Five Questions With: Jennie Johnson

"What you would see in a typical class is a corps member supporting student engagement and classroom management while the teacher delivers direct instruction on a new skill."

Jennie Johnson of Warwick is executive director of City Year Providence, one of 26 sites in City Year, an education-focused, national nonprofit organization that partners with public schools to help keep students in school and on track to graduate. She has been in the position for nine years. The organization’s AmeriCorps members support students in grades 3 to 9 by focusing on chronic absenteeism, persistent behavior concerns or failure in math and literacy. Johnson is responsible for raising the Providence site’s budget and oversees the organization’s development and fundraising, and other components. Here she describes her organization’s challenges and successes.

PBN: City Year helps at-risk students get on track to graduate by uniting teams of AmeriCorps members for a year in schools where they work collaboratively with school leaders and teachers. How does this work in Providence?
JOHNSON:
We partner with five public schools in Providence: DelSesto, Gilbert Stuart, and Roger Williams middle schools and Carl G. Lauro and Pleasant View elementary. We help our partner schools address chronic absence, disruptive behavior and failure in math and English, all of which are early warning indicators that a student is at risk of dropping out of school.
In each school, eight to 10 City Year AmeriCorps members work from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., every single day. Our AmeriCorps members partner with teachers to provide targeted academic support; call home when students are absent and use positive, youth development strategies to help students build the social-emotional skills they need to be successful in school, in their community, and in life.
By providing a team of trained young adults, City Year is helping schools close the gap between the scale of interventions and services students need and that which the schools are designed and resourced to provide. Helping schools address this gap is what we are all about. We are very encouraged by the results our teams are having in the schools where we serve, and feel a tremendous sense of urgency to be in a position to serve more students.

PBN: Describe a success story with an AmeriCorps member and a student who was at risk for not graduating but got back on track.
JOHNSON:
We actually just had our annual gala, Starry Starry Night, where our guests heard many powerful stories of student impact. One that really stood out was the story of a fourth grader whose math and reading indicators were well below grade level. In class, she was reserved, even timid and afraid to participate or ask for help.
Our City Year AmeriCorps member, Beatrice, worked closely with the student’s math and literacy teachers all year to provide tailored, differentiated instruction. Every day, Beatrice tutored this student to “catch her up” on the specific skills she was missing and keep her on pace with her classmates. They built an incredible relationship along the way, and over time the student came out of her shell, built her confidence and really started to thrive. Beatrice’s partner teacher said the student is like a whole new child in the classroom.
Today, this student is performing on grade level in both reading and math! She made accelerated gains and is on track going into the 5th grade. We’re all really proud of her, and of the partnership between Beatrice and her two teachers. And, when you add up all of those individual partnerships and student growth stories, we can really start to put Providence’s students on a path to a lifetime of success.

PBN: How do teachers interact with AmeriCorps members effectively?
JOHNSON:
We work with incredible educators in the Providence schools, and the relationship our AmeriCorps members build with their partner teacher is as important as the relationship they build with their students throughout the year. We know that it is a tall order for our partner teachers to meet the specific learning needs of every student on their class roster, so our partnership is designed to give them an extra, highly-trained resource to deliver targeted academic and social-emotional interventions to students who need additional support.
We invite everyone to come see the work in person. What you would see in a typical class is a corps member supporting student engagement and classroom management while the teacher delivers direct instruction on a new skill. Once a new topic has been introduced to the whole class, the students would break into group or independent work, and that is when the corps member would lead a small-group, focused tutoring session with students who have been identified for additional support.
It requires a lot of collaboration. Our corps members are assigned to one or two teachers for the entire year, so they know what is happening in class, they know what learning objective their teacher has set, and they know what their students struggle with. When our partner teachers and corps members communicate regularly about students, review data together and develop plans for supporting students, it leads to results.

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PBN: How dependent on the parent organization are you for funding and how else do you raise funds?
JOHNSON
: City Year is a single nonprofit organization. Providence is one of 26 sites across the country and we are locally responsible for a $2.5 million operating budget that is part of a larger whole. Locally, 20 percent of our funding comes from AmeriCorps, another 20 percent from a district contract for our services and the remaining 60 percent comes from the private sector. More than 80 percent of our private sector funding is raised locally and just under 20 percent of our funding is coming from donors and partners that fund us in multiple locations.
Our funding model, at the local and national level, has always been a true public-private partnership and that is as true in Providence as it is around the country. It’s an important point, and it’s always been a critical factor in sustaining our work.
City Year is among only 1 percent of charities to earn Charity Navigator’s highest rating certifying our commitment to accountability, transparency and responsible fiscal management.

PBN: What will be the highlight of your June graduation ceremony? How many AmeriCorps graduates do you have this year?
JOHNSON:
Forty-eight AmeriCorps members will cross the stage in the presence of our champions and supporters, their families and friends. Each will have completed a transformational year serving the students of Providence. City Year’s Graduation is traditionally an opportunity for community leaders to share their appreciation for the service and impact of our AmeriCorps members and the friends and family who have supported them, making it possible for them to serve.
Although I am surely biased, and proud, the highlight of graduation is always the opportunity to appreciate each of our AmeriCorps members. They each have given a year of their lives to the children of this community. Through their service, they have learned about themselves, too, having built important skills, and tested themselves and in many cases clarified life goals and career directions.
A final highlight for me is realizing how many of our AmeriCorps members fall in love with Providence and the community they build here. It’s always exciting to hear that a young person is deciding to make their home in this community!

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