City Connects is in its third year of operations in Ireland, where it’s running in Dublin’s North East Inner City (NEIC), an area with high concentrations of students who live in poverty.
Since then, the program has brought new services, supports, and enrichment programs to students. Here’s a by-the-numbers look at what has been accomplished, drawn from NEIC’s 2022 Progress Report.
Continue reading “By the numbers: City Connects in Dublin, Ireland”
Ask Mary Walsh, the Executive Director of City Connects, about her love of education, and she talks about her parents who grew up in Ireland and were only able to attend school through the fourth grade.
“It was always my dad’s deepest regret that he never could get more education,” she says.
Walsh shares this story and the road that led her to become a professor of education in Boston College Magazine’s What I’ve Learned section.
As Walsh tells BC Magazine, one key lesson she has learned from her father is “Nobody can take your education from you.”
However obstacles like poverty, hunger, and parental depression can prevent children from getting an education in the first place. What can make a difference is equipping schools to move these obstacles aside so children can learn. And that’s why Walsh launched City Connects, to put Coordinators in schools who look at every child and provide services and supports to maximize each child’s readiness to learn.
Another lesson is “Always live on the hyphen.”
Continue reading “Sharing lessons and stories: City Connects’ Executive Director Mary Walsh”
While the blog is on summer vacation, we’re sharing past posts about the many ways City Connects helps students thrive.
This week’s roundup looks at how City Connects has expanded into Ireland.
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Ireland launches City Connects
City Connects Blog, June 11 2020
Often City Connects grows because of, well, connections. That’s what happened when Una Shannon came from Ireland to Boston College to be a postdoctoral fellow. Shannon learned about City Connects and shared our work with Eugene Wall, the president of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, as well as sharing it with ministers from the Irish National Government.
The result: Irish educators are planning to launch a City Connects pilot program this fall in 10 Dublin schools.
“It strikes me that any ‘school person’ who hears about City Connects tends to have an ‘aha’ moment,” Shannon says. She’s a former teacher who earned her bachelor’s degree from Mary Immaculate College. “It just makes sense to support the whole child, to have a strengths-based perspective, and to have a systemic, systematic, and sustained approach to student support that’s in rhythm with school life.”
Continue reading “From the archives: City Connects in Ireland”
While the blog goes on summer vacation, we’ll spend the next few months sharing past posts and social media coverage about the many ways City Connects helps students thrive.
This week’s roundup collects some of the articles, research briefs, and policy proposals published by our partners and by the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children that share insights drawn from City Connects’ evidence-based model of integrated student support.
The Center for Thriving Children is the home of City Connects and is based at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development. The Center “advances science, implementation, and innovation to promote healthy child and youth development, learning, and thriving.”
These publications speak to long-standing student needs and to the ways these needs have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
Continue reading “From the archives: Sharing what we’re learning through papers, policy briefs, and articles”
We’re happy to announce the release of City Connects’ 2022 Progress Report. It’s a look at our history, our growth, and the progress we’ve made in schools as the world has navigated the pandemic.
As the report explains:
“In high-poverty urban schools, children face out-of-school challenges that can impede their success in the classroom and in life. Since the 1960’s, researchers have concluded that socioeconomic background is a significant factor affecting students’ academic achievement.”
City Connects helps by implementing a systematic, evidence-based model of integrated student support that addresses the out-of-school challenges stemming from poverty. And as City Connects has grown, expanding into more U.S. cities and into Dublin, Ireland, we’ve also seen growing interest in integrated student support.
“…particularly in the context of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, interest in this work has grown in the worlds of practice, research, and policy,” the report says.
Continue reading “City Connects releases its 2022 Progress Report”
Daniel Triana Alvarado was 7 years old when his family moved from Mexico to Westborough, Mass., where he began a journey through public education that prepared him for and led him to the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects.
Westborough, Triana recalls, was a town with resources for families and students. In high school, Triana had a guidance counselor, Steven Favulli, who talked to him and his family about college.
“My parents still talk about how important Mr. Favulli was,” Triana says. “He made my parents feel like they had a grasp of what was going on in school because he spoke Spanish, and he took the time to help them understand.”
Triana enrolled in Worcester State University (WSU) where he decided to major in business administration, attracted by the range of doors the degree promised to open.
“What did I get out of going to Worcester State University?” Triana says, musing about his college years. “Opportunities.”
These weren’t typical opportunities. Triana was working full time in college, so he couldn’t participate in internships. And he hadn’t developed career aspirations based on seeing the careers of his parents or of family friends. Instead, his opportunities came in the form of personal connections.
Continue reading “Giving Back: Daniel Triana Alvarado joins the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children”
As Ireland prepares to welcome Ukrainian refugees and increases its investments in student support, City Connects staff met last week with Irish Minister of Education Norma Foley to share details about our partnership with schools in Dublin.
Mary Walsh, City Connects Executive Director, and her team explained more about City Connects, sharing how its unique features make it effective and how the program is being implemented in Ireland.
We are particularly proud that Foley and her team were also able to visit Boston’s John Winthrop Elementary School, a City Connects school where coordinators have built strong relationships and helped students facing homelessness and the challenges of the pandemic.
“We were just so thrilled to get the opportunity to see the work on the ground today,” Foley said during a discussion about City Connects held at Boston College later in the day. “It was a wonderful example of what it should be and how it actually is operational.
“It is one thing to see it on paper but another to see it delivered effectively in a school community. I’m a strong believer myself that whatever challenges a child has, whatever needs a child has, a child also brings enormous strengths.
“We are very proud of the work that is being done and very appreciative of your work with Mary Immaculate College and (BC’s) expertise and talent as well and the collaboration we have seen here today as well.”
Continue reading “Strengthening ties between City Connects and Ireland — as Irish schools prepare to welcome Ukrainian refugees “
In Indiana, City Connects has gotten a welcome nod from the business community.
Our program is featured in the current issue of BizVoice, published by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
“Poverty, homelessness, illness, domestic violence and other issues heavily influence well-being,” the article, Beyond the Classroom, says of students. City Connects “is an innovative concept designed to help children engage and learn in school by connecting them with customized intervention, prevention, and enrichment services to thrive.”
This work is done by City Connects Coordinators, or, as some Indiana schools call them, “family navigators.” And as we’ve blogged, City Connects’ work in the Midwest is being managed by the City Connects Technical Assistance Center at Marian University’s Center for Vibrant Schools.
“We were very intentional with putting the family navigators in our schools that had students who faced the most obstacles and needed additional support. Our family navigators, along with our community partners, really build a network of support for the students, the families, the schools and the teachers who serve them,” Lee Ann Kwiatkowsk says in the article. She’s the director of public education and CEO of the Muncie Public Schools.
The article also highlights how essential City Connects has proven to be during the pandemic.
Continue reading “Businesses see value in City Connects”
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