Also will head Education That Works Program

Nick Green, Notre Dame graduate and previously Head of the Math, Science and Technology department, Athletic Director, and Dean of Student Discipline & Behavior for Memphis Catholic Middle & High School, today was named Interim Principal of the school by Bishop J. Terry Steib and Janet Donato, Superintendent of Schools, Catholic Diocese of Memphis. He will also head the high school’s Education That Works work/study program.  Green succeeds Jim Pohlman, who leaves later this month to become superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Green initially came to Memphis Catholic in 2005 for a two-year stint with the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program.  A native of Cleveland, Ohio, he decided to stay at Memphis Catholic, where, in addition to teaching Calculus, Pre-Calculus, Physics, Algebra I and II, World History, and Theology, he also coached baseball, basketball, cross-country, and football. While at Memphis Catholic, he has been recognized for his excellence as a teacher by the Coca-Cola Scholarship Foundation with its “Educator of Distinction” Award and the Memphis “Beat the Odds” Foundation’s which awarded him its Cathryn Rivers Johnson Award. Recently, Green was nominated for the People Magazine 2012 national “Teacher of the Year” award.  This past Spring, he organized the first Memphis Catholic Math Challenge, a grades 5-8 math contest for all Memphis Catholic schools.  “Teaching and coaching here has been an incredible experience, and I believe in this school and its students,” says Green. “I am excited for the opportunity to serve as principal, and I look forward to working with our school community to make Memphis Catholic an even better place to go to school.”

Green obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theology, and two Masters degrees, one in Education through the ACE program, and another in Education Administration through the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, all from the University of Notre Dame.  He attended St. Ignatius High School, a 125-year-old Jesuit-run, college-preparatory high school for boys in Cleveland.

His predecessor, Jim Pohlman, says of Green, “Nick has a special gift for teaching and the desire to make the lives of students better.  He is able to engage students.  He is someone who makes them feel important each and every day.  The students, parents, faculty and alumni of Memphis Catholic are fortunate to have such a talented, dedicated, and energetic leader as their principal.”

Interim Catholic Schools Superintendent Janet Donato says, “I am very pleased that Nick Green has accepted the position of Interim Principal at Memphis Catholic Middle & High School, and look forward to working with him in his new role.”

Memphis Catholic High School is the home of the Education That Works program, which enables financially-disadvantaged students to receive a private, college preparatory education by working five days per month for corporate sponsors to earn approximately two-thirds of their tuition.

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Congratulations to the members of the Class of 2012, who have surpassed the $1 million mark for scholarships earned!! Already over 50% of the class has scholarships!! Education That Works — For Real!!!

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Congratulations to Miss Aiden Willis, Class of 2013, chosen as Intern of the Month for March 2012 from the nomination of her mentor supervisor, Maria Holguin, at Cargill Cotton.  On Tuesday morning, Director of Work Study, Ted Schreck, delivered lunch for the two donated by Fino’s Deli.  The two are pictured in the Cordova headquarters of Cargill Cotton in front of a photo of a barge on the Mississippi River carrying the precious commodity, cotton.

 

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Seven Different T-Shirt Colors To Pick From This Year!!! – Orchid, Cherry Red, Irish Green, Dark Heather Gray, Pink, Royal Heather, Safety Green. Click here to see our shirt colors.

FUN FOR ALL AGES!!!

Onsite registration and pre-race check-in will take place from 12:45 – 1:45pm.

Contact the race director for sponsorship opportunities.

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This article originally appeared in the February 3, 2012 edition of the Commercial Appeal.

As programs like Education That Works show, our business community will be better when teens get practical experience of part-time work.

By Mimi Hall Uhlmann, Special to Viewpoint

Friday, February 3, 2012

The headline on Thomas L. Friedman’s Jan. 26 Viewpoint column in The Commercial Appeal caught my eye: “In today’s workplace, average is over.” The New York Times columnist went on to write that, “In the past, workers with average skills, doing an average job, could earn an average lifestyle.”

But what really caught my attention was Friedman’s list of current unemployment rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Americans over 25 years of age: 13.8 percent for those with less than a high school diploma; 8.7 percent for those with a high school diploma and no college; 7.7 percent for those with an associate’s degree or some college, and 4.1 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

I was still mulling those statistics when I came across a fascinating piece in The Wall Street Journal titled “What’s Wrong With the Teenage Mind?” by psychology professor and author Alison Gopnik. Gopnik’s essay explores the problems arising from the earlier onset of puberty in today’s teens coupled with the increasing delay in adolescents’ — and even young adults’ — assumption of real responsibilities. Is there a better example to illustrate her point about society’s acceptance of young Americans’ delay in taking on adult responsibilities than the recent extension of parental health insurance coverage to 25-year-olds?

Gopnik goes on to say that there is strong evidence that IQ has increased significantly in today’s children, and there is an easy explanation for it. They are spending more time in school, have more homework and participate in vastly expanded after-school and summer enrichment programs.

What they lack, however, is the practical experience earlier generations had of working in part-time jobs under adult supervision, and being held accountable for the performance of significant chores at home.

“For most of our history,” Gopnik points out, “children have started their internships when they were seven, not 27.”

Today’s youth lack “the experience of trying to achieve a real goal in real time in the real world,” Gopnik writes, a process that encourages development of the skills and control required to moderate the adolescent impulses of puberty. She cites a metaphor from pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl of the University of California, Berkeley, who says, “Today’s adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.”

My experience with the Education That Works program at Memphis Catholic High School convinces me that Gopnik and Dahl are right. In our program, every student in our high school is paired with a corporate sponsor for whom they work five full days per month. The students have real job responsibilities, are given performance evaluations by their supervisors each semester, and can actually be fired if their performance on the job is unacceptable.

For their work, the students earn $5,000 per school year, applied by their sponsor toward the student’s tuition, covering about two-thirds of the cost of the private, college-preparatory education at Memphis Catholic. As a result, the students get valuable real-life experience along with a quality education, and the sponsors get energetic, affordable workers while making a genuine investment in the quality of their future workforce.

Why am I so sure it works? Because in all but the first year of the Education That Works program (which is now in its sixth academic year) we have graduated 100 percent of our seniors. For each of the past three years, more than 60 percent of our graduates have received academic scholarships to college. Last year, that figure was 66 percent.

Lest you think Memphis Catholic is some elitist outpost, approximately 40 percent of our students come from families that meet federal poverty guidelines. Our student population reflects the urban areas from which many of our students come, at 75 percent black, 9 percent white, 7 percent multiracial, 4 percent Latino, 3 percent African and 2 percent Asian. Our student body is 75 percent non-Catholic and about equally split between boys and girls.

These students are succeeding in the classroom and in the office. In performance reviews this past November, sponsors said that more than 93 percent of Education That Works interns met or exceeded sponsor expectations for quantity of work; 88 percent met or exceeded expectations for quality of work. That is a tribute not only to our students, but to the mentors at our sponsor firms as well.

To check back in with the statistics Friedman reported, it bears noting that less than one-quarter of Memphis’ citizens have college degrees. The city’s unemployment rate just improved to 9.5 percent in December, down from 10.1 percent the previous month. This compares with Tennessee’s December unemployment rate of 8.7 percent and the national rate of 8.5 percent. If Friedman’s statistics about the relationship between educational achievement and employment are correct, and the findings of Gopnik and other psychologists are accurate, it appears that programs like Education That Works are a significant step toward more productive teens, and a healthier Memphis business community, in the years ahead.

Mimi Hall Uhlmann is director of corporate recruiting for the Education That Works program at Memphis Catholic High School.

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If you sign up for the Education That Works program at Memphis Catholic High School, your high school student gets an added bonus: a real life work experience that will challenge them to investigate what their future career may look like, and an opportunity to help the family afford a private, college preparatory education. The unique Education That Works work/study curriculum is changing lives and transforming urban Memphis one student at a time.

Five years ago, in an effort to create a niche for Memphis Catholic, we had the idea to include the business community in the education of urban youth. We found that business leaders, aware of the dismal high school dropout rate and the growing knowledge gap, were concerned about the future of the local workforce. Many firms saw Education That Works as an opportunity to get personally involved in improving the education of students who might be future employees.

Like most teens, many of our students had no idea what went on in the businesses that fuel the local economy. Our goal was to expose our students to the work world and encourage their desire to go to college, graduate, and stay in or return to Memphis to work in these businesses.

It was an ambitious plan, and more importantly, a leap of faith. But as so often happens, the rewards have far out-numbered the risks taken. Today, 145 Memphis Catholic students work in an adult world five full days per month. They do real work, which is evaluated twice per school year in performance reviews by their supervisors, just as with regular employees. For their work, companies pay $5,000 per student per school year, which is deposited into the student’s tuition account, covering 66 percent of tuition costs. The program offers students a great opportunity to acquire real-time experience and connect with business professionals who may want to hire them once they graduate from college, or help them find a job in the Memphis community.

What are the results? Prior to instituting this program 25 percent of our students were receiving four-year scholarships to college. In the first year of Education That Works that number rose to 33 percent, the second year it was 44 percent, then 70 percent. In last year’s senior class, 63 percent of the students received four-year scholarships. We are proud of our students and pleased that 72 percent of our graduates who are in college today are on track to graduate within four years.

Our valedictorian last May was awarded the only Gates Millennium scholarship in the city, one of only four in the state. The previous year’s valedictorian is on scholarship at Vanderbilt, and made the Dean’s List her freshman year. One of our graduates is now employed part-time by his former corporate sponsor Greystone Financial, helping him pay his way at the University of Memphis. His job? He helps train the Education That Works interns who have followed in his footsteps at Greystone.

It’s important to note that the demographics of the Catholic High student body pretty accurately reflect the makeup of Memphis. It is 66 percent black, 14 percent white, 12 percent multi-racial, 4 percent African, 2 percent Hispanic and 2 percent Asian. It is about equally boys and girls, and 72 percent non-Catholic. As Catholic Schools Supt. Dr. Mary McDonald says, we don’t teach kids because they are Catholic, but because we are.

The guiding principle behind Education That Works comes not from current education journals, but from the source of all wisdom – the Bible. As it says in Isaiah 42:3, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness, he will bring forth justice.” Taking financially-disadvantaged students and introducing them to potential careers helps motivate them to reach their full potential as responsible adults and valued future employees – or employers — in our community.

We encourage young people to discover their gifts and talents and explore how God wants to use them in the real world. We expect our students to succeed, and in most cases, with the grace of God, and the help of forward-thinking business leaders, they do.

- James J. Pohlman is Principal and President of the Education That Works program at Memphis Catholic High School.

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Despite his busy school schedule, Ben also makes time to serve as a Boy Scout, and he recently successfully completed his review for Eagle Scout. One of the tasks he completed as part of his Eagle Scout review process was building an outdoor classroom on the Memphis Catholic campus.

In nominating Ben, Memphis Catholic Principal Jim Pohlman said, “Ben has a unique ability and gift to see the need of others and respond with a helping hand. He epitomizes the qualities that we hope all the students at Memphis Catholic possess. His basketball coach Nick Green says, “Ben brings such a great attitude and happiness to everything he does, it’s easy to see how he has been such a successful young man.”

Memphis Catholic High School is the home of the Education That Works program, which enables financially-disadvantaged students to receive a private, college preparatory education by working five days per month for corporate sponsors to earn approximately two-thirds of their tuition.

Contact:
Mimi Hall Uhlmann
901.569.1206
muhlmann@memphiscatholic.org

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