The Educational Advocates Reaching Todays Hardworking Students Inc

The EARTHS' goal is to function as a community, with each person being responsible for positively teaching another. We aim to reach back and give back, as we strive to motivate, inspire and enlighten inner-city youth and their families through education. The EARTHS' Positive Peer Program was started nearly 30 years ago in the basement of one of our board members' homes. In serving the youth, a need to also serve their parents, family and community was identified. PARENT POWER (What Will You Do With Yours?) was formed to provide workshops and trainings to help adults understand their rights, roles, and responsibilities to be actively engaged in their children's education. Upon receiving grant funding from the PA Department of Education's Office of Child Development and Early Learning, The EARTHS and PARENT POWER collaborated to form The Parent Leaders Advisory Network (PLAN) to hold interactive, fun-filled, educational workshops for parents, caregivers, and family members to read a book with their Pre-K to 3rd grade children and complete a math and art activity associated with the book.

The EARTHS and its affiliated programs (PARENT POWER, The PLAN) have facilitated over 300 workshops and trainings for low-income families and community members that helped them become better advocates for their children and better understand how to reinforce learning at home; because research shows that when a parent or active adult is engaged in a child's learning, the child does better academically, socially, and behaviorally. This is despite the race, income, culture, or zip code of the family.

Our goal is to prepare low-income families to become effective partners in the education of their children. Using the Results Based Accountability Framework, low-income parents participate in parent-led trainings, school visits, data analyses and literacy, math and art workshops. We use targeted discussions and provide opportunities for parents, family and community members to offer feedback, network and become more familiar with each other. Parent-child visits to museums, libraries, other cultural activities, and parent visits to high performing schools are offered and encouraged. The goals for Positive Peer Program participants are for them to increase their self-esteem, have better relationships with their peers and community members, take pride in where their live, expand their knowledge and experiences beyond what they already know about Philadelphia, and become positive, productive members of society. As they gain confidence in their ability to legally succeed, the reduction and prevention of neighborhood violence will be a natural result of these efforts and activities. When the program was initiated nearly 30 years ago, it was done in an effort to improve academic outcomes for youth. We are proud to say that all of the 15 students who participated in our initial program are high school graduates and currently, productive members of society. Some attended (3) and graduated (1) from college, all are working in legal jobs (15) and only one was incarcerated.

PARENT POWER (What Will You Do With Yours?) provides low-income parents, family and community members with opportunities to speak directly to Temple’s College of Education students (administrators, school principals and teachers) about their lived experiences with systemic racism and their challenges to obtaining high quality education for their low-income children. Through intentional conversations, Dr. Lori Shorr’s Temple education students (many of whom are influential, school leaders) will begin to understand the value of family engagement by seeing parents/caregivers as resources despite their race, educational attainment, income, or zip code and be encouraged to examine their own societal privileges. Research (Henderson, Mapp, et.al., 2022) shows that all children benefit academically from increased parent, family and community engagement.

PARENT POWER and The PLAN have a history of engaging, training and partnering with students, parents, families, community members, community-based agencies and district representatives. One of our members works in a neighborhood elementary school and serves families with children in Pre-K to 6th grade. Another works in a neighborhood high school and serves pregnant and parenting teens and/or teens with younger siblings. A third member served as a Philadelphia District School Reform Commissioner, founded PARENT POWER and serves homeless families (and these parents are invited to participate, also).

The Educational Advocates Reaching Today’s Hardworking Students, Inc. (EARTHS) and its affiliated programs have conducted over 500 workshops to help low-income, family and community members understand their rights, roles, and responsibilities to be actively engaged in their children's development. PARENT POWER primarily targets parents/caregivers of students in North Central Philadelphia. Grandparents/single parents are raising 41.3% of these children due to incarceration, death, or substance abuse of the parent(s). When children in our low-income community were not learning the way teachers were teaching, The EARTHS, was founded to tutor them. In teaching the children, it was realized that we must include their families (regardless of their backgrounds and lived experiences).

Since 1994, The EARTHS have used multi-generational mentoring to educate and empower low-income students who attend some of Philadelphia's lowest performing, neighborhood schools. The EARTHS' leaders are from the community and have used multi-generational mentoring to educate and empower low-income students who attend some of Philadelphia's lowest performing, neighborhood schools. Our programs are innovative because they are parent-led and designed to involve parents/caregivers in a consistent and intentional manner to help children progress academically, socially, and behaviorally. Families within our North Philadelphia neighborhood face the primary barrier of thinking they have no choice but to send their children to the same failing school that has failed families for generations. Because we are in and of the targeted community, we are committed to improving the community, eliminating the vicious cycle of poverty and changing life outcomes for its impoverished residents.

In 2013, when The School District of Philadelphia announced its plan to close 22 elementary schools in low-income neighborhoods, it became obvious that an alternative plan was needed to educate parents and community members about how equal opportunities for a high-quality education for all could help in reducing violence, drop-out rates, and truancy. Between 2014 and 2017, representatives from The EARTHS provided Beyond the Bake Sale book club discussions and workshops for families and staff of Women’s Christian Alliance, The School District of Philadelphia and Drexel University. Between 2015 and 2018, the PA Department of Education provided Community Innovation Zone (CIZ) funding ($225,000) for our parent-led trainings to over 1,200 low-income, North Philadelphia families with birth to 3rd grade children. Positive results were shown in reading scores for third grade students at T.M. Peirce; 30 students participated in an academically enriching, summer program; 2,500 home libraries were created or expanded; and low-income parents reinforced learning at home by engaging their children in positive, learning experiences. PARENT POWER conceived, furnished and staffed Family Engagement Centers at Blaine Elementary School, T. M. Peirce Elementary School and Dobbins Career and Technical High School. In partnership with the district’s ELECT (Education Leading to Employment and Career Training) Program, PARENT POWER showed nearly 200 pregnant and parenting teens how to build literacy, math and art skills for themselves and their children.

Each school year, The EARTHS, PARENT POWER and The Parent Leaders Advisory Network (PLAN) partners with neighborhood schools to conduct parent-led, monthly, Let's Read Math workshops for 300 low-income, family members and children who live or attend schools located in zip codes 19121, 19132 and/or 19140. Some of these family members learned the skills needed to become facilitators/leaders of the Let's Read Math curriculum and began to see the benefit of being more actively engaged in their children's education. By using the Let's Read Math curriculum and providing free children's books, art supplies and other materials, we help build home libraries, get children kindergarten ready and teach families to reinforce learning at home by showing them: 1) how to easily combine reading, math and art skills; 2) how to engage their children in learning and 3) the importance of learning through play.