Boston College – City Connects Blog

A webinar explores how to help children thrive

Earlier this month, the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects, hosted a webinar called “Helping Children Thrive in an Age of Uncertainty.”

The webinar is a dynamic conversation that addresses the question: “In this time of historic uncertainty and challenge, what does it mean for children to ‘thrive,’ and what will it take to promote thriving in enduring and equitable ways?”

The discussion draws on the work of talented academics and their visionary ideas of what thriving could mean. It touches on the importance of joy, flourishing, having the opportunity to dream, and how thriving could be a community-wide resource that community members share over the course of their lives.

Here at City Connects, these ideas are a crucial part of our model. Our coordinators focus on meeting students’ needs and on offering them compelling opportunities like music lessons and summer camp. The goal is to help children thrive in school, at home, and as they grow into adults.

Educators from Dublin and Springfield talk about City Connects

Last week, we proudly welcomed the principals of the 10 City Connects schools in Dublin, Ireland, to meet with our staff at Boston College.

It was a wonderful chance to share ideas and strategies about how City Connects helps schools understand and address the needs and interests of their students.

The principals visited several local Catholic and public schools in Boston that implement City Connects, shared their own City Connects experiences, and talked about how to better engage families, teachers, and the community in providing students with systematic support.

One of the most inspiring sessions was a discussion on implementing City Connects in large cities that occurred between the Dublin principals and Daniel Warwick, Superintendent of the Springfield Public Schools in Massachusetts. Warwick was joined by Jessica Davila, the principal of Springfield’s Alice B. Beal School, and Stephanie Sanabria, Springfield’s City Connects Program Manager.

A toolkit to empower policymakers to use research and practice

Policymakers do the critical work of creating the context – the rules, budgets, and priorities – that schools and districts work within. To help policymakers use the latest insights from research and practice to encourage schools to build effective systems of student support, we’re releasing the second edition of our Integrated Student Support State Policy Toolkit.

The toolkit was created by the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, part of Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, as well as by City Connects, which is part of the Center, and by Communities in Schools, a national nonprofit organization that connects students to “caring adults and community resources.”

The updated toolkit draws on the principles of the National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support, which was released by the Center for Thriving Children. The National Guidlines were co-developed by a national working group of practitioners and researchers.

Because the toolkit reflects the latest policy trends, toolkit users can choose one of three different paths to implement systemic ways to support children. The paths are:

Bekah Harris on supporting students by managing change

To help schools implement successful programs of integrated student support, Bekah Harris says, you have to help schools manage change.

It’s creative work that involves strengthening schools’ approaches to student support.

That’s why Harris has taken on a new role at the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects, as the Senior Coach for Change Management. She’s helping schools by enhancing and building on the services they already offer.

Harris comes to this role with years of experience. She grew up in Oklahoma, where, she says, “I didn’t have a choice about education. I was born into a family of educators. My mom was a high school math teacher. My aunt taught kindergarten. My cousin and I taught elementary school. We actually taught in classrooms down the hall from each other for a couple of years. It was predestined.”

Teaching gave her a clear view of students’ lives.

Centering the Whole Child at a National Governors Association meeting

Schools across the nation are struggling with many student crises. Among them are learning loss due to the pandemic, an uptick in chronic absenteeism, and ongoing issues with food insecurity and mental health, all of which have made it more challenging for educators to help students learn and thrive.

That’s why professionals across a diverse set of fields are working to find creative solutions to improve student engagement and support.

At a recent National Governors Association meeting of educational policy advisors, leaders from state governments and nonprofits gathered with experts to discuss different ways schools can support students.

“Part of what was so powerful about this convening was seeing that there is a growing understanding of the importance of supporting the whole child,” Joan Wasser Gish explains. She is the Director of Systemic Impact at Boston College’s Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects.

City Connects joins Facebook

City Connects is on Facebook!

We’re sharing more about how we provide the integrated student support that addresses students’ out-of-school needs so they can do well in school. And we’re posting about our home, the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development.

We’ve also launched on Instagram. We’re already on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on LinkedIn and YouTube. All these links are also available on our Linktree.

We hope that expanding our social media presence will help expand awareness about the importance of integrated student support and how much evidence supports this practice. We’re also excited to be posting about the creative efforts of our staff. And we’re looking forward to posting about the research efforts that support City Connects.

So far, our posts feature:

Expanding the Center for Thriving Children

The Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, home to City Connects, is growing — and inaugurating a new leadership structure — in order to expand its capacity for research, outreach, and innovation.

Expanded Leadership

Mary E. Walsh, who launched the Center and who served as its executive director, takes on the new role of Founding Director as well as being a Senior Fellow at the Center. Walsh will also continue her work as the Executive Director of City Connects.

Eric Dearing, a professor of Applied Developmental Psychology in Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, is the Center’s new Executive Director.

Claire Foley will serve as the Center’s Associate Director, and she will continue to serve as the Associate Director for City Connects.

“Eric, Claire, and Mary make an outstanding leadership team, and they have already developed a compelling vision for achieving even greater impact through the Center’s work,” Lynch School Dean Stanton E.F. Wortham tells the Boston College Chronicle.

Inspiring approaches to student support — based on our National Guidelines

It’s the first anniversary of the National Guidelines for Integrated Student Support, and we’re excited to report that they are helping educators design customized – and, in some cases, strikingly original – systems to promote students’ success.

Released by the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the National Guidelines were co-created by a national working group of experts who drew on best practices. The guidelines have been shared by the National Governors Association and by the White House’s National Partnership for Student Success.

“One epiphany we had in developing the guidelines is that evidence-based approaches are using different mechanisms to achieve the same core functions that promote student success,” Joan Wasser Gish, the Center’s Director of Systemic Impact, says.

The common features that are in the National Guidelines are:

• conducting a holistic review of each student that focuses on strengths and needs

• developing an individualized plan for providing each student with in-school and community-based services and opportunities

• following up on those plans, and

• using data to inform decisions at the classroom level, the school level, and the community level

One promising, practical use of the National Guidelines is at the Systemic Student Support (S3) Academy — a joint project of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Rennie Center, and the Center for Thriving Children.

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