Shawn Rux took over as principal of MS 53, a New York City middle school, last year. At the time, 50 or 60 kids were absent every day. You could understand why they stayed away: The school was chaos.
Twenty-two teachers had quit, the entire office staff had quit, and hundreds of kids had been suspended. The school was given a grade of F from the city’s department of education.
“It was in a bad place,” Rux says.
Rux decided he needed to create incentives for kids to come to school. Incentives that were more obvious to middle-school kids than, “If you come to school you’ll be better off 20 years from now.”
He handed out raffle tickets to anyone who showed up to school on time. One of the prizes was an Xbox. And he threw in an element of randomness: The first kids in line when the doors opened might get 20 tickets.
It worked. Kids started showing up early.
“It was … like, ‘Get out of my way, I’m trying to get into school,’ ” Rux says. “It was nice.”
Rux also created his own currency. He called it Rux Bux. Teachers hand them out when kids are well behaved. They can be traded in for school supplies, or special lunches. A sixth-grader named Wander Rodriguez is trying to save up 5,000 Rux Bux — enough for a personal shopping spree with Rux.
The principal also stands outside school every morning, greeting the students as they show up. This recognition is another, subtler incentive to come to school.
“I like this school,” Wander Rodriguez says. “They treat me like home, they treat me nice, they always give me stuff. … They always say ‘hi’ in the mornings.”
The school went from an F to a C. Daily attendance went up to over 90 percent. Then the hurricane hit.
The school is in Far Rockaway, Queens — one of the areas hardest hit by the storm. Some kids’ homes were destroyed. One student who stayed at home through the storm told a teacher, “My apartment complex was in the middle of the ocean.” Rux’s car was destroyed. The first floor of his house was flooded.
After the storm, after school started up again, Rux’s goal was to get attendance back to 90 percent. Every day, his staff texts him the attendance numbers. The day I visited last week, 89.2 percent of students attended school. Close, but not close enough for Rux.
The storm has been tough on everyone, he says. But that’s no excuse. Kids have to be in school.
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![belindapendragon:
damesuniverse:
ybgk:
England’s Smartest Family is Black:We won’t hear about this in the news…..England’s Smartest Family is BlackMeet the “First Family of Education” in England . They are black.Peter and Paula Imafidon, 9-year-old twins from Waltham Forest in northeast London , are a part of the highest-achieving clan in the history of Great Britain education. The two youngest siblings are about to make British history as the youngest students to ever enter high school. They astounded veteran experts of academia when they became the youngest to ever pass the University of Cambridge ’s advanced mathematics exam. That’s on top of the fact they have set world records when they passed the A/AS-level math papers.Chris Imafidon, their father, said he’s not concerned about his youngest children’s ability to adapt to secondary school despite their tender age. “We’re delighted with the progress they have made,” he said. “Because they are twins they are always able to help and support each other.”To Peter and Paula’s parents, this is nothing new. Chris Imafidon said he and his wife have been through this before: they have other super-gifted, overachieving children.Peter and Paula’s sister, Anne-Marie, now 20, holds the world record as the youngest girl to pass the A-level computing, when she was just 13. She is now studying at arguably the most renowned medical school in the United States , Johns Hopkins University , in Baltimore .Another sister, Christina, 17, is the youngest student to ever get accepted and study at an undergraduate institution at any British university at the tender age of 11.And Samantha, now age 12, had passed two rigorous high school-level mathematics and statistics exams at the age of 6, something that her twin siblings, Peter and Paula, also did.Chris Imafidon migrated to London from Nigeria in West Africa over 30 years ago. And despite his children’s jaw-dropping, history-making academic achievements, he denies there is some “genius gene” in his family. Instead, he credits his children’s success to the Excellence in Education program for disadvantaged inner-city children.“Every child is a genius,” he told British reporters. “Once you identify the talent of a child and put them in the environment that will nurture that talent, then the sky is the limit. Look at Tiger Woods or the Williams sisters [Venus and Serena] — they were nurtured. You can never rule anything out with them. The competition between the two of them makes them excel in anything they do.”
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damesuniverse:
ybgk:
England’s Smartest Family is Black:We won’t hear about this in the news…..England’s Smartest Family is BlackMeet the “First Family of Education” in England . They are black.Peter and Paula Imafidon, 9-year-old twins from Waltham Forest in northeast London , are a part of the highest-achieving clan in the history of Great Britain education. The two youngest siblings are about to make British history as the youngest students to ever enter high school. They astounded veteran experts of academia when they became the youngest to ever pass the University of Cambridge ’s advanced mathematics exam. That’s on top of the fact they have set world records when they passed the A/AS-level math papers.Chris Imafidon, their father, said he’s not concerned about his youngest children’s ability to adapt to secondary school despite their tender age. “We’re delighted with the progress they have made,” he said. “Because they are twins they are always able to help and support each other.”To Peter and Paula’s parents, this is nothing new. Chris Imafidon said he and his wife have been through this before: they have other super-gifted, overachieving children.Peter and Paula’s sister, Anne-Marie, now 20, holds the world record as the youngest girl to pass the A-level computing, when she was just 13. She is now studying at arguably the most renowned medical school in the United States , Johns Hopkins University , in Baltimore .Another sister, Christina, 17, is the youngest student to ever get accepted and study at an undergraduate institution at any British university at the tender age of 11.And Samantha, now age 12, had passed two rigorous high school-level mathematics and statistics exams at the age of 6, something that her twin siblings, Peter and Paula, also did.Chris Imafidon migrated to London from Nigeria in West Africa over 30 years ago. And despite his children’s jaw-dropping, history-making academic achievements, he denies there is some “genius gene” in his family. Instead, he credits his children’s success to the Excellence in Education program for disadvantaged inner-city children.“Every child is a genius,” he told British reporters. “Once you identify the talent of a child and put them in the environment that will nurture that talent, then the sky is the limit. Look at Tiger Woods or the Williams sisters [Venus and Serena] — they were nurtured. You can never rule anything out with them. The competition between the two of them makes them excel in anything they do.”
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