children’s opportunities to learn, thus diminishing their potential to build a better future. Summer school closure is not only a setback for our children, but a setback for our larger human family. Like the ripple effect of a stone falling in a pond, such an abrogation of delivering educational services fans out to impact the well being of the community as well as the nation.

Children are our greatest resource and our ability to educate them ranks among our greatest humanitarian obligations and achievements. The inability of leaders, educators, parents, and care givers to provide quality educational summer resources to children because of disintegrating budgets has fostered a sense of abandonment, disappointment and frustration among students who are most in need of academic remediation and psychological support. The enormity of the problem of missing summer school is incalculable; missing one summer term for a struggling student likely prevents that child from mastering a crucial subject, preventing him from entering the fall semester on improved academic ground. The most hard hit groups are minority and alien resident students. Yet, the need for supplemental academics touches all classes, races and ethnicities. The summer session is a particularly sensitive and critical session most likely to be attended by the weakest performers in mathematics and language arts. Summer offers remedial students a second chance to re-apply themselves to what was missed in the regular term. Thus, the summer session is critical to failed and barely passing students. Importantly, summer also assists gifted students in moving ahead on the learning track. The failure of the system to provide summer school leaves children without a place or focus of learning and with few resources. The adage, “It is a terrible thing to waste a mind,” would seem to have come to pass in our current educational debacle were it not for the arrival of the SOS Classroom Project to the rescue.

As the SOS Classroom steps forward in its development to salvage our schools, we realize we need this internet classroom because it provides an answer to our most pressing questions: Where can we turn to in order to intellectually aid our children in kindergarten through 8th grade? What resources will provide them with a quality academic experience that is cost effective/free, and convenient to the safety of the home? Moreover, what academic solution will our children be willing to respond to? What will appeal to them to the degree they will be willing to learn and thrive in doing so?

The SOS Classroom answers these questions in being built and organized with Web 2.0 technology. The website is in the process of being established through the combined efforts of University of Southern California professor, Dr. Mark Marino, joined by tech writing students that are assisting his efforts. It is the first web address that uses social bookmarking, such as diigo and del.icio.us, for academic studies. As everyone contributes to reviewing sites, what was once a problem for the greater Los Angeles community becomes solved by the communal effort of the community combing the internet to post quality academic learning sites. These sites offer a sense of fun to academically challenged students, relieving performance anxiety through colorful animated formats and interesting ways to learn. Learning games, music, animations and other exciting features provide a close connection to pleasurable entertainment media. The SOS Classroom is a learning engine built of care, vision, and human resource, that becomes more advanced and improved as we use and build it.

As soon as a hundred fliers were printed announcing the SOS Classroom, they were immediately grabbed up by parents and children in East Los Angeles. Another stack was immediately sent out and I’m printing more. From the enthusiastic reaction on the street to the pilot “Preview” announcement of the SOS Classroom, it seems that the need and desire to make the SOS a reality is very real indeed. Reflecting on the enthusiasm encountered so far for the project, it seems the need for the SOS project goes beyond the failure of the educational system: the need for the SOS Classroom is powered by the basic human need for mental engagement that fuels our desire to learn. Providing a forum that allows kids to process learning information at their own pace and on their own terms is immediately recognized as an ideal situation. The SOS helps kids master mathematics and language arts in an arena that empowers them to get hold of their own academic success through self-directed study. As one kid was reported to have said, “Wow! Very Cool! This is something I can do!”As much as educators vitally contribute and prescribe to the learning process, learning also significantly takes place within the initiative and willingness of students to enlist their own personal challenges and enthusiasms. Personal initiative is something the SOS Classroom capitalizes upon.

The need for the Save Our Summer Classroom extends well beyond summer and is a resource kids can turn to all year long. On the street handing out fliers, feedback from older kids and adults voiced the hope that eventually the site might address the challenges facing high school students in becoming competent in math and English in anticipation of passing the High School Exit Exam. Through the SOS Classroom recommending a menu of sites that best address studies most helpful to High School Exit Exam preparation, the role of SOS as a vital academic resource would be extended. It would prove especially helpful to those who have been unable to pass the exam and have matriculated without a diploma, discovering themselves out of school and severely limited in their job opportunities. Indeed, future students coming to work on building the SOS might want to explore extending the venue of the SOS project to assist this academic hurdle. For future students coming into the project, canvassing opinion and keeping an ear open to feedback is important to keeping the SOS fresh and vital.

The potential for the development of personal pride in working toward self-directed accomplishment in the SOS Classroom is tremendous. Indeed, the SOS Classroom is something kids can do themselves, enjoying the activity and process of learning as much as playing. The more the SOS Classroom empowers children as well as adults to feel a sense of accomplishment and academic improvement, the greater will be the site’s success as a respected resource. Indeed, mathematics and language arts are the cornerstones of the curriculum offered by the website at www.sosclassroom.org,which tags and reviews these must-have, much needed subjects by grade levels. The SOS organizes the web as a great educational portfolio and accessible treasure trove, concentrating on subjects that provide today’s children the needed tools with which to meet tomorrow’s challenges. Most of all, the SOS Classroom places the keys to accomplishment in student’s own hands. The SOS is arriving to the rescue!