Education

Creative community solutions keep students engaged in school

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment
Photo courtesy of KARE11


When City Connects Coordinators in Minnesota saw that students engaged in virtual learning were missing from school, the coordinators dug in to find out why. 

“There were several reasons,” Laurie Acker, the City Connects Program Manager in Minnesota, says. “Some students didn’t have access to the Internet, or they had spotty access because a number of people in their homes were trying to use computers.” Other students lived in homes that were crowded or distracting. 

“The other thing we saw was that for a number of families there wasn’t any parental assistance at home, so some students were trying to do school by themselves without help. Younger students didn’t always know how to use the computer. And middle school students weren’t always motivated to use it.” 

Fortunately, Valerie Quintana saw a solution: use office buildings that have been emptied out by the pandemic to create study spaces for school children. 

Quintana is the co-founder and Executive Director of The Real Minneapolis, a nonprofit organization that “responds to the immediate and fluid needs of historically under-represented individuals by thoughtfully listening.”  Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 3/8/21

City ConnectsLeave a comment

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:

A year into the pandemic, fewer young students are on target for learning to read.

Miguel Cardona is confirmed as the new U.S. Secretary of Education.

How one Washington, D.C., school convinced parents to let children return to their classrooms.

To read more, click on the following links.

Continue reading →

Managing the pandemic in preschool

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment

“Preschool shouldn’t be like this,” Erika Griffin says of the Early Learning Center in Salem, Mass., where children have their own desks and their own bins of toys that only they can play with – all to protect them from spreading COVID-19. 

“When the kids need a break from sitting at their desks, the teachers put Hula Hoops on the ground six feet apart and each child sits in their hoop so they can play on the floor, just to give them a break from sitting at their desks. At the end of every day, those toys are sanitized. We work hard to come up with small, creative solutions, and the kids have been great with that.” 

Erika Griffin

Griffin is both a City Connects Coordinator and a school adjustment counselor at the Early Learning Center, and she’s used to children sitting at large tables, socializing, and sharing toys. 

But what Griffin’s work shows is that even during a global pandemic, City Connects continues to work in early education settings. 

As we’ve blogged, the core of the City Connects practice remains the same, whether it’s implemented in preschools, elementary schools, high schools, or colleges. Coordinators conduct whole class reviews with teachers and in consultation with families to assess the strengths and needs of each and every child.  Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 3/1/21

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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:

The timing of when food stamps are issued can affect test scores.

Governor Charlie Baker calls on Massachusetts elementary schools to be open five days a week by April.

A Philadelphia Catholic School successfully navigates the pandemic.

To read more, click on the following links.

Continue reading →

Courtney Pollack: a researcher’s journey to City Connects

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment

courtney-pollackCourtney Pollack, a former middle school teacher, stands in two worlds. 

As a Research Affiliate in the Gabrieli Lab at MIT, she does laboratory-based research. 

At Boston College, she does applied research. 

“Laboratory research contributes important knowledge about learning. But there’s a long runway from the lab to the classroom, so it takes time and several intermediate steps for this knowledge to have an impact on how students learn every day,” Pollack explains.

“Another approach is to conduct applied education research, which is what the Center for Optimized Student Support does.” Pollack is a Senior Researcher at the center, which is home to City Connects and based at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development.

“Researchers in the center study the City Connects intervention, which is grounded in prior child development research from different disciplines and from both laboratory and applied settings.” 

Long before Pollack was an academic, however, she was a college student who had started thinking about how education works because she was tutoring middle school students in Arizona who were struggling in math.  Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 2/22/21

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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:

Students in virtual classrooms report more symptoms of stress than students attending class in person.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases new guidelines for schools.

How physical education classes have changed during the pandemic.

To read more, click on the following links.

Continue reading →

A City Connects connection to college

Alyssa HaywoodeLeave a comment

Jama Badinghaus, a City Connects Coordinator at Chaminade Julienne High School in Dayton, Ohio, has been helping students apply to college for several years. Now she’s doing it in the middle of a pandemic — and she’s encouraging students to reach beyond the colleges they know to choices they hadn’t considered. 

“My role is on the support side,” Badinghaus says, “helping students think about what they want to do and asking if families have the resources they need.”

“We’ve put more energy into making sure that students have access to financial aid information. We’re making sure that students have a better sense of how to complete college applications, and we educate them about specific programs for first generation students [who are the first in their families to attend college] or for low-income kids.” 

For Badinghaus this has meant diving deep into programs like QuestBridge, a national nonprofit that connects exceptional low-income students with competitive colleges.  Continue reading →

The Weekly Connect 2/16/21

City ConnectsLeave a comment

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:

In-school Covid testing reduces infections by up to 50%.

A Michigan bill would require all the state’s schools to have a school counselor.

The pandemic has forced school counselors to take on more challenging student needs.

To read more, click on the following links.

Continue reading →