ACE Spectrum
ACE Spectrum
Ace Spectrum is about you — the ACE Learning Centers.
It’s a quick sharing of ideas, inspiration, opinions and best practices among our continuing education organizations.
Please join the conversation.
Listen Local – KALW Creates Love Letters About SF’s Portola District, Which is Home to KALW
By Guest Blogger Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW Community Radio
Our reporting project on San Francisco’s Portola District (where KALW’s studios are located) has resulted in some great articles from … and about … us.
The GRIGG Avenue Theater as it stands on San Bruno Avenue. CREDIT: Nicole Grigg.
You might remember the story that Audio Academy fellows Cari Spivack, Jeremy Jue, and Boawen Wang produced back on Valentine’s Day: love letters to the neighborhood. Here’s a quick refresher:
How many Bay Area place names have you been mispronouncing?
Luck of the draw: How trading card games found a home in Portola
Portola neighborhood book club excludes no one
Three more members of the Audio Academy just had their pieces about the Portola air. Here’s a little bit about them:
Portola’s Avenue Theatre may become a neighborhood anchor once again – This story by Nicole Grigg utilizes sound design from The Wizard of Oz to help tell the story of what an iconic movie theater on Portola’s downtown strip once meant to the neighborhood and how efforts are being made to repurpose it as a vibrant hub.
The cottage by the University Mound Reservoir, where the reservoir gardeners work. CREDIT Kanwalroop Kaur Singh.
A secret community of gardeners in Portola tends to the land – Kanwalroop Kaur Singh took creative angles to tell this story of a curious and historic cottage beside a covered reservoir in the district, where gardeners gather and work to make the neighborhood beautiful.
Opt outside: An outdoor education program at Balboa High gets students engaged in school – Claire Stremple got down and dirty in McLaren Park to tell this story about one of Balboa High School‘s small learning communities – the WALC program – which brings teens together to learn about ecology, develop deeper ties with their neighborhood, and get inspired about education.
Balboa’s WALC seniors in McLaren Park. CREDIT: Claire Stremple.
Aside from the fun we’ve had in getting to know the neighborhood better through this work, the neighborhood has been getting to know us. We recently had an article written about our Portola Project by the local publication The Portola Planet. It highlights our fellows’ work and discusses their training in the Audio Academy.
We’re currently accepting applications for the next Audio Academy class. Please spread the word to anybody you think might be interested in getting a great audio education for free. Click here to apply. The deadline is March 31.
Span Tutor Helps San Francisco International High School Grads “Climb Up” to Success
At San Francisco International High School’s ACE Learning Center, it’s recognized that continuing education is linked to job readiness. The Span Tutor and Span Mentor Programs create jobs that build students’ professional skills and make them more employable beyond the SFIHS community. This is part of a series of SFIHS Mentors and Tutors who report on their experiences with the paid program.
By Guest Blogger Yanming, San Francisco International High School Alumni and Span Tutor
Yanming, a SFIHS graduate (’15), is a Span Tutor at City College of San Francisco where he is studying Electronic Engineering.
My name is Yanming and I graduated from San Francisco International High School (SFIHS) in May 2015. I have been attending City College of San Francisco (CCSF) since 2015, studying Electronic Engineering.
I remember the first day I attended to SFIHS, I couldn’t speak English well and no friends talked with me, even though there were lots of students who spoke my first language because they had created small groups already. After one week of school, I realized the class style was very similar to my home country: take classes with your classmates, but unlike in China we went to different classrooms. Taking classes with the same students made me know some of their names and I started to join into their conversation. But, I was not used to it so I just made one or two friends in each group. Life was changing fast. My high school had a final project called portfolios. The portfolio is a project that starts on the end of the fall semester, to help the students to collect all the paper and summarize them to write some reflections and present it front of your classmates, like a little speech. That is very helpful for students to practice speaking, writing and listening. However, it separated my friend with me so I didn’t like it. It gave me a pressure to work with someone who could only use English to talk with me. Maybe I was not comfortable enough to talk with my classmate and use English at that time. However, after that, I felt thankful, and I got used to using English to talk with people around me.
Working in SFIHS now is very challenging. This high school doesn’t just receive the students who immigrate to the United States. It also receives the students who come from all around the world without documents who come to the U.S. and are hiding from war. Most of them did not get enough education in their home country compared the students have the same age with them so they know very limited English and mathematics. Now, I am a tutor to give back to my alma mater: it is not for fame or fortune. It helps the students who are seeking education and opportunity. My job is to help them get used to the education system, focus, respect the class time and finish their homework. And also, I am taking a CCSF class with them, which let them know about the university style, and I give them advice about the class and homework.
To take a class with them is very challenging and I almost wanted to give up. They believe college is obviously like our high school, but now they notice the differences and try extremely hard to fix the mistakes they made. Someone said, “Where I fell, I have to climb up from.” I can see the students exactly achieving that.
SF International HS Span Tutor Sees “Old Self” in Students He Helps Meet Challenges and Attain Goals
At San Francisco International High School’s ACE Learning Center, it’s recognized that continuing education is linked to job readiness. The Span Mentor and Span Tutor Program creates jobs that build students’ professional skills and make them more employable beyond the SFIHS community. This is the start of a series of SFIHS Mentors and Fellows who report on their experiences with the ACE Learning Center paid program.
By Guest Blogger Xiaohui, (English name Herry), San Francisco International High School Alumni and Span Tutor and Mentor
Xiaohui, also known as Herry, graduated from SFIHS in 2015.
My name is Xiaohui and my English name is Herry. I am from Taishan, Guangdong, China. I was born and raised in this small coastal city in southern China. I immigrated to the U.S when I was thirteen years old in 2010. I graduated from San Francisco International High School (SFIHS) in 2015. Currently, I am a second-year student at UC Berkeley. I am studying political science and planning to study political economy as well.
My experience at SFIHS was meaningful because SFIHS provided me various opportunities to learn from the real world, in which books were not able to teach us. For example, School Without Walls allowed us to travel around the city and learn from different places about different topics. I have gotten to know about what I could not learn from school. I visited many organizations that support immigrants by defending their civil rights and providing a voice to speak up for them. I found out that this was what I am passionate about. Soon, SFIHS gave me an opportunity to intern at a political campaign to learn more about what I could do individually to support immigrants.
This semester, I am back to our SFIHS family again, but with a different role. Now, I am working with students as a mentor and tutor with students taking Child Development classes at CCSF. I offer support to students’ homework and share my college experience with them. In addition, I help them with their college and scholarship applications. I wanted this job because I could get a chance to contribute to our SFIHS community in a different way. Since I am more experienced and mature now, I could support the younger students like an elder sibling. This job is sometimes challenging, in which there are things that I do not know because I did not go to their class. But I feel motivated and passionate about this job. I could see my old self from these students since many of them are facing the challenges that I faced when I was in high school. In this case, I feel glad and accomplished that I could advise them and help them attain their goals.