If you ever wanted to lock in a serious salary - like $200K a year - begin an organization like Peer Forward or College Summit, its old name. It has TWO of these lucky folks.
However, this organization LOST three and a quarter million bucks last year and doesn't have a high rating with Charity Navigator. They spend a bunch on fundraising expenses.
You have to wonder if there's a Democrat Congressman somewhere in the organizaion....,
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“One of the worst lessons that students get from school is that you win by yourself” says one of the founders of the movement. But this lesson is central to our competitive, free enterprise, personal responsibility culture and economy. If you are working with others to achieve a common goal, you should always be looking for how to use this experience to advance and get somewhere better; as an entrepreneur of your own life, not to make this your ultimate orientation is to fail to do your job and invite a lack of success.
Winning by yourself and for yourself is a key value of our society, and this program deliberately undercuts that value by encouraging students to think of themselves as members of a collective and to measure their success by the success of the collective. It will produce people more like Obama (who was a community organizer) and less like Trump.
Whether or not this is a good thing is another question entirely, but the program does swim against the present current of our country.
I have been a volunteer with College Summit/Peer Forward for a dozen years. I have worked with more than 100 students in helping to write a Personal Statement. Not all have gone to college but most have. Years later most have graduated from college and have middle class lives. Privileged. Hardly. Respectful---always. Changed lived. Surely. Worthwhile-Absolutely.
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I found this piece inspiring until this sentence:
“But if a student says to another student, ‘Knowledge is power. We need higher education so we can overcome our oppression,’ they’re much more likely to listen.”
You need education because it enables you to think and to survive and get on in a complex modern world. It also enables you to see through the destructive left wing social justice narrative that you are subject to an abstract noun, oppression, which is code for "Your circumstances are the fault of white males who must be brought down so you can be lifted up".
I am pleased that Mr Urena has sorted his life out and appears to be on the right path to a happy and productive life. If he is wise he will continue his education throughout his life. He will help his children by marrying and staying faithfully with their mother and will encourage them to learn. He will pass on values of honesty, integrity, hard work and care for others. He will not tell them they are oppressed.
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@Ian What is a false narrative , Ian, is that lifting up people of color brings down white people.
It is not a zero sum game.
It's funny that you bring this up. I have seen the power of peer support in building resiliency among the college population of one of the most diverse public urban universities in the US. In fact, when I see what is going on around the world, I think it'd be a great idea to call on the 20,000 or so students who went through that particular peer college support practice to ignite a resiliency building movement through our coffee shops or something by circling up and passing along the critical reflection practice. I remember the experience generated a sense of belonging, drove us to volunteer, built our critical thinking skills and broadened our world views - all through a direct learning story telling practice focused on developing the skill to objectively observe one's subjective experience.
Wouldn't that be fun? More than a march or a moment - let's come together and bond over stories about how we serve the community
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Good Luck to This Innovative Peer Power Model!!
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Great to this, very timely.
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I think this is an atrocious model that only cements the privilege (and sense of superiority) of those deemed "advantaged" peers... ick.
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@former MA teacher I accidentally hit "recommend" - meant to hit reply. All the PeerLeaders I've met are humble, thankful for the support, and focused on paying it forward. Just wish you could see them in action - they put in so much time and sweat equity into helping their fellow students. They take the learnings from the PeerForward workshops and find creative ways to share it and inspire their peers to think bigger.
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@Amanda That's great to hear! But it doesn't always work that way---students are not always humble among one another and I think it depends on the culture of the community where folks have a different sense or judgment of what makes for qualifying privilege, and I think in NYC there's more of an understanding of wealth privilege as happenstance, hard work or even good fortune than would be found in some other communities.
Boston teacher: I think the article does not describe privileged students but rather kids from poor deprived struggling families including one who was homeless for a period of time. This kind of peer mentoring--similar to the approach of the Posse foundation--has been proven to lead to improved outcomes and increases success
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Having just returned from a trip to the Netherlands, I can only ask, where are the apprenticeships in America? What has become of vocational education at the secondary level? Why is the focus only on college and university as if there were no alternatives in the universe? Not all of us are college material and far too many of us are college-bound, watering down the marketability of a college degree and marginalizing educational standards. Surely robots and automation are not going to do away with all the jobs we formerly categorized as "blue-collar." Who's gonna fix our plumbing, build our houses, work on our engines?
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You are so right but the results are incredibly impressive and vocational assistance can be helped as well as you can see from the third question. Would try to encourage this and then adapt for vocational training and apprenticeship but most important will be ongoing education and training to adapt to the changing world. Think of this as the art of the possible and the empowerment of young people. Maybe something like this can help in areas where opiate addiction is so high.
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@Tournachonadar In the near future who will do most of the skilled manual labor jobs? Yeah, robots.
@Wayne, my email tag at work reads
“Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.”
George Santayana