21st Century Scholar

Want to read more about how to teach writing to college-bound students? Check out the blog post here!

This week 21st Century Scholar welcomes four guest bloggers who graduated high school this spring, completed CHEPA’s summerbridge writing program this July and will attend a four-year university in the fall. Today’s post describes one student’s perception of the college writing and knowledge skills she acquired this summer. Brenda Manzo’s testimony is an affirmation not [...]

by Bill Tierney The final concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s season was John Adam’s new piece, City Noir, and Mahler’s Symphony #1 with Gustavo Dudamel conducting – fantastic!  Before the concert they had an interview with John Adams.  He is probably best known for Dr. Atomic and Nixon in China, and some describe his [...]

We have just concluded another year of SummerTIME.  Several years ago I was struck by how unprepared our public high school students are for college.  Many of them graduate from high school with high grade point averages, and they gain entrance to a UC or CSU and have to take remedial courses.  They also are [...]

In our third week of SummerTIME, we had five considerably different presentations on vital class room equipment, necessary tools essential for college success.  It is in accordance to say that we did not have any prior knowledge to these sessions.  Our first presentation was given by Professor Bill Tierney.  He told us about facts in regards to college [...]

During the first day of college knowledge we learned about the importance of getting involved in campus. Jonathan Mathis advised us about joining clubs and told us to stay aware of clubs that are not recognized by the school. The following day he told us about time management, and how it is important to keep a [...]

SummerTIME for the past one week has been quite enriching.  The discussions  and preceding readings involved the issues of sexual orientation, rape as a term used  to describe the forceful penetration of one’s ideas into another culture, and gender violence.  We had the opportunity to explore why and how many women, and sometimes even men, experience  violence. Even [...]

This week the program really emphasized its four fundamental aspects: tools, information, motivation, and education.  Our readings switched from African-American critics to those of Mexican and Chicano decent.  These readings were responses to first wave Chicano activists and their movement.  The readings focused specifically on machismo and femenismo and their complex relationship.  Traditionally these two [...]

This week was very exciting, even though I missed two days for orientation at my school. We went over our rough drafts with our instructor individually, while getting advice of how to improve our writing skills. We also learned how to link paragraphs together with great transitional sentences. We are also assigned a writing counselor [...]

This second week in SummerTIME has been an even more intense period. We shifted  from discussions on the issues that affect African American  and Latino people within the country to an explicit review of other marginalized people. This week we studied the Chicana women and their fight for liberation from a society that essentializes different [...]