Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
A Cape Cod school district is using social emotional learning assessments.
A federal spending bill boosts funding for early childhood education.
California fights preschool expulsions with mental health services.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
Across City Connects schools, community partnerships have a profound impact on children lives. One example is flourishing in Springfield, Mass.
Last year, as we’ve blogged, after a local family’s home caught on fire, Stephanie Sanabria — the City Connects coordinator at Springfield’s Early Childhood Education Center — worked with a team of community partners to secure a bed for the family’s daughter. A few months later, more beds were delivered to Springfield for more children. Behind the deliveries is an initiative called A Bed for Every Child run by the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. The Pioneer Valley Chapter of credit unions helped out with fundraising.
As Julie Donovan, City Connects Program Manager in Springfield, explains, “this initiative is critical for our families. Our students need a good bed to lay in every night, so that they can get the proper sleep — the proper rest to achieve their full potential — and come to school ready to learn.”
Because of local tragedies as well as hurricanes that hit Florida and Puerto Rico, the need for beds has grown. As Sanabria, who has been nicknamed the Bed lady, recently told us, referrals for families often come through word of mouth, especially now that many Puerto Rican hurricane evacuees are receiving housing. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Are students getting too much homework — or too little?
All 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., have turned in their plans for ESSA (the Every Student Succeeds Act).
San Antonio is integrating its schools by income.
Social/emotional learning in Chicago.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
For City Connects coordinators, supporting students and helping them succeed sometimes means giving them the tools they need to share their thoughts or figure out ways to solve their own problems.
That’s part of what Coordinator Josh Richardt is doing at Catholic Central Elementary School in Springfield, Ohio.
To help students share what they’re thinking but might not say, Richardt uses the Helping Hands Locker. It’s a centrally located, locked locker where kids can deposit messages about their experiences. Richardt explains the concept to students, and then he gives them prompts. One can be a piece of paper that says “I wish my teacher knew…” Students can answer in writing or with a drawing. They can also indicate how they want the information handled, meaning shared with a teacher or just with Richardt himself. Kids are sharing information about disagreements on the playground or about mean comments that someone has made about them. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Students who attend City Connects elementary schools have lower high school dropout rates than students who do not.
The Trump administration invests $71.5 billion in the U.S. Department of Education.
Trauma-informed schools and clinics help students cope with disasters and toxic stress.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
We’re proud to announce that a Boston College research study on high school dropout rates has just been published by AERA Open, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Educational Research Association.
The study — “The Long-Term Impact of Systemic Support in Elementary School: Reducing High School Dropout” — found that elementary-school students who experienced City Connects see their dropout rates cut in half compared to children who don’t attend City Connects schools.
Boston College researchers released this finding last year and discussed it in a policy brief. Now, it’s being acknowledged by AERA, the American Education Research Association, which has an extremely rigorous review process.
“Having this study published is welcome confirmation of our impact. Even years after they leave their City Connects elementary schools, students are benefitting from the personalized outreach and support that City Connects provided when they were young,” Mary Walsh says. Walsh is City Connects’ Executive Director and the Kearns Professor of Urban Education and Innovative Leadership at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education. Continue reading
Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!
These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Providing mentors for new teachers helps boost their students’ math scores.
A bill in Congress would address the shortage of teachers who work with English language learners.
In San Antonio, Tex., school Superintendent Pedro Martinez is conducting a radical school integration experiment.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
Our mission is to build a network of support and care for the students that we serve — but this is only possible thanks to the hard work of our coordinators. They are the ones who, everyday, forge strong relationships with teachers and school staff, students and parents, and community partners to effectively provide individualized supports for students depending on their particular situation and circumstances.
Coordinators greet students at the bus stop. They catch up with parents in the hallway. They talk to teachers, school nurses, and principals. They are friendly. They are approachable.
And they do the core, City Connects work of conducting whole class reviews — assessing the strengths and needs of every student in every school. They connect students to services in school; and coordinators connect students to dozens of community partners outside school who provide everything from dental care and mental health counseling to summer camps and after-school programs. Continue reading
