It’s a Thursday morning at the John Winthrop Elementary School in Dorchester and Jaymie Silverman is multitasking. She’s on the phone, and she’s talking to a parent who just came in, checking in with a student, and preparing for an upcoming meeting. As the school’s City Connects Coordinator, Silverman is responsible for connecting all of … Continue reading “The Power of Whole Class Reviews”
Even as an undergraduate at Boston College, Maria Theodorakakis was looking for a way to combine her academic interests with hands-on work. “I was looking for a major that really kind of combined my interest in psychology and sociology with my interest in helping kids and working in schools,” Theodorakakis recalls. A conversation with the … Continue reading “Practice and research: a conversation with Maria Theodorakakis”
We’re excited to announce that City Connects is expanding its presence in Indiana. In 2018, we launched in three Indiana schools. This fall, thanks to a mix of state and federal funding, City Connects is launching a two-year pilot program in 34 public and charter schools, serving 15,850 students in four cities: Gary, Indianapolis, Muncie, and South … Continue reading “City Connects is growing in Indiana”
“It is calmer,” Laurie Acker, the City Connects Program in Minnesota, says of the brand new school year. “When Covid first hit it was an emergency and there was chaos. Then last year was extremely hard for teachers and students. Now this year, there’s science and protocols. We’re following CDC guidelines. If there’s a Covid … Continue reading “Sizing up the new school year”
News headlines keep echoing a dismal fact: across the country, children are dealing with the trauma of living through a global pandemic. This is true for both school-aged children and for young children ages 0 to 5. And as City Connects Coordinator Elizabeth Planje explains, working young children in preschool programs to provide services and … Continue reading “Detectives: City Connects coordinators in early education programs”
Last October, Jannet Sanchez started working as a City Connects Coordinator at Boston’s Maurice J. Tobin School. Her first step? Learn about her new school quickly by building strong relationships with teachers. Classes had been going on for a month, but only remotely because of the pandemic, so Sanchez couldn’t have the face-to-face interactions with … Continue reading “Celebrating Teachers at the Tobin School”
Once upon a time, Shannon Stamegna thought she might go to law school. But after she started looking at educational programs, she found the social work program at Salem State University. “The description of the program and of learning to help others just matched my personality,” she says. “I also loved the idea of working … Continue reading “A new City Connects Coordinator: Shannon Stamegna”
As students return to in-person learning inside their schools, many are bringing the traumas of the pandemic with them. Schools can help by providing integrated student support, a whole child approach that meets students’ academic, social-emotional, family, and health needs. To learn how, educators can attend the Systemic Student Support (S3) Academy, an initiative of … Continue reading “S3 Academy: empowering schools to set up their own systems of integrated student support”
City Connects Blog 