The Weekly Connect 10/26/20

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Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Civil rights data from the U.S. Department of Education shows increases in sexual assault and in the use of seclusion and restraint to discipline students who have disabilities.

Boston Public Schools suspends in-person learning.

During the pandemic, overeating and inactivity could lead to increased rates of childhood obesity.

To read more, click on the following links.

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Yan Leigh: the new Director of Research and Evaluation

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment

We’re excited to welcome Yan Leigh to the Center for Optimized Student Support, the home of City Connects, here at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development.

Leigh is the center’s new Director of Research and Evaluation. 

What motivated her to pack up and move to Boston in the middle of a pandemic? 

“I feel strongly connected to and vested in the vision, mission, and core values of the center,” she says. “School districts and states have been hit so hard by the pandemic, so there is not a better time than now to be part of the center’s work. When there’s a crisis, there are challenges for sure, but there are also opportunities.” 

“Our education system has a history of giving some students less of every critical resource. That’s why we need to use evidence-based interventions to reshape the system, one classroom and one student at a time.” 

As an economics graduate student at the University of Mississippi, Leigh thought she would work on business development for a nonprofit organization or work in the private sector. 

“But during my years as a graduate student, I developed a strong interest, an obsession really, in connecting educational research and practice.”  Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 10/19/20

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Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Suspensions cause some students to lose more than a year of learning.

USDA extends free meals for all students for the entire school year.

One cause of the digital divide among students learning at home is a shortage of laptops.

To read more, click on the following links.

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How City Connects Coordinators are working through the pandemic

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment

Whether their schools are open for in-person learning or open for virtual learning, City Connects Coordinators are working to get the right services to the right child at the right time. 

In their hands, the core City Connects model remains the same, but it is being delivered in increasingly creative and flexible ways. 

One example is Zuleika Andrade, who started working as a coordinator in January. 

“Then,” she says, “Covid happened.” 

So Andrade and her school — Mission Grammar School, a Catholic school in Boston’s Roxbury community – pivoted from in-person to online education. Andrade worked with students virtually running lunch-bunch and snack groups, providing individualized support to students, and helping families navigate access to resources. 

“I was calling families and checking in to see what parents needed now that school was closed, because school provides so much, not just education, but meals, child care, social-emotional connections.”

Last month, the school reopened for in-person instruction with a new, safety-conscious look: in addition to new classrooms, a new lab, and a new ventilation system, there are signs with reminders of where to stand to be socially distant. Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 10/13/20

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Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

U.S. Department of Education data reveals that Black girls are disciplined more often than their white peers.

Boston delays the next phase of in-person learning because of rising coronavirus infections.

Some students who struggled in school are successful with remote learning.

To read more, click on the following links.

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Welcoming our new graduate assistants

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Every year at City Connects, we are excited to welcome a new cohort of graduate assistants. The GAs, as we call them, come from different programs here at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, and they bring passion and energy to our work.

“The GAs typically work with us for an academic year, and we want their experience to be a valuable part of their education,” Claire Foley, City Connects’ Associate Director, says. “Many of the GAs give conference presentations and they contribute to our multi-disciplinary team.”

This year’s cohort of new GAs bring a wealth of experience to City Connects. They are:

Elizabeth Dowgert, earning a master’s degree in School Counseling

Dowgert is working on City Connects’ policy outreach and communications efforts. She’s a former preschool teacher who brings insights from the world of early education, where there’s a strong interplay between “whole child” approaches and education, Foley says.

“Elizabeth is really drawn to the idea that school can be a place where you look at and address kids’ out-of-school needs.” She will be working with us to translate our experience implementing City Connects in early childhood settings into lessons and resources for practitioners and policymakers. Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 10/5/20

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Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Wildfires trigger lingering trauma in California students.

Michigan invests stopgap funding for child care.

Remote learning is leaving students behind.

To read more, click on the following links.

Continue reading →

New courses on providing integrated student support during a pandemic

Alyssa Haywoode1 Comment

The pandemic has underscored what we’ve always known at City Connects: The best way to help children is to be systematic and intentional about providing comprehensive supports – even in the face of global instability. 

To do this work, we’ve had to adapt, and we’ve had to work harder than we had ever imagined.

The pandemic “forced us to develop the best online training we’ve ever had for City Connects,” Mary Walsh, City Connects’ Executive Director said recently of new courses that City Connects has developed on providing integrated student support during a pandemic.

To share this knowledge more broadly, we are offering the courses for free to elementary school teachers and counselors across the country as, Walsh says, a “gift during this horrible COVID time.”

The four courses are online and self-paced. They were initially offered in August and sold out in hours. Now, by popular demand, a second run of the courses is available until Friday, October 16, 2020. Participants also have the option of signing up for an accompanying synchronous Zoom session.  Continue reading →