CSSP - Community School Student Partnership

I joined the family ! I had read about the CSSP ( Community School Student Partnership) even before arriving here and I  am not disapointed about the additional information I now have.

From now on, on every Friday from 3 to 6 i'll be a after school mentor in a community school of West Philadelphia.

Community School Student Partnership offer to Penn students the opportunity of tutoring in community schools of West Philly where the rate of children able to read is disgracefully low. Students can volunteer or be work study in one of the programs (after school tutoring, reading initiative, recess program ...). 

Why "family"? Because CSSP tries to create this kind of atmosphere and to be full of positive energy. As a future mentor I went to training sessions to learn about the culture of the organization. It's basically about being positive (this includes chants, dances and vocabulary all staff member and children know and use to communicate with each other).

What is a comunity school ? 

According to a reliable source (i.e. wikipedia, hmm hmm) : 

(...) don't read everything unless you are very curious, the key concept is the idea of school as centers of community life. I guess you can identify it to a movement, its supporters do try to influence politics. 

"According to the Coalition for Community Schools, a branch of the Institute for Educational Leadership, a community school is "both a place and a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources" with an integrated focus on academics, health and social services, leadership, and community engagement. Community schools are generally public, i.e. government and tax-payer funded, though many private and charter schools have also adopted the model. One of the difficulties the movement has encountered is the sheer diversity of institutions claiming to be community schools. This, coupled with the decentralized structure of American education, has hampered efforts to quantify the number of community schools nationally extant.

The movement gained momentum in the Chicago area, where the Federation for Community Schools is working to disseminate the model throughout the public-school infrastructure. With the appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, to the post of Secretary of Education, the concept of "schools as centers of community life" has become part of the national education agenda. Currently, many local, state, and national organizations seek the establishment of community schools throughout the country. Of these the most prominent non-profits are the Coalition for Community Schools, Communities In Schools, Schools of the 21st Century (an initiative of Yale University), the National Community Education Association (NCEA), and the Children’s Aid Society. The United States government (through the 21st Century Community Learning Center) and various state governments also provide funding and policy support for community school initiatives."