Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia College of Education has launched a new partnership with Greene County Schools and the Greensboro Dreamers program to help reach higher levels of student achievement, build a pipeline of teachers and student teachers, and expand UGA’s efforts to recruit minority students.
The effort will broaden the partnership UGA established several years ago with the Greensboro Dreamers in which UGA students go to Greene County middle schools weekly to provide homework assistance, improve reading skills, run test prep sessions and offer college readiness workshops.
UGA also hosts rising Greene County eighth graders for a week on campus that includes sleeping in residence halls, touring campus, meeting with academic counselors and learning about opportunities for students at UGA.
College of Education administrators and faculty members will meet with Greene County on a bi-monthly basis to plan these new efforts. COE Dean Andy Horne said, “The new partnership will meet one of the seven goals for the college I have established: to enhance collaborations and partnerships with regional school districts. We are committed to deepening our engagement with school districts to ensure that our students have outstanding student teaching experiences and at the same time, leave something of lasting value to our partner school districts. I am very excited about this partnership.”
The Greensboro Dreamers program was established nine years ago as the first rural chapter of the national “I Have a Dream” Foundation. It is a comprehensive long-term (16 years) educational support program that is following a group of 54 Greene County Elementary School children (first grade class of 2000). In exchange for participating in the program, each child involved is guaranteed tuition for college or vocational school. The program has been profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes and featured in Time and People magazines.