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In this eUpdate:
Grant Increases Services to English Language Learners in Gainesville
SIATech Gainesville partners with Job Corps and Santa Fe College to provide after school instruction to ELLs
In a combined effort to bring ELL Language Services to Job Corps students, the new ELL Language Lab at SIATech Gainesville will open for students on Tuesday, September 1st.
Joy Baldree (SIATech Principal), Pamela Easterling (Job Corps’s Career Transition Specialist), along with Julie Falt and Stuart Soto (instructors at Santa Fe College) set out to discover a way to increase services to English Language Learners (ELL) on Center. Through their combined talents and efforts, a program was envisioned and a grant was written that would provide after school ELL instruction and resources to the Center students.
They did it! This month brought cause for celebration as the grant was funded for a full year with the possibility of funding for a second year! Julie Falt and Stuart Soto toured the Job Corps Center on August 12th. They met with instructors and enjoyed interacting with the students. SIATech will be coordinating the ELL Language Lab that will be taught by Mr. Soto and held in the SIATech Senior Projects Lab on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. As wonderful as this all sounds, there may even be enough funding for a second teacher to provide a computerized Tutorial Lab on Wednesday evenings using SIATech’s ELL tutorial software, Dyn Ed.
We can’t thank Mrs. Easterling enough for her initiative and perseverance in obtaining outside resources for the ELL students and to the Florida Department of Education for funding the initiative. The assistance to our ELL students through this grant is truly exciting!
If you would like to learn more about the ELL Language Lab, please contact Ms. Baldree at joy.baldree@siatech.org.
Thank you to SIATech Gainesville Principal Joy Baldree for submitting the news of this grant. This feature was written by Debbie Dala, administrative assistant for Specialized Student Services.
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SIATech Treasure Island's Student Newspaper
A student newspaper is a great way to peer inside the happenings and culture of a school. SIATech's San Francisco site at Treasure Island Job Corps Center produces a compilation of student writings, called The SIATechian. This monthly publication presents personal essays on why students enrolled in Job Corps, creative writing that reflects on students' countries of origin, updates on staff changes, and more. Read the latest SIATechian for a glimpse into the lives of students at SIATech Treasure Island.
Thank you to English ITA Molly Gerber and ELL Coordinator Gary Smith as well as all staff members at Treasure Island for their work producing The SIATechian.
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SIATech Congratulates ResCare on Contract Renewal at Homestead Job Corps Center
Earlier this month, Homestead Job Corps Center announced that ResCare will retain its oversight of the center. Center Director Anthony Taylor commented, "Every Job Corps Center has the same goal. We want to teach our students the skills they need to be successful in life. With over 60,000 students completing the Job Corps program each year...we are now becoming known worldwide for the difference we are making in America’s ‘at promise’ youth."
 SIATech is proud to provide the fully-accredited high school diploma program on the center. As explained by SIATech's East Coast Director of Education Marjorie Lopez, “Homestead has earned accreditations for its high school program, SIATech Charter High School, through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) with Miami-Dade Public School System. This accreditation sets Homestead apart from many other Job Corps centers and speaks to its commitment to offering the best possible supports to the students. We are very proud to be part of Homestead Job Corps Center.”
 According to the Homestead Job Corps Center's Business and Community Liaison Lesly Diaz, Homestead Job Corps Center not only helps the economy by supplying trained and motivated employees to the workforce, it also stimulates the local economy through the 180 employees it has on Center and by the thousands of dollars the Center spends each year on services and supplies. Every dollar invested in Job Corps stimulates $1.91 in economic activity. Job Corps has compiled an impressive record of success in preparing disadvantaged youth ages 16-24 for the workplace, higher education or the military. Over 84 percent of Job Corps graduates obtain jobs, enlist in the military or pursue higher education.
Congratulations to Marjorie Lopez on her recent promotion from SIATech Homestead Principal to Director of Education for all SIATech Florida school sites. Thank you to Homestead JC's Business and Community Liaison Lesly Diaz for submitting this story.
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SIATech Long Beach Student of the Month: Lashanda Kent
 It is great when students inspire staff and students around them. This month, one of those students is Lashanda Kent. Lashanda began SIATech High School a few months ago. Lashanda was a hard worker then, but it was not so easy to work with her. She was hard to communicate with because of her bad attitude. A few weeks later, Lashanda left on a medical leave.
A few months later, Lashanda came back to SIATech High School in Long Beach. On her first day back, Lashanda was ready to complete her high school classes. She sat by her desk, she focused, and there was no stopping her. Today, Lashanda will become our first high school graduate of the class of February 2010. I sat with Lashanda and we talked about what inspired her motivation and her attitude change. Lashanda began to talk about her past.
Lashanda grew up in a rough neighborhood in Southern California. In her neighborhood, she began to hang out with gangs. She began to tell me that the streets became her home, and they became more important to her than anything. Her school career began to fail; she began to get suspensions and soon became expelled from her previous high school. Her mom began to get worried and she began to take action. Lashanda enrolled in a probation school, but she did not like it because she felt she was not going to get anywhere. Her mom became worried she would leave the probation school, so she called Job Corps and met with some representatives of the program. A few months later, Lashanda was enrolled.
A few weeks into her high school career, Lashanda found out she was pregnant. She decided to leave and come back once her child was older. Many students would have given up after a huge event like a pregnancy, but she did not. Lashanda commented that her son made her see life differently. Her son was the reason she changed. She commented that she realized that the streets were not going to feed and take care of her child. She needed to take action and become successful for her and her child.
To SIATech, Lashanda is the proud winner of two Student of the Month Awards for July 2009. All her teachers congratulated her and they are very proud of her achievements. We know she will be successful in all her future endeavors.
Thank you to Social Studies Teacher Jose Estrada for submitting this story.
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"Education is not the filling of a pail,
but the lighting of a fire."
- William Butler Yeats
Shared by SIATech San Diego Instructor Sara Lewis at SIATech's August Specialized Student Services Workshop
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