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In this era of financial cutbacks, the public school system can
use all the help that is available. A team of psychologists from
Boston College's Lynch School of Education has gotten involved in
the country's future by collaborating with local public schools
for nearly 10 years on programs that provide services and professional
input for administrators, parents and students.
Mary Walsh, Ph.D., director of the Boston College Center for Child,
Family and Community Partnerships spoke with Massachusetts Psychologist's
Catherine Robertson Souter about the programs and reveals ways psychologists
can get involved on a local level.
Q: What was the impetus for doing the programs?
A: They started initially through research we were doing in
local Boston public schools. At the Gardner in Allston, when we
finished, the principal said to us "How can you leave? Don't you
see that the children here could use the support that psychologists
could bring, that the university could bring? If you do have to
leave now, can't you come back and bring people from the university
with you?"
Nobody had challenged me that way before. Obviously, as one faculty
member, there wasn't a lot I could do. But I came back and chatted
with other faculty members from across the professional schools,
not just psychology, but social workers, nursing, law - and within
two years we were able to go back to that school and work with them
around programs they thought were important for children.
We eventually were able to get grant funding to develop the first
full-service school in the city of Boston at Gardner. We had technical
support from the Children's Aid Society, the largest social service
agency in New York City. They had worked with the New York school
board in the late 1980s to start these full-service or extended
service, schools.
Q: What is a full-service school?
A: It's a school that provides opportunities for children and
families to access resources and support to help the children achieve
academically and develop socially. It typically offers programs
run by a variety of people, like tutoring before school, extensive
after school programs that focus on both academic and social development
and evening programs for parents like free legal services, English
as a Second Language (ESL classes) and parent education events.
Usually, the school partners with outside agencies. The lead agency
in this case is the YMCA of Greater Boston. Oftentimes, there is
a university partner if there is one available. Boston College is
the university partner. So it's a school, community, university
partnership.
Q: What results have you seen so far?
A: Parents have become increasingly involved in the life of
the school as volunteers. Some even got jobs in the after school
program as teaching assistants.
In the late 1990s, the Gardner was the eighth most improved school
in the state on the standardized testing.
The current data suggests that you cannot close the achievement
gap between kids living in poverty and kids in middle class schools
by improving classroom teaching alone. That will close about 50%
of it. The other 50% needs to be addressed by focusing on the non-academic
barriers that get in the way of learning - kids who don't have adequate
child care after school, kids whose living conditions make it difficult
for them to get their homework done.
Q: Will you expand this program?
A: In 1998, we were funded to take the Gardner school model
and expand it in a systemic way across 11 Allston/Brighton schools
and in the Boston public schools and we are fully operational now
in 10 elementary schools across Allston/ Brighton and in Mission
Hill and Roxbury.
We are beginning to extend to Catholic schools in the area that
have expressed an interest.
Q: In addition to the extended service schools, your colleagues
have initiated other programs to work with the public schools.
A: Yes. Tools for Tomorrow was started by David Blustein, Ph.D.,
whose arena is career development, the psychology of work. His team
developed programs that help high school students look at the world
of work and make connections to their current learning. He has doctoral
students do class intervention with faculty. They have developed
a manual and an ongoing curriculum for this and have done some interesting
studies. Brighton High School is the focus of much of their work,
as well as West Roxbury High School.
Elizabeth Sparks, Ph.D., a counseling psychologist, directs an
educational advocacy program at Brighton High School. She works
with doctoral and master's degree students in our graduate psychology
program to train them to teach high school students how to advocate
for their own educational needs. They work through the guidance
and student support office with students who seem to be struggling.
Q: How could a psychologist get involved with the schools?
A: Engage in conversations around what are the supports in a
community to address the non-academic barriers to learning. They
exist in every community, not just in those with large numbers of
people living below the poverty line.
Some of the agencies that psychologists are working with already
are beginning to collaborate with schools much more directly, so
they can get involved that way.
If they are in private practice, they may be able to collaborate
with after school programs and the extended service programs in
their town or city. We are happy to chat with anyone who may have
an interest in doing that.
There is also a Web site called communityschools.org
and author Joy Dryfoos has written a number of books on full-service
schools.
Q: What comes next?
A: We have a full time evaluator so we are collecting a lot
of data on what is happening, what types of changes are occurring.
That's what makes it really wonderful for us to be involved as psychologists
because we are in a position to ask empirical questions and get
empirical answers. Are we making a difference? Does the work make
a difference?
Q: And?
A: So far, the early indicators are very positive.
Q: What are the lessons to be learned here?
A: The two thrusts of it are that institutions need to collaborate
- education, universities and community agencies of all kinds -
to enhance the life chances of kids and families.
The other part is that professions need to collaborate - psychologists,
social workers, and health care providers. This work gives psychologists
the opportunity to collaborate and become part of the team, to contribute
their own expertise as well as learn from the expertise of others.
Psychology has a lot to contribute to the development of school
children. I think it's clearly now an agenda for APA, but for a
long time psychology, other than school psychology, hasn't thought
about schools as a setting where there are real opportunities to
make a difference.
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