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”
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”
During this year’s Teacher Appreciation Week, we are honored to support our teachers and their important relationships with students and families.
City Connects Coordinators have always played a critical role in supporting teachers — and they are continuing this work in the face of COVID-19.
Teachers tell us they often feel the indirect emotional burden of students’ problems, from hunger, anxiety, and depression to homelessness and family stress.
Coordinators help by assessing students’ needs and addressing them with customized in-school and out-of-school resources. This frees teachers to feel supported and enables them to focus on teaching. Continue reading “Helping teachers who work in COVID-19’s shadow”
It’s budget season in Ohio, and last week, Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted and other state officials, including Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria, visited Chaminade Julienne Catholic High School in Dayton to see City Connects in action.
Husted is encouraging his state to increase its investment in students’ success.
“We believe that this is a replicable model that can be used in public schools and other schools across the state,” Husted tells WHIO Television. “And we want the new money that’s being put into the budget to serve these students to go to programs like this.”
“The visit comes as legislators are considering a new $550 million allocation in the state budget to provide similar ‘wraparound services’ to Ohio schools,” the Dayton Daily News reports. “That budget has already passed the Ohio House, and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted advocated for the plan Friday.” Continue reading “Ohio’s lieutenant governor visits a City Connects program – and calls on his state to invest in students’ success”
We’re happy and a little amazed to welcome a superstar to the world of integrated student support: LeBron James.
This summer, James, the world-famous National Basketball Association player, launched the I Promise School in Akron, Ohio. It’s a collaboration between the LeBron James Family Foundation and the Akron Public Schools.
A key component of the school is providing students with services to mitigate the effects of poverty.
As an EdSurge article explains, “Social media lit up praising the litany of services the school will offer to students and families alike: among them, free uniforms, bicycles and helmets, transportation, breakfast, lunch and snacks… It will also serve families with supports like a food pantry and GED programs and job placement service for parents.” Continue reading “A new school founded by NBA Superstar LeBron James provides integrated student support”
We’re excited about our new video. It’s an overview of how City Connects gets the right services to the right child at the right time.
In the video, Julia MacEwan, a City Connects site coordinator, says:
“In order for kids to be successful in school, they need lots of different things. A kid might need a backpack, a winter coat. She might need counseling, a family service center. And those are all the kinds of things that your City Connects coordinator can connect you to.”
Eric Dearing — a professor of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology in Boston College’s Lynch School of Education — explains:
“One advantage of City Connects is that it takes a multi-pronged approach to solving a multi-pronged problem. The disadvantage – and also the advantages – that we see among families in poverty are not the same from family to family and child to child.”
And Mary Walsh, City Connects’ executive director, adds:
“We did it by relying on developmental science, and we worked very closely with practitioners in the community. We were able, in a sense, to create a system that built the proverbial village around a child.”
Please take a look.
We are pleased to debut a new “mini-documentary” about City Connects. You’ll hear first-hand from school administrators, community partners, and our staff about how City Connects’ system of addressing students’ unique strengths and needs positively impacts schools and student achievement.
The video features thre City Connects schools in Boston (the Eliot K-8, Dever-McCormack, and Quincy Elementary) as well as our partners Big Brothers Big Sister of Mass. Bay, UMass-Boston, and the Red Oak After-school Program of the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center.
If you are interested in learning more or partnering with City Connects–as a district, school, or community partner–we’d love to hear from you! Send us an email.
To follow up on a story aired last March about the sharp increases in child poverty, 60 Minutes last night continued its “Hard Times Generation” theme with a piece about homeless families living in cars in Seminole County, Florida.
Recently revised Census numbers show the child poverty rate hovering around 17 to 21%. Research shows that even housing insecurity–a step before homelessness–puts children at risk for poor health and developmental delays. A program in Seminole County schools, Families in Transition, is trying to help homeless children and their families by working with 50 partners in the community. Beth Davalos, a social worker with Families in Transition, said:
“The longevity of homelessness continues to rise, so people are running out of resources. The unemployment runs out. Their savings run out. The family that lent them money does not have it anymore ’cause they’re looking at economic hardship. And before you know it they find themselves living in their car because they ran out of all options.”
Watch the full 60 Minutes piece here:
City Connects Blog 