Tag: Student Success

A Video Tells Our Story

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.

The Abell Report Looks at City Connects’ Approach to Student Success

abellWe’re excited to announce that City Connects is featured in the October edition of the Abell Report. The report is published by the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation, the largest foundation that focuses solely on Baltimore.

The Abell Report sums up assumptions that are common in many schools: Support services for students are important, but “they are often dismissed as isolated from the core school functions of teaching and learning.”

It is, however, essential to relocate these services to a school’s core. As the report says, “New research shows that effective student support not only improves the climate of a school, but it can also actually accelerate learning and improve students’ academic outcomes.” Continue reading “The Abell Report Looks at City Connects’ Approach to Student Success”

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