[originaltext]Moderator: Hello ladies and gentleman, it gives me great plea

Moderator:
    Hello ladies and gentleman, it gives me great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker for today’s session, Richard Weissbourd. Richard Weissbourd is the lead author of the report called ’’Turning the Tide,’’and he’s a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Richard Weissbourd, thank you very much for joining us.
Richard Weissbourd:
    Thank you for that introduction. It’s my pleasure to share the report ’’Turning the Tide’’with you here.
    As far as I know, many high school seniors have finished college applications. And now they’re waiting to find out whether taking advanced courses, prepping for entrance exams and agonizing over essays will all pay off. A new report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education calls on colleges to lower the pressure on students to impress admissions committees by accumulating achievements and awards. The report, called ’’Turning the Tide,’’recommends limiting the number of advanced placement classes and extracurricular activities that students can list on applications. Instead, it emphasizes community service and other changes.
    I think one of the things that the students are very focused on is creating-accumulating extracurricular activities, accumulating A. P. Courses. It’s fine. It’s totally appropriate to list a couple, two or three extracurricular activities that have been meaningful to you and to describe why they’re meaningful to you. We’re not looking for long lists of activities either. And what the admission deans who have endorsed this report- over 50 admission deans have endorsed it—what they’re saying is, you know, you’re not going to be penalized if you take a lot of A. P. courses, but you don’t need to. You’re not going to be penalized if you take a few A. P. courses.
    And the message we’re trying to send here is that the goal isn’t long brag sheets. The goal is meaningful academic engagement and spirited, passionate learning, and it’s meaningful ethical engagement. It’s being involved in your community, concern for others, concern for the greater good, for the public good. And one of the things about community service and community engagement is, if students have authentic choices, and it’s well-structured, well-supervised, they have time for reflection with adults and with peers, even if it’s mandatory, it tends to be helpful and it often is transformative. It’s a powerful learning experience.
    So you might even do it for the wrong reason, but end up getting a lot of benefit from it. Actually, to engage in the kind of community service is not a sort of pressure on students. We’re not mandating somebody to do community service, we just encourage it. It is about doing something meaningful, doing something in a diverse group, doing it for a year, nine months to a year, doing it for a sustained period of time.
16. What does the introduction say about Richard Weissbourd?
17. What is the purpose of the report from the Harvard Graduate School of Education?
18. How many admission deans have endorsed the report?
19. What does Richard Weissbourd think of community service?