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These are some of the things we’ve been reading about:
Having one black teacher can improve black students’ chances of going to college.
Should childhood trauma be treated as a public health crisis?
In New York, a focus on house could lead to more diverse schools.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
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:
Education Week explores how principals manage job pressure.
Federal legislation funds grants to help schools with the opioid crisis.
Boston College’s Center for Optimized Student Support is building a statewide infrastructure of integrated student support.
Students who attend more “advantaged” schools do better on international exams.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
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:
A Cape Cod school district is using social emotional learning assessments.
A federal spending bill boosts funding for early childhood education.
California fights preschool expulsions with mental health services.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
Across City Connects schools, community partnerships have a profound impact on children lives. One example is flourishing in Springfield, Mass.
Last year, as we’ve blogged, after a local family’s home caught on fire, Stephanie Sanabria — the City Connects coordinator at Springfield’s Early Childhood Education Center — worked with a team of community partners to secure a bed for the family’s daughter. A few months later, more beds were delivered to Springfield for more children. Behind the deliveries is an initiative called A Bed for Every Child run by the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. The Pioneer Valley Chapter of credit unions helped out with fundraising.
As Julie Donovan, City Connects Program Manager in Springfield, explains, “this initiative is critical for our families. Our students need a good bed to lay in every night, so that they can get the proper sleep — the proper rest to achieve their full potential — and come to school ready to learn.”
Because of local tragedies as well as hurricanes that hit Florida and Puerto Rico, the need for beds has grown. As Sanabria, who has been nicknamed the Bed lady, recently told us, referrals for families often come through word of mouth, especially now that many Puerto Rican hurricane evacuees are receiving housing. Continue reading
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:
Are students getting too much homework — or too little?
All 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., have turned in their plans for ESSA (the Every Student Succeeds Act).
San Antonio is integrating its schools by income.
Social/emotional learning in Chicago.
To read more, click on the following links. Continue reading
City Connects’ first year of work in Salem, Mass., is already getting national attention. A recent article in Education Week looked at Salem’s citywide effort to promote students’ success, in partnership with By All Means, an initiative led by the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. A key part of this effort is Salem’s work with City Connects.
Last September, City Connects launched in all eight of Salem’s K-8 schools. This is the first example of citywide implementation of City Connects, and at this one year mark, we want to share three takeaways. Students benefit from:
Here’s how these benefits are playing out. Continue reading
While we are proud of the work that City Connects coordinators do to help homeless students, we are even more proud of the work that third graders at Trinity Catholic Academy in Brockton, Mass., are doing to help their peers.
The third graders packed backpacks full of school supplies for other Brockton children who are in the third and fourth grade and are homeless.
“Remember miracles can happen. Dream big. Work hard,” one Trinity Catholic third grader wrote in a note to a child who will receive a backpack. Continue reading
School climate is making headlines – and peaking the interest of researchers and policymakers. So earlier this month, we caught up with Anastasia Raczek and asked her to explain what school climate is and how it relates to City Connects’ work.
“School climate means lots of different things to different people. But we’re beginning to get more specific about it, and we do know a lot about what it seems to lead to,” Raczek said. As the Associate Director of Evaluation & Research, she helps lead an independent team that works to evaluate and improve City Connects. The team is based in the Center for Optimized Student Support, part of Boston College’s Lynch School of Education.
In December, Raczek spoke at an event on school climate that was organized by the Rennie Center and co-hosted by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, MassINC, Boston University, and Boston College. Conference participants discussed the connection between school climate and student success. A related policy brief is posted here. Continue reading
