article that survived the elimination process where a 45 year-old asks,
"What do I want to be when I grow up?"
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Newspaper Article Samples
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
1. Program History-
An outgrowth of Skyline College’s EOPS, the Tutorial
Assistance Program (TAP) branched off independently in the
early seventies. TAP grew from there, serving the whole
campus and generating funds—both internal and external—
to continue its multifunctional support services, providing
tutoring in over 30 subject areas.
In 1981, TAP joined efforts with the other autonomously
functioning labs—Math Assistance Lab (MAL), English
Assistance Lab (EAL), and Media Services—culminating in
what is now known as The Learning Center (TLC), which
came to fruition under the facilitation of The Director, Phyllis
Lucas; MAL Coordinator, John Chavez; EAL Coordinator,
Elaine Broman; 10 across the curriculum tutors; and their
TAP Coordinator, Felix Perez, who was also at that time an
active CRLA member and President of ACCTLA.
Recently, in 1996, TLC moved into a new building, designed
and erected for the Library (second floor) and TLC (first
floor), which has comprehensive, 2 state-of the-art
Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) labs, 3 tutoring labs,
and a Media Center.
Starting from a modest student-centered program of 10
tutors covering 30 subject areas, TLC, occasionally having as
many as 100 tutors, today in 2003 has 48 tutors covering
250+ subject areas. And today in 2003—rooted in its CAI
labs, tutorial labs, classes and workshops, and TRIO/STAARS
program (which is the top one in the nation and top three in
the state)—TLC continues to provide optimum student-
centered services.
SAN MATEO COMMUNITY COLLEGES FOUNDATION
2003 JUMP START PROGRAM
AT SKYLINE COLLEGE
The purpose of the grants awarded was to provide support
for the Skyline College Jump Start Summer Program, an
integrative program designed to provide assistance in
English, Mathematics, Study Skills/Critical Thinking,
Computer technology, and Career exploration for local high
school students determined to be at-risk (i.e., with a grade
point average below 2.0). The objectives of the program
were as follows:
• To provide an identified population of students with
appropriate instruction in an individualized environment
without intimidation, by appealing to varied learning styles
and cultures.
• To provide the students with realistic career
exploration activities and opportunities.
• To provide a supportive and wholesome environment
for the students, highlighting their successes, no matter
how incremental.
Given such goals, Jump Start employed three instructors
and two instructional aides for English, Computer
Technology, Mathematics, Study Skills/Critical Thinking, and
Career Exploration, to provide the best opportunity for
individualized instruction in these subjects. In addition, the
program provided students with study materials and
supplies, Sam Trans bus passes and daily lunches—served
by Skyline College’s cafeteria, the latter two of which to
ensure student access to and participation on the campus
and their attendance on a daily basis. Also held at Skyline
“We’re living over here [in America] and they’re the ones going through tough times—
we’re not, so we’re trying to do the best to help what we can.” –Shukry Azar
George Santyana once said, “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Avoiding the ominous repetition of atrocity was the primary goal a number of our TLC
students met by participating in the SFSU Palestinian support rally on Tuesday, April
10, 2002. Not only was that day the anniversary of the Deir Yasseen Massacre of
1948, it was the anniversary of a mass devastation we all should remember. Saji
Abuomar, one of our most sedulous of STAARS students who attended the rally
emphasized this need for perpetual and undying recall, saying, “We must insist that
we not repeat the past. It [April 9] was the anniversary of the Holocaust, and yet
oppression is going on.”
The focused group of students also went, as the articulate and passionate Ghassan
Jabir told me, “to overturn administrative rule, to show support for SF State students
[who were hoping to actively] be allowed…to verbally defend our cause: to end
occupation in Palestine.” Jabir also reminded me that while the TLC peers were (and
are) loyal to global concerns, to end the recapitulation of oppression in the middle
east, equal regard was to their fealty to the SF State Palestinian students, as well.
“For most of us, SF State is our future home,” he said, acknowledging the importance
of camaraderie at all levels. Jabir reinforced, as did the other students I spoke with
who marched, that we must be attentive to history and its impact on our present,
reiterating that “the Holocaust should not be repeated in Palestine.” This message, he
stressed, was part of an emphatic goal for April 9, 2002, as it continues to be every
day for all of the Palestinian students with whom I spoke.
Another of those reporting back was Maisoon Abdulkariem, a bright, thoughtful, and
spiritually engaged TLC volunteer peer tutor who agreed with the ultimate goal—the
absolute need to break the thousands plus year cycle of what she called “abuse in the
middle east.” Abdulkariem reminded me that this tragic and ongoing conflict is
“[based] on a land issue,” and then expressed agreement with the others about what
the rally was like. The students gathered at the Student Union on the SFSU campus,
marched down 19th Avenue, back up, and through Brotherhood Way. When I asked
about diversity on that street with the beautiful name, Abdulkariem said a few Jewish
people were marching with us, as they do not agree with what the Israeli government
is doing back there.” Others in the group reported that the Jewish students had a
coalition table set up at the march departure site, and as one [unnamed] student said,
There was one Iranian-Jew holding a Palestinian flag.”
The overall tenor of the rally was mature, I understand, with “interested [people]
…asking what certain words meant in Arabic,” Abdulkariem told me, and with “people
amazed and asking questions…and police asking if [they] had security,” said Maati
Benbarek (whose a brilliant Moroccan, supportive of his friends in the TLC regardless of
his non-Palestinian ancestry), who also added, “The police were extremely helpful,
very professional. They were concerned for our safety.”
Agreeing, Abdulkariem said, “Yes…some people were flipping us off, but some were
supportive, too. Some students started saying, ‘Long live Israel,’ and I was taken
aback.” But, she reiterated, most important was that the ralliers were unified,
confirming what Jabir had said earlier about how impressed he was by the number of
people who showed up when he said to me, “I had told my Econ teacher about it, and
he showed up!”
Yes, they showed up. They showed colors. They showed how vocal they were and
how vocal they had the right to be. And they showed support for each other,
something I am proud to witness in the Learning Center where support is our middle
name. As Shukry Azar said to me a few days after the rally, “Being there supporting
and standing there beside your people going through tough times is just powerful.”
And that is the power I witness here: the power to think openly, feel deeply, express
courageously, and engage wholeheartedly, without throwing a fist a rock a stone a
bullet a bomb. These are the students whom we teach to study history, study politics,
study human psychology, and study interpersonal communications. And these are the
students who teach us what it means to apply that learning in a mature, intellectual,
emotional, and spiritual way today, so we can abstain from the repetition of the
physical that happened, happens, is happening…too many times.
disagreeable man, somebody who has no position in society and never will have.
Very well, even if that were true, I should want to show my work, what there is in
the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a nobody. ~ Vincent Van Gogh
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