According to Angela Herbert, Outreach Executive Director, “With a rigorous school day that may run from 8:30 AM to after 5PM, it is important for students to have healthy habits, without them it is much more difficult to succeed.”

She added, “Healthy Habits are much more than just nutrition, they are more than healthy eating, they are a lifestyle.”

Working with its partner schools and creating programming to fit the schools’ individual requirements, proper nutrition, healthy eating, cooking classes, and exercise are all part of the Outreach Healthy Habits curriculum. Based on our experience, enrichment classes centered on those topics are very popular with students, and along with physical activities, serve as a “tipping point” as students progress from healthy eating habits to healthy school and lifestyle habits. Enrichment teachers and volunteers serve as positive, reinforcing role models and the lessons are much more effective and often brought home to the dinner table when older students prepare meals or snacks for younger siblings or when they start and care for a vegetable garden. Sports offer participating students the opportunity for physical activity, a chance to compete, to learn about teamwork and responsibility.

Recently Outreach partnered with Zespri Kiwifruit, a New Zealand based multi-national food corporation and Rouse’s Supermarket to raise awareness of the epidemic of childhood obesity. Among the highlights was an event at a Rouse’s store that included staff from the New Orleans Health Department and cooking demonstrations for students.

Another Healthy Habits highlight has been the swimming class for Sci high students that Loyola University is hosting at the behest of Outreach. Students are learning to swim for safety and for exercise.

WWL-TV aired a story about the program:

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The video clip below, originally aired on WGNO, shows Ashe students getting hands-on training by the professionals at Tipitina’s Music Office Co-Op. The students shadowed their hosts for half of the day, while their hosts showed them how the work habits they develop in school help them in the career they will pursue. The importance of setting goals and the value of becoming an active New Orleans citizen was also emphasized. “Besides teaching job search skills, the program aims to strengthen the relationship between students and their community,” said Claudia Barker, Executive Director of New Orleans Outreach.

The event is one of the culminating components of a semester-long visionary program called New Orleans Outreach Power Ties, a career awareness program developed by New Orleans Outreach that links professionals from various occupations with New Orleans middle school students through a series of career oriented workshops. The workshops, taught by volunteers from the Junior League of New Orleans, allow students to learn about basic job skills such as resume building and interview techniques.

The Career Day consisted of four mini-workshops. Three of the workshops included important career skills, such as writing thank you notes, basic office skills, and business etiquette. Students also get to participate in mock interviews with the volunteers, who give them feedback on their presentation, preparing them for future interviews with real employers.

The New Orleans Outreach Power Ties volunteers were members of the Junior League of New Orleans, many of whom had also taught the previous on-campus Power Ties workshops. The Junior League is a prominent supporter of the New Orleans Outreach Power Ties program by providing funding and volunteers. Now celebrating its 85th anniversary, The Junior League is an organization that encourages women to utilize their potential through volunteering in the community.

The Career Day ended with a “Power Lunch” hosted by Zea Rotisserie and Grill. The meal included a motivational presentation by former NFL player and local attorney Christian Rhodes.

Christian Rhodes received his law degree from Loyola University New Orleans School of Law and is currently an attorney with Roedel Parsons. Rhodes explained to the students that the path you choose doesn’t always bring you to the career you expected, as demonstrated by an injury during his first few weeks as a professional football player, which led him to decide to pursue a career in law.

“It’s important for students to understand that there are many paths to success,” said Claudia Barker, executive director of New Orleans Outreach. “There may be obstacles that they face,but these young people are capable of doing anything they want as long as they work hard and believe in themselves.”

New Orleans Outreach will also offer Power Ties at two other New Orleans public schools, McDonogh City Park Academy and Arthur Ashe Charter School, this spring.

This means that Sci Academy students…

• More than doubled the average scores of students in the Recovery School District.
• Outperformed both the state and Orleans Parish.
• Ranked 3rd in citywide scores, behind the two most selective public high schools in the city–Ben Franklin and Lusher.
• As a non-selective school, outperformed over 60% of selective admissions magnet schools in the city.

These students are making this progress in part because of Outreach’s strong Data-Driven Tutoring Program, which was funded by the Booth-Bricker Fund.

Full implementation of the Data-Driven Tutoring Program began in the late summer and early fall at four schools: Sci Academy, Samuel J. Green Charter School, Arthur Ashe Charter School, and the New Orleans Charter Science and Math High School (Sci High). The first half of this year of full implementation has yielded positive results for students, as well as more information about best practices in creating a successful program model.

Outreach hired a full-time tutor coordinator who works with school leadership and faculty to determine the scope and logistics of the program; to hire, train, and support lead tutors and to create and implement training for the volunteer tutors. The tutor coordinator also tracks and reports qualitative and quantitative findings to adjust each program, determines best practices and program success, and creates a model that will be replicated in subsequent years. Outreach hires and pays a lead tutor for each school site and recruits and trains both volunteers and paid tutors to serve as the program’s frontline staff, working with students with the most pressing needs. Tutoring is either done on a one-to-one basis or in very small groups of two or three students per tutor. All tutors receive training from the tutor program coordinator, Outreach’s site-based program managers, and partner school faculty. Ongoing professional development, covering curriculum, school culture, behavior policy, etc. continues throughout the year.

Students who participated in Outreach’s Data-Driven Tutoring Program averaged a 9.6% gain on academic assessments across all tutored subjects. Some even surpassed the academic gains of their peers who were not identified as needing extra help. Outreach is still in need of a few tutors at various schools. If you are interested in being a volunteer tutor, please email our volunteer coordinator, Josh Fertitta, at volunteer@nooutreach.org. If you are interested in being a paid tutor, please send a cover letter and resume to jobs@nooutreach.org.

Believe it. Students are succeeding. Schools are improving. It is up you if the trend is to continue.

There are many reasons – the charter school movement that took hold after Katrina, extraordinary educators who have flocked here, progressive administrators, reform organizations, and national foundations looking to fund initiatives that improve academic achievement – but most of all, it is because of you, the New Orleanian who has decided that public education can and should be a priority for this community and who is willing to get involved to make it happen.

New Orleans Outreach is one of those organizations and our Academic and Cultural Enrichment Program is one of those initiatives making a difference in the quality of education we offer children. This program brings music, arts, sports, dance, robotics, debate, cooking and nutrition classes – in all, over 100 elective afterschool and summer classes to New Orleans children who otherwise would not have them. With your support we can expand our reach even further.

The last few years have seen an almost unbelievable transformation at New Orleans Outreach. Just a few short years ago we had a mere handful of employees and fewer than 100 volunteers all working in one or two schools. Last year we managed the efforts of more than 2,000 volunteers and over 250 paid contract instructors and community partners who provided more than 76,000 hours of direct service, benefitting almost 2,400 students in eight schools.

All told, our investment provides more than $1,000 worth of classes, programs, and services for every student in our partner schools, which is all the more astonishing when you consider the state provides each school with less than $9,000 per student.

New Orleanians like you make this happen. You volunteer and bring your experience, energy, and enthusiasm into classrooms across the city. You tutor, you teach, you mentor and coach, you listen and you inspire. And of course, you donate and make it all possible. Your donations do more than fund programs. They show the nation that you have faith in reform and that you are ready and willing to help with the heavy lifting in this effort to create better schools for all children.

Every dollar you donate will be leveraged by using it to match corporate and foundation grants, government grants and volunteer efforts so that your dollar effectively becomes $2.50 – $3.00 in the schools. But it all starts with your dollar. I am asking you to support New Orleans Outreach’s Annual Fund. One hundred dollars becomes three hundred, five hundred becomes fifteen hundred, and one thousand becomes three thousand.

Your support is vitally important if progress is to continue. And progress must continue because upwards of 40% of kids entering ninth grade in New Orleans’ public schools are not going to graduate with their class.

The price of failure? It is one we surely cannot pay.

Don’t almost donate. Please make your gift to Outreach today. It’s your investment in tomorrow.

Read more and listen to the story at www.wwno.org.

To study political science, Sean Hood moved to New Orleans after Katrina and enrolled at Loyola University.  To help rebuild New Orleans he became a student leader, serving on the board of directors of LUCAP, Loyola’s student-led community outreach program.

Many of Sean’s Loyola classmates have felt the same calling and have tied their educational experience with their desire to help others and the “opportunity to rebuild a city,” a combination which, according to Sean, “is unheard of elsewhere in the country.”  Many of Sean’s classmates are also Outreach volunteers.

Hood came to Outreach in 2008, volunteering as a high school teacher assistant, tutoring students one-on-one, facilitating group activities, and observing alternative teaching methods.  While initially appalled at how behind many of his students were, Sean also recognized their potential and more importantly, their desire.  Sean says he doesn’t pity the students because they are not looking for pity.  Rather, he says, “They are looking for someone who will put forward the effort to help them succeed.”  The reward for Sean is the almost “exponential improvement that students make in their studies.”

Sean added, “The smiles are a pretty good reward, too.”

According to Executive Director Claudia Barker, “Entergy’s investment offers a tremendous boost to all of our programming efforts.  It translates into improved student academic performance as we further enhace classroom learning with more enrichment classes, better training for volunteers, and more experiential learning opportunities for students.”

Academic and Cultural Enrichment programs, like those offered by Outreach, keep students actively engaged and excited about learning.

Barker added, “Entergy understands that learning needs to engage the whole child and with their help we can offer students a more complete education.”

The board of directors and staff of New Orleans Outreach thank the Entergy Charitable Foundation for its generous support.

Last year, more than 1,900 individuals came to New Orleans Outreach so they could volunteer in a New Orleans public school.  Those volunteers helped comprise an investment of more than 60,000 hours of support that Outreach was able to bring into its partner schools.  They cleaned and painted, built libraries, they tutored, and they taught everything from music, modern dance and art to robotics and rocketry, whatever the schools needed to help their students succeed.

Those volunteers stepped forward because they know that the key to making New Orleans a viable vibrant community is a viable, vibrant public education system.

They stepped forward because there are probably no words to describe the New Orleans public school system in the years leading up to Katrina and that we had to do better.

They stepped forward because one person can make a difference, thousands can make the impossible possible.

New Orleans Outreach provides its volunteers extensive training, placement in a school, and ongoing support because we recognize the importance and value of what volunteers bring to our schools.

Over the past two years Outreach has offered more than 150 different academic and cultural enrichment courses to students in its partner schools in large part because of the talents of our volunteers.  Individuals have taught classes and tutored, conventioneers have painted classrooms and planted gardens, corporate groups have led our Power Ties career awareness programs or supervised interns.

We seek the rocket scientist and student, the chef and electrician, the bicycle repair person and lawyer, the artist and musician, the housewife and grandfather any and all who want to join New Orleans Outreach, all who want to make a difference.

Whatever it takes, whomever it takes, to help students succeed, one hug at a time.

It’s all the pay you’ll get.  It’s all the pay you’ll ever want.

Learn more about how you can be an Outreach volunteer.