Vassar Education Collaboration - VEC

Join Exploring College on December 4th from 3:30pm-5:00pm on Zoom! We'll talk about finding your people after high school, how to live with a roommate, whether or not college is right for you, and more! ALL ATTENDEES WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN PRIZES, including JBL wireless headphones (pictured below). Email [email protected] to register today!

VELLOP Holds it annual Gift Drive for young students at the Early Learning Center. Donations welcomed.

Club VAST (Vassar After School Tutoring) is up and running! We are offering Homework Help/Mentor Hour on Tuesdays from 3-4pm and an Activity Hour from 3-4pm on Thursdays.

Fill out an application at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe45QhVw6ME7Xw6NEuQKwj79SqnATdgcVd4ajq6Boa6huJYUg/viewform

If you're interested in learning more about Exploring College and how we've moved virtual for Fall 2020, join one of our interest meetings on September 24th! We will give you a rundown on what our program offers and answer any of your questions. Fill out the Google form below and we will send you the official Zoom link!

https://forms.gle/WMvAH8w7McucVHY58

VCUEI Programming will be virtual this Fall as Vassar students are committed to staying on campus and the Poughkeepsie Schools are on-line. But Exploring College, Vassar After School Tutoring, and Vassar English Language Learners Program will innovate and continue. If you are a Vassar student and would like to participate we can use you.

We're happy to announce that VELLOP (our English Language Learners Outreach Program) is currently accepting applications to tutor this Fall!

If you're a Vassar student interested in tutoring and mentoring K-12 ENL (English as a New Language) students in the Poughkeepsie City School District, don't hesitate to apply.

Feel free to spread the link to our application: https://tinyurl.com/VellopSummerSurvey

Please direct any and all inquiries to our VELLOP Coordinator at [email protected]

Thank you!

Check out this amazing article on our two summer programs: Getting Ready for High School and the Exploring College Summer Intensive! We are so proud of our students and thankful for our educators.

https://stories.vassar.edu/2020/local-teens-thrive-in-vcuei-summe-programs.html

Local Teens Thrive in VCUEI Summer Programs - Vassar College Urban Education Initiative Helps Prepare Poughkeepsie High School Students for Upcoming Academic Challenges More than 30 Poughkeepsie High School students took part in Exploring College and Getting Ready for High School, two programs run by the Vassar College Urban Education Initiative to help prepare community youth for their next academic challenges.

We ended the two-week program Getting Ready for High School last Friday. Students explored Poughkeepsie. One said at the end "Poughkeepsie is way cooler than I thought after 12 years of living here. I'm now realizing that." That was our hope.

In our Exploring College Summer Intensive, students identified plants in the local area using the iNaturalist phone application and created journal entries. Here are two beautiful examples of their work!

We are in the middle of a 2-week program called Getting Ready for High School. 16 upcoming 9th graders at PHS are participating. They read, discuss, learn and also chose activities around Poughkeepsie to undertake. One is going to the Walkway over the Hudson. There's lots to do in Poughkeepsie.

It has been a very busy two weeks for Exploring College! Yesterday morning our students gave fantastic final presentations on their digital narratives and yesterday afternoon we held a virtual closing ceremony to celebrate their successes! During the program, students received a comprehensive introduction to environmental science and applied this knowledge by writing letters to local policy makers, outlining policy ideas for sustainability within their own communities. We are constantly inspired and impressed by the thoughtful ideas our students bring into the world and we are so honored to work with them. We cannot wait to see where they go next!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/13/health/school-learning-online-education.html
We're learning the online courses are more effective if the student has a coach. So we are exploring how the VCUEI mentors can do that in the Fall if schools are not fully back in person.

What We’re Learning About Online Learning As virtual classrooms and online learning proliferate, researchers are working to quantify what works and what doesn’t.

The Exploring College Summer Intensive starts after the long weekend on Monday! We want to share a podcast our students will be listening to in the program about oil companies and climate change. Give it a listen here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/audio/2019/jun/19/what-oil-companies-knew-the-great-climate-cover-up-podcast?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

What oil companies knew: the great climate cover-up - podcast Author Bill McKibben on how industry lobbying created 30-year barrier to tackling crisis. Plus: John Stewart on his campaign to stop the third runway at Heathrow

We are gearing up for the Exploring College Summer Intensive, this year focusing on Environmental Science in our program Exploring Climate! As this article states, climate change is a human and civil rights issue with a disproportionate effect on communities of color. Read this short article to learn more about racial justice and climate justice. More articles to come in the following weeks as our students study this issue and share their thoughts.

https://www.naacp.org/issues/environmental-justice/

NAACP | Environmental & Climate Justice The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.

For our Spanish-speaking audience!

¡Para nuestra audiencia hispanohablante!:

Estamos empezando un programa emocionante este año: 'Preparándose para la escuela secundaria' para los estudiantes de noveno grado que ingresan a la escuela secundaria de Poughkeepsie.

¡Más información a continuación!

"Did you learn about Juneteenth in school?"

Did you learn about Juneteenth in school? Many Americans don’t. Educators explain why. On the eve of Juneteenth, educators said the history of systemic racism in this country and the contributions of Black people have been erased.

We are starting an exciting program this year - Getting Ready for High School for incoming 9th graders at Poughkeepsie High School. More information below.

Poughkeepsie School Year ends next week and another year of VAST is over. We hope to be back in the Middle School next Fall

Did you miss out on an edition of our weekly newsletter from Exploring College? Don't worry, we now have them all posted online! Check out all our recent newsletters here:
http://pages.vassar.edu/exploringcollege/newsletters/

Newsletters | Exploring College Blog

Are you a high schooler looking for summer opportunities? Apply to the Exploring College Summer Intensive with Vassar College!

We are looking for rising 11th and 12th graders with an interest in environmental science who also want to learn more about the college application process. Our program is FREE!

Our 2020 summer theme is climate change, with a class taught by Vassar professor, Pinar Batur, and field work led by the director of the Environmental Cooperative at Vassar Farm, Jen Rubbo. Our program will be held online, but depending on the restrictions come July, we hope to have in-person components wherever possible.

For more information and to apply online before June 15th, visit our website here:
https://www.vassar.edu/urban-education-initiative/programs/exploring-college/summer-intensive/

It's now easier to email Vassar Education Collaboration - VEC

Hello and welcome to our new Vassar Education Collaboration Page! Here you will find all the most recent updates for our three programs, Vassar English Language Learners Outreach Program (VELLOP), Vassar After School Tutoring (VAST) and Exploring College. Read on to hear more information about each of our programs!

Vassar English Language Learners Outreach Program (VELLOP):
VELLOP provides tutoring services to ELL students throughout the Poughkeepsie City School District. Our focus is on literacy improvement, the importance of bilingualism, and dropout prevention. VELLOP serves students of all grade levels and uses a tutoring model that connects our Vassar tutors with both classroom teachers and ELL students. For more information about VELLOP, email [email protected] or check out our website here:
https://www.vassar.edu/vassar-education-collaboration/programs/vellop.html

Vassar After School Tutoring (VAST):
For the past 15 years, Vassar College has operated an after school tutoring/mentoring program at the Poughkeepsie Middle School, designed to increase educational opportunity in the City of Poughkeepsie and foster a connection between Vassar College and its immediate community. VAST provides individual mentors between 40-50 scholars to promote interest in academics, love of learning, and creative self-expression. VAST also helps prepare students for high school and Vassar College’s Exploring College program. For more information about VAST, email [email protected] or check out our website here:
https://www.vassar.edu/vassar-education-collaboration/programs/vast.html

Exploring College:
Exploring College is a four-year enrichment program designed to support and prepare high school students for college admission and general life after high school. The program encourages collegiate aspirations and aims to improve college readiness among its participants, many of whom will be first-generation students and/or come from low-income backgrounds, and to increase the number of those students who attend college. We offer after school programming, tutoring, SAT/ACT prep, and a 2-week residential summer program on Vassar's campus. For more information about Exploring College, email [email protected] or check out our website here:
https://www.vassar.edu/vassar-education-collaboration/programs/exploring-college/

Vassar English Language Learners Outreach Program (VELLOP) - Vassar Education Collaboration - Vassar College Vassar currently has over 120 students serving 250 Poughkeepsie youth. Vassar Education Collaboration engages more student volunteers than any other program on campus. An estimated 1,000 Vassar students have helped 1,500 Poughkeepsie students in the program’s first 15 years.