{"id":13518,"date":"2015-01-29T16:37:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T22:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/?p=13518"},"modified":"2015-02-03T19:21:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-04T01:21:22","slug":"kids-teaching-kids-imsa-allies-and-its-recent-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/2015\/01\/29\/kids-teaching-kids-imsa-allies-and-its-recent-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Kids Teaching Kids: IMSA Allies and Its Recent Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Allies program\u2014formerly known as KI\u2014is a unique organization that provides high school students the opportunity to teach elementary and middle school students STEM subjects. As a state organization dedicated to spreading high quality education across Illinois,\u00a0IMSA has a department called Professional Field Services (PFS), which reaches out to the state to \u201cshare instructional models and mathematics and science programs that inspire teachers and students and have practical applications for Illinois classrooms.\u201d In other words, PFS spreads the love<\/em> of IMSA. One way they do this is with Student Statewide Initiatives (SSI). This spreads IMSA\u2019s love\u00a0<\/em>to Illinois\u2019 students in a few ways, including IMSA\u2019s Allies program.<\/p>\n

Ryan Yang\u00a0offered a summary of the Allies program,\u00a0saying \u201cAllies is a program in which we give opportunities to privileged and underprivileged students alike, giving … exposure to science and mathematical concepts to students. We do this through events such as FUNshops (essentially just two interactive science or math lessons in hour long blocks), family reading nights, and field trips in which students come to IMSA to experience lab practice such as dissection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program has seen some changes in leadership. They’ve hired a new curriculum writer, Carmela Minaya, and a new person to run Allies, Heather Richardson. Both can be found around their offices in A144.<\/p>\n

The Acronym had the opportunity to talk to Aziza Darwish, head of SSI, about recent changes to the Allies program. On the subject of expanding the program to IIT\u2019s charter school network, she said \u201cthe bonding I\u2019ve seen in just a few meetings there is amazing. We\u2019re helping with that. We\u2019re enabling that. We\u2019re giving them the opportunity to work with something they may never have worked with in their life before. Not only that, but we\u2019re giving them access to a new way of learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding IMSA students in particular, Darwish added, \u201cI think all of our IMSA students are amazing and then the Allies are extra special to me.\u201d She then added some details about behind the scenes changes to Allies:\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve probably changed the curriculum most. We\u2019ve done a lot to modify and expand so that allies get a lot from the program. It\u2019s not just a teaching program, really. It\u2019s so much more than that. Students are\u00a0gaining collaboration, communication skills, college readiness skills, and of course the teaching aspect is there but you do gain so much more from teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my conversations with members of the SSI staff and various students\u2014and my own experience as a member of Allies\u2014I\u2019ve always observed a magic in peoples\u2019 eyes. For some, it\u2019s just a club. For many, though, it\u2019s more. It can becomes a way to learn how to do something often taken for granted: educate others.<\/p>\n

For more information, follow these links (or go ask any Allies member):
\nAllies webpage: https:\/\/www.imsa.edu\/extensionprograms\/kidsinstitute\/allies.html<\/p>\n

PFS webpage: https:\/\/www.imsa.edu\/extensionprograms<\/p>\n

SSI Blog (from which the article’s feature image was taken) http:\/\/imsastatewide.wordpress.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Allies program\u2014formerly known as KI\u2014is a unique organization that provides high school students the opportunity to teach elementary and middle school students STEM subjects….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":13593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1019],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2341],"class_list":["post-13518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-imsanews"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13518"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13902,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13518\/revisions\/13902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13518"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.imsa.edu\/acronym\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}