WNYC: Education Correspondent Beth Fertig Reports on a Citizen Schools Initiative Involving Citizen Teachers from Cognizant

Middle school is when kids run the risk of losing interest in school and falling behind. Citizen Schools, a US-based education non-profit, is working to address this issue by extending the school day for students at low performing middle schools in seven states across the US.

In addition to providing tutoring and activities to build communication and collaboration skills, Citizen Schools offers “apprenticeships” led by volunteer professionals who teach the students on a wide range of topics: from developing plans for a tech start-up or a sports franchise, to conducting Mock Trials, programming robots, building solar cars, or building web-sites.

Beth Fertig, WNYC’s education correspondent, reports on the program that has been successful at improving attendance and grades in Boston and is beginning to show promise in New York. She meets sixth graders at the Bronx Writing Academy School. Their assignment is to think about how to launch a new successful technology product.

“The students are paired with volunteers who know about budgeting and marketing,” Fertig says, referring to a team of Cognizant employees—Matthew Bruno, Marco Salcedo and Joshua Bilgrei—who teach an apprenticeship titled “The Next Big Tech Business” where students design tech businesses that address and solve a real-world tech problem. After inventing a product and a business concept, the apprentices are split into three teams: Production, Marketing and Finance. Students hone their teamwork and oral communication skills and pitch their businesses to a panel of business professionals.

“Citizen Teachers” such as Bruno, Salcedo and Bilgrei form the backbone of a program run by Citizens Schools. “It sends a small army of volunteers to struggling middle schools in low-income neighborhoods. With their help, the kids learn about different professions during the course of the school year. They meet after school twice a week for ten weeks and then make presentations to rooms full of professionals,” Fertig reports and goes on to speak to Marco Salcedo, a corporate counsel at Cognizant.

The kids Salcedo is working with have come up with a Facebook forcefield to block any negative or nasty messages. “In a couple of weeks, we are taking them [students] to our company headquarters,” says Salcedo. “I have had some people at our company agree to listen to these pitches that we are going to work on.”

Cognizant is actively supporting Citizen Schools as part of the company’s Making the Future program designed to improve education and learning around the world, especially in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). In addition to Cognizant’s financial support of Citizen Schools, over 90 Cognizant associates have volunteered with Citizen Schools across the US in the past 9 months.

Click here to listen to the report.