Bridges to Hope, Understanding and Changing the Social and Academic Outcomes of the Youth of Boston

A Free College-level Course for High School Students Offered by Wheelock College in Collaboration with Boston Public Schools and the Department of Adult Education and Community Services, Boston.

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Wheelock College, Boston Public Schools, the Department of Adult Education and Community Services invite you to:

Youth: Constructing the Challenges We Confront, a capstone presentation by the high school students who took the undergraduate-level course, Bridges to Hope, Understanding and Changing the Social and Academic Outcomes of Youth in Boston.

Date: May 9, 2008
Time: 5:30-6:30 p.m.
Location: Wheelock College (Brookline Campus) Ladd Multipurpose and Living Rooms

Light refreshments will be served! Please R.S.V.P. by Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The urban landscape for youths in the U.S. is increasingly burdened by social, economic and moral decay (Dimitradis, 2006). Boston is no exception. Crime rates have risen exponentially and the number of Black and Latino youths who are incarcerated far exceeds that of the White peers. To compound matters, educational policies (e.g. the No Child Left Behind Act, 2001), which place the burden of success squarely on the shoulders of children who are under taught, have given way to rising crime rates and an increase in the prison population. Through the Youth Symposium, Bridges to Hope and Understanding: Exploring Truth and Reconciliation: a Conversation with the Youth of Boston, which was facilitated by Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu on October 29, 2007, high school students from around the city demonstrated vitality and resilience such that these have since become the perquisites for creating new possibilities for themselves and their communities.

In collaboration with Boston Public Schools and the Department of Adult Education and Community Services, Boston, Wheelock College presents local high school students with the chance to earn four undergraduate credits by offering the course “Bridges to Hope, Understanding and Changing the Social and Academic Outcomes of the Youth of Boston” this spring. Dr. Felicity Crawford, Assistant Professor in the School of Education and Child Life at Wheelock, will teach the course.

This course is designed to build on the “spark” that the youth of Boston Public Schools, in conjunction with undergraduate students from Wheelock, have ignited with their very powerful ideas. The concepts explored in this course will lay the foundation for high school students to build the knowledge, skills and dispositions that would enable them to use well the framework and strategies of critical thinking to assert their power and enhance their potential to change the deleterious outcomes for local youths.

To that end, students will read, analyze, evaluate and interpret the knowledge they gain from the literature about youth activism and community change and apply it.