MARCH: EDUCATION + BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Take me to:
Program Day
Date: Wednesday, March 9th
Time: 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Location: Zoom (see reminder email or the YW Boston Connect event page for meeting details)
Objectives
Our objectives are to
- Experience the promise of and challenges for Boston Public School students
- Understand the complexity of urban school leadership
- Understand history of segregation/de-segregation in Boston Public Schools
- Be able to articulate barriers and opportunities to providing a high quality education for all children
Agenda
- 9:00 Welcome & opening
- 9:45 Education and Socialization
*Break* - 10:10 Small Group Discussion
- 10:30 BPS Expert Panel: Edverette Brewster, Emmanuel Allen, Velecia Saunders
*Break* - 11:40 Inclusive Leadership and Education
- 12:25 Final Discussion
- 12:55 Closing & Survey
Pre-work
Complete the following readings before our program day:
- View 00:00-31:10 of Eyes on the Prize segment on the Boston Busing Crisis (30 minutes)
- Content warning: This documentary on Boston’s busing crisis of 1974 and includes racial slurs and images of racial violence.
- We encourage you to reflect in your LB notebook as you watch and/or afterwards.
- Review and annotate Boston Public Schools At-A-Glance (15 min)
- Review this historical timeline of education in the US (10 min)
- Read report: An Uneven Path: Student Achievement in Boston Public Schools, 2007-2017 (30 min)
- Review Number One for Some report on education in Massachusetts (15 min)
- Review this overview from Axios of some of the most pressing issues related to race and education in America (20 min)
- Education data gathering pre-work *This is for your own use.
Additional recommended:
- For more on Boston’s busing crisis, watch Can We Talk?
- Explore the Boston Globe’s The Great Divide Series on Race, Class, and Opportunity in Our Schools *Let us know if you are interested in a particular article but can’t get past the pay wall.
- Chalkbeat: Early school choice deadlines mean affluent parents often get first shot at coveted schools, new study shows
- Recommended by a LeadBoston 2020 class member: The Decline of the ‘Great Equalizer’
- Review TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth Study
- Explore the Boston Globe’s Valedictorian Project
- The Bay State Banner: Boston University professor Travis Bristol studies hiring, retention of teachers of color
- The Boston Globe: The Boston Public Schools are in crisis. Harvard (or BC or MGH) can help.
- The Boston Globe: How to make up for the pandemic’s devastating learning loss? Massachusetts families say summer school will be key
- The Atlantic: Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene (includes 48:28 audio option)
- City Journal: The Miseducation of America’s Elites
- This American Life’s two-episode story on Harper High School in Chicago
- Serial podcast series, Nice White Parents
Module 2: Patterns of Oppression
Watch the YW Module 2 video on “The 4I’s of Oppression” (6:28)
- As you watch, take notes and answer the reflection questions in your LeadBoston journal.
- Once you’ve finished the video, share your response to the Post & Share question below as a comment to the pinned post on the YW Boston Connect LeadBoston 2022 group page.
Post & Share: In your workplace, who has the privilege to speak from an individual perspective much of the time? Who is expected to speak for—or is seen as the only member of—a group much of the time?
Expert Speakers
Edverette Brewster, Principal, Holmes Innovation School, Dorchester, MA
Edverette is a native of Memphis, Tennessee and a graduate of Vanderbilt University where he earned a Bachelors of Arts in Public Policy. Edverette entered the teaching profession as a Teach for America Corps Member and relocated to Boston to teach middle school English Language Arts at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School, where he taught Humanities and served as the Humanities Team Facilitator. At the Frederick, Edverette served on the Instructional Leadership Team and coached the LGF Step Team. In 2016 Edverette earned his Masters in Instructional Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. During his career, he has worked with Teach for America as a Curriculum Specialist during regional Institute and a Content Team Leader. In 2018 Edverette received Honorable Mention for the BPS Educator of the Year and taught course through Teach Plus that focused on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Currently, Edverette is the proud principal of the Holmes Innovation School in Dorchester. His passion is to provide culturally relevant instruction and quality support for students in public school settings.
Velecia Saunders, Special Education Disproportionality Specialist, Boston Public Schools Office of Opportunity Gap
Velecia Saunders is currently the Special Education Disproportionality Specialist for Boston Public Schools. Prior to this appointment in July of 2020, she spent 28 years at McKinley schools as a paraprofessional, teacher and finally Headmaster. McKinley is a substantially separate public day school within BPS that serves students in grades K-12 who have been diagnosed with moderate to severe behavioral, psychological and social emotional concerns.
Velecia comes with wealth of experience around improving outcomes for students in alternative schools and in healing centered and trauma informed student engagement. For the past 12 years, Velecia has also been an adjunct professor working under Dr. Lisa Gonsalves in the Teach Next Year Program at UMass Boston, teaching sociocultural perspectives and classroom management and child psychology. She resides in Milton, Mass., and is a proud mother of two beautiful girls ages 10 and 28.
Emmanuel Allen, Director, Boston Public Schools Re-Engagement Center (REC)
As a lifelong resident of Boston, Emmanuel Allen is dedicated to the success and achievement of urban youth. For the past seventeen years, he has worked to create programing and pathways for a variety of populations, ranging from homeless youth, to high school dropouts and those at risk of dropping out, to first-year college students.
Emmanuel helped design the Boston Public Schools Re-Engagement Center, a full service center that actively recovers students who have left school. He has also managed and organized programs targeted at reducing violence in urban areas. Emmanuel holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Fitchburg State University in Computer Information Systems and a certificate in Nonprofit Leadership and Management from Boston University. He completed his MBA at Northeastern University. Emmanuel currently works for the Boston Public schools as the director of Boston’s Re-Engagement Center.
Follow-Up Conversation Information Lead By Leadership Commitment Prep Group
Date: Wednesday, March 16th
Time: 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM
Location: Zoom (see YW Boston Connect event page for Zoom info)
Optional Thursday Social Information
Date: Thursday, March 24th
Time: 5:05 PM to 6:00 PM
Location: Zoom (see YW Boston Connect event page for Zoom info)