In the spring of 1998, a $1 mil-lion gift from alumna Pamela Trefler offered UMass Boston's Graduate College of Education (GCOE) and Dorchester High School (DHS) the freedom to create a new teaching and learning environment for students - - one based on the best ideas of educators and support staff from both institutions. As a result, a new vision of DHS is beginning to unfold - - and many changes are coming about at both institutions.
Several steps have already been taken to begin implementing changes
at DHS. One major goal is to reconfigure traditional classroom
patterns to create small learning communities at the 950-student
school, where regular classroom ratios of students to teacher are
33:1. Small learning communities based on public service, technology,
and entrepreneurship are already established, and the process of
developing small learning communities will continue.
Twenty-three UMass Boston student/tutors joined DHS classrooms in
January, to support teachers and students, while DHS teachers are
serving as mentors to GCOE students working at the high school, and
as instructors and co-instructors in the GCOE's programs. By way of
professional development, more than 60 of the 80 teachers at DHS will
have participated in a UMass Boston course on literacy development by
the end of the year. On both sides of the partnership, participants
are offering their ideas, their intellectual resources, and their
experiences to each other in a way that they could only dream of
before, thanks to the Trefler grant.
"What we are forming is really a professional development school,
which is a big culture change in both places," says June Kuzmeskus,
the Graduate College of Education/Dorchester High School Partnership
coordinator. "It means we're moving toward a reciprocal, co-equal
relationship, with teacher preparation on site, connected to
professional development, and with a systematic inquiry into teaching
and learning."
Another major goal of the partnership is under development: a
year-long, pre-service, professional teacher preparation program
named "Teach Next Year," a new pathway of the GCOE's masters of
education program. Ten to 15 masters students will be accepted into
"Teach Next Year," which begins at the end of August 1999. The
program will provide students with an intensive, DHS-based experience
in which they will work their way up from student teachers to
full-time teachers with a reduced load over the course of a year.
The partnership's implementation of so many potentially far-reaching
changes for the first time in a Boston Public School is really the
opportunity to blaze a new trail in public education.
While the collaboration between UMass Boston and Dorchester High
School, with its fresh infusion of resources seems new and exciting,
in fact the relationship between the two institutions has long
roots. It was in the aftermath of desegregation of the Boston Public
Schools in the 1970s that the courts paired Boston-area colleges and
universities with individual Boston high schools. UMass Boston and
DHS were paired then, and have worked together since, although lack
of resources often prevented efforts to implement new ideas. Last
year, 97 percent of the DHS teachers who voted on whether to
implement the partnership gave their stamp of approval, which means
almost unanimous support for the course that the GCOE and DHS have
embarked upon together.
"The grant allows us to do many things we've wanted to do for years,
but lacked the sustained resources for...now we can do things we
never dreamed of. This partnership is an initiative of depth and
complexity, and has never been done before in the City of Boston,"
says Charles Desmond, associate chancellor for school and community
collaborations, who has worked closely with DHS staff for many years.
"Everyone involved is looking to make it built to last."