Donate to ALC

Hello Friends of the ALC:

In only a few weeks 90 youngsters will step through the doors of the Alternative Learning Community (ALC). These middle schoolers will be looking for a second chance, an opportunity to turn the struggle they faced in other schools into success at ALC. We’ll be there for them with small class sizes, individualized attention, powerful teaching, and wrap-around support services. A central part of ALC’s vision is our environmental/outdoor education theme, and we need your support to make this happen.

Your donation to ALC will go directly to our outdoor/environmental education programs and will impact all students. Donations of any size helps fund our engaging opportunities described below.

There are two ways you can become a founding supporter of ALC.

1.) Send a check payable to “ALC/OSSF” to:
Alternative Learning Community
9736 Lawlor St.
Oakland, CA 94605

2.) Donate on-line by going to http://www.alcoakland.com/supportalc

(ALC works with our partnering fiscal agent, Oakland Small Schools Foundation. All donations are tax deductible and go directly to outdoor/environmental programs at ALC.)

Here’s just a few examples of how you support will be used:
In the first weeks of school, all ALC students will have the opportunity to build trust and community on a ropes course in San Francisco.
We have scheduled outdoor and environmental adventures that make learning engaging and relevant, such as an overnight sixth grade trip to a sustainable farm near Half Moon Bay.
Work is underway to build a bicycle livery on-site that can be used by any class for project-based learning excursions.
ALC is partnering with EarthTeam to do community service learning creek restorations nearby.
All classes will engage students in rigorous learning through this theme.

Already mountains of work have been done, but we are not even at the beginning of this adventure. To realize the transformative and empowering impact ALC can have on our youth and community, we need your engagement and support. Even a small gift of $10 or $20 helps and shows us that you stand with us in our mission of turning struggle to success for Oakland youngsters.

Thanks, in advance, for your support and partnership in our critically important mission! Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Onward,

~ Dennis

Thanks for the support!

Many thanks to everyone who came out June 15 to celebrate the end of a school year and the infancy of the Alternative Learning Community!

With your support (and eagerness to eat yummy tamales and enchiladas) we raised nearly $400 toward ALC's outdoor and environmental education opportunities for our youth.


Special thanks to Sonia for taking RSVP's; Jenny for working the door; and to Maria Martinez, the Tamale Queen, for hosting us. Appreciations to Toni, World Ground Cafe, World Cup Coffee, and Domino's Pizza for donating prizes.


(Click here to return to ALC's homepage.)

ALC Musings: Vol 1, No 1

Hello Friends:

I’m putting in a weekend work session on the shaded porch of a café across the street from the UC Berkeley campus. It is graduation season, the warmth of the sun blends with a chilly breeze as spring transitions into summer. Cap and gown clad graduates are flanked by proud families, but on my mind is a new middle school twelve miles away. Only a sliver of the youth coming out of Oakland schools qualify to come to Berkeley, and a frightfully high number never even graduate from high school. For many, it is the middle school experience that seals this fate. Here lies the challenge for the new Alternative Learning Community (ALC): to turn the tides and empower youth to be successful academically, personally, and socially in middle school and beyond.

Welcome to Volume One, Number One of ALC Musings. This listserv is intended to give our community, far and wide, an insight into ALC’s work. It is inspired by my friend Robert Burkhardt, the director of Eagle Rock School, who keeps a similar log, as well as the Bay Area Writing Project, who remind me how important it is for educators to take time out from our busy lives to reflect and write. Messages will be mailed no more than two a month, and if you would not like to receive them, let me know and I’ll take you off the list. No one else will have access to your address from this list. Some of you reading this are involved daily in the development of ALC. Others are hearing about our dynamic new school for the first time. If you haven’t recently visited our website, please check out www.alcOakland.com for an overview.

ALC is reaching out to middle school-age students and their families. We are recruiting students who have struggled in traditional school settings but who are committed to meeting ALC’s high expectations. Oakland principals, counselors, and teachers have been very helpful in this process, and this couldn’t be done without the support of ALC’s Outreach Coordinator, Javier Armas. My work with Javier goes back to when he was a student in my high school English classroom. Since then he has graduated from UC Santa Cruz and the two of us have worked together on projects with the Environmental Studies Program and Oasis High School. A part of this outreach includes evening community meetings. All are welcome and a schedule will be posted on our website.
We are excited to announce that ALC officially has a home! We are “tucked in a corner of the town, but easily accessible to all.” Just off 98th St, between MacArthur and I-580. We are only blocks from the Oakland Zoo and close to other great community resources such as Youth Uprising. Four primary bus lines pass near the school. For more, visit the “location & directions” link at www.alcOakland.com.

ALC has already hired two teachers and is meeting many dynamic applicants who are drawn to our mission, vision, and theories of action. Final hiring decisions will be made soon, so if you or someone you know may be interested in this work, please contact us right away.

One very important strand of our work is wrap-around mental health support, and ALC is happy to announce that we will partner with Lincoln Child Center to provide this service to all ALC students.

Of course, there is much more to say, but I don’t want to exhaust you with a novel-length email. Keep an eye on our website and future emails for volunteer opportunities and fund raising events. Get ready for a delicious dinner celebration with Oakland’s “Tamale Queen”. More info soon!

Thank you all for your interest and support in the Alternative Learning Community.

~ Dennis Guikema, Principal, ALC
dennis.guikema@ousd.k12.ca.us
http://www.alcOakland.com