Lauren Mountain, current director of United Way Youth Venture at MWCC, recently told members of the School Committee that the college and Murdock High School have partnered with the Youth Venture program since 2002. Three years ago the college began introducing Changemaker Communities, essentially a professional development program working with educators to help them learn skills of teamwork, empathy, leadership and problem-solving.
She said Changemaker paired really well with Youth Venture because students were learning the same skills by experiencing them as social entrepreneurs — responding to something within their community and addressing it.
“It was a natural transition for us to go from Youth Venture to Changemaking, and from Changemaking now to this new opportunity for the 2020 calendar year through the Barr Foundation.”
MWCC was selected as a recipient of the Barr Foundation’s new “Portrait of a Graduate” grant program, described as a collective vision of what all high school students will know and be able to do by graduation. To create the portrait, educators, parents, students and community members work to determine the definition of student success in school and beyond.
Mountain said that MWCC was one of 14 awarded communities in New England for the Portrait of a Graduate Grant.
“It is essentially a planning grant for us to look at the gaps in high school readiness, their ability to be successful in college, career and community,” Mountain said.
Mountain explained that she conducted interviews of leaders at participating school districts, including Fitchburg, Leominster, Gardner and Winchendon. Also included in the grant are MWCC’s Early College Dual Enrollment and Pathways Early College Innovation School.
As a partnership, leadership from the different schools are trying to determine what success looks like. They are also reaching out to alumni to ask them to define their success, including the factors that caused their success and what helped to make them the person they are today.
The grant allows the group time to study the data received in depth. To find the data, Mountain explained there will be a lot of interviews with stakeholders, including educators, staff, students, parents, employers, family members, the community as a whole, and service providers including health, and other external support services that help make a student successful.
Mountain told the School Committee that the grant team is helping to bring many voices to the table. Their focus is to answer the question about students’ readiness for college. Mountain noted that currently when taking in the remediation rates, the answer is no, students are not ready. Data reveals that students are taking basic English and math courses, and are basically not ready.
“If you look at the workforce there would be a percentage of people not exhibiting the skills needed. Is it the school’s fault or do we all need to come to the table and work together?” she said.
The administrators are working with Mountain as a team to find the reason why students share gaps in readiness. The working team is looking at models of learning that might help change the data. They will help bring other district voices to the table to spend time looking at the national frameworks. They will go on site visits to different schools, even nationally, to see how things are done outside of New England.
When the data is gathered at midyear, the team will pull it all together to try and make sense of it. Mountain said the goal is to align what they learn with what is in process for the district’s turnaround plan and other education initiatives, and then find ways to incorporate what is working and cut waste.
Mountain added that what is introduced will change what the high school experience looks like because students and teachers will have helped in its creation.
Change is difficult, but administrators came to an understanding that they must be open to doing something totally different. Mountain added that the project will not work without community support. She suggested that the School Committee could help get the word out to people who don’t necessarily buy into the school district, as well as those who attend every PTO meeting, telling them all voices are needed to change what is currently not working.
According to the Barr Foundation site, the grant was awarded to MWCC on Dec. 4 in the amount of $250,000. The term of the grant is 12 months.
Gardner, Fitchburg, Leominster and Winchendon have also recently partnered in the planning process under a separate Barr Foundation grant to find out what would ensure high quality principals in the schools.
In a press release that announced the Portrait of a Graduate grant, Fagan Forhan, assistant dean at MWCC, stated, “The rate of change in the world today is exponentially faster than it has ever been, and it is essential for us to look at what students should know, and be able to do, at the point of high school graduation as they prepare to enter higher education and/or the workforce in a world that is very different than the one most of us grew up in. The school districts in our region have been working deeply together for a number of years, and are poised to truly move the needle on the educational experience — and outcomes — for youth in North Central Massachusetts.”
