Seven of My Students Receive IRCO Award

Very proud of Briana, Jessica, Leen, Ximena, Erik, Brandon, and Dacha of our Immigration, Migration, and Belonging Freshman Inquiry course for receiving Africa House--IRCO's Rising Star Award for volunteering more than 200 hours of tutoring with immigrant teens this year, plus a major research project.

They also undertook a major research project to try to determine how to balance the number of tutors and youth on any given Saturday. This entailed researching the impact of tutoring on immigrant youth as well as creating a mechanism for students and tutors to register their intention to attend and to reward them for using that mechanism.

This seems to me like a good example of authentic learning, a research project in which students are charged with learning academic knowledge and practical skills that will improve the lives of people they know and care about. The knowledge and skills are not, pun intended, just "academic."