Boston Public Schools

City Connects students win a Sole Train running award

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment

City Connects Coordinator Ashlei Alvarez does not enjoy running. When she was in school, she was the cross-country runner who hid in the bathroom. 

But every Friday morning, Alvarez goes running around the Boston Common with 30 fourth- and fifth-graders, two parents, and a number of staff members from the Josiah Quincy School where Alvarez works.

Why? 

“My first year here I noticed that we didn’t have a lot of extracurricular, sports-based programs,” Alvarez says. So when a teacher at her school told her about Sole Train: Boston Runs Together, a running program “that’s about deconstructing the impossible,” Alvarez and Kelly Garcelon, a kindergarten teacher who does like running, brought the program into their school. 

Alvarez expected five students to sign up. Instead, 30 did. “We were shocked,” Alvarez says. Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 6/24/19

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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!

These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:

New research suggests that some teachers improve students’ attendance.

Boston’s School Committee votes to eliminate middle schools.

The suicide rate among adolescents is at its highest point since 2000.

Michigan’s teachers are not as diverse as the state’s students.

To read more, click on the following links.

Continue reading →

National conferences feature City Connects

Alyssa Haywoode1 Comment

 

While Coordinators bring the power of City Connects to students, it is academic researchers at Boston College who share the story of City Connects at conferences, so that others can learn from what we do.

“An advantage of City Connects being located at a university is access to researchers who can evaluate the program’s impact,” Anastasia Raczek says of City Connects, which is a part of the Center for Optimized Student Support. Raczek is the Associate Director of Research & Evaluation of the center, which is at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development.

This spring, researchers have shared five presentations about City Connects at education research conferences in the United States and Canada.

The research was conducted by both Boston College professors and graduate students.

“Graduate education is a vital part of our mission, and we’re excited about the research our students have done and shared at these conferences,” Raczek says. “Because they come from different departments – education, measurement and statistics, developmental psychology, counseling psychology, and curriculum studies — they bring a diverse range of professional viewpoints.” Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 4/15/19

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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!

These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:

New principals can boost student achievement.

Therapy dogs go to school.

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh pledges to invest $15 million in pre-K programs.

School teachers talk about how they are meeting the needs of migrant children.

To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading →

Anticipating students’ needs with Cradles to Crayons

Alyssa Haywoode1 Comment

One of City Connects’ longstanding community partners is Cradles to Crayons, a nonprofit that collects new and nearly new clothes and distributes them to children in need. The organization has worked with City Connects for more than nine years.

In the fall of 2017, Cradles to Crayons reached out to City Connects and asked us to help out with a pilot program that they had in mind. Cradles to Crayons wanted to achieve a higher level of services by creating a new, seasonal delivery schedule for its KidsPacks – the bags full of clothes, coats, shoes, boots, books, and school supplies. The organization wanted to launch the program in City Connects schools, building on our existing relationship.

The pilot started at the beginning of this school year. In close coordination with our Coordinators, it serves more than 100 students across five Boston public schools. Students receive a back-to-school backpack with school supplies in September — and three more deliveries during the year containing clothing for fall, winter, and spring.

The goal of having these predictable deliveries is to create a system that’s better able to anticipate families’ needs and reach more students. Continue reading →

Media coverage of City Connects

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City Connects is in the news. An article in EdSurge and a brief in Education Dive tell stories of how we get the right services to the right child at the right time.

EdSurge’s article – “Meet the Support Network Addressing Out-Of-School Challenges for Every Student” — focuses on Boston’s Medell Elementary School where a kindergartener was missing a lot of school. The child’s teacher reached out to Madeline Gillespie, the school’s City Connects Coordinator, and Gillespie took action.

As EdSurge explains:

“Gillespie spoke with the girl’s mother and learned they were living in a shelter and had no way to get to school. It was less than a mile away, so the family wouldn’t ordinarily qualify for free transportation. But shelters are a special exception—students are eligible to ride on a school bus. Equipped with this information, Gillespie helped set up regular pickups and drop offs, and just like that, attendance improved.” Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 2/11/19

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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!

These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:

How City Connects works in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.

The link between bullying and depression among preschool children.

An overview of all 50 states’ education policies.

Head Start improves in Jacksonville, Fla.

New Orleans works to cut student absenteeism.

To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading →

Jordan Lawson brings the statistical and the personal to City Connects

Alyssa Haywoode2 Comments

Jordan Lawson thought he was going to be a clinical psychologist.

But after learning more about the field, he discovered psychometrics – and the idea of using statistics for social good.

“Statistics is interesting in and of itself, but sometimes, people, myself included, can lose sight of the fact that it’s just a tool that could be used for good,” Lawson says.

Now he’s at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development where he is a doctoral student in the Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment Department and a research associate who is helping to address one of City Connects’ data analysis challenges. Continue reading →