Salvador Pimentel, asenior at Brighton HighSchool, says his jobs haveshown him there’s notmuch to look forward towithout a college degree. The colorful murals that ring the walls of Brighton High School’s College and Career Center (for 65 years it was the school library) seem out of sync. Not that there’s anything wrong with paintings of […]
Laura Pappano
Posted inEducation
Sink or Swim
English immersion students in Brockton:Seyla Nou and Elisia Heak Eunji Gloria Cho Mantzouranis—Ms. Cho to her students —uses a green marker to put on the whiteboard what should be a simple math problem for fifth- and sixth-graders: Find other ways to express 8 x 7. You could, for example, say (4 x 7) + (4 […]
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Flunking out
What do we do about them? Julie Holly, a Winchendon mom, has put out Snickerdoodles and croissants, muffins and chocolate chip bread. Four other moms are seated around the table, but no one’s touching the sweets. Having the label of “underperforming” slapped on your school district—and by extension your town, your teachers, your kids, and […]
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Multiple Choice
It is a blustery autumn afternoon and the Framingham Community Charter School is in lockdown mode. Just moments before, the school’s 96 sixth-graders were on the playground after lunch when school principal Michael Delman got word over his walkie-talkie that, as he puts it, “somebody was shot in the neighborhood and the shooter was missing.” […]
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In Need of Guidance
High school counselors are playing pal, shrink, and surrogate parent for stressed-out kids. So who’s planning students’ academic future? Photographs by Mark Morelli It was 25 years ago that Brockton High School counselor Tom Ross painted the message in brown stencil letters on the institutional yellow cinderblock wall. It ends with the pitch: “The only […]
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Big Man On Campus
Here he is at the State House, it’s that time of year, and he just can’t help himself. After quoting the Roman statesman Seneca-“Loyalty is the holiest good in the human heart”-threatening to sing, actually singing a little, recognizing the pols in the audience (“I saw Stan Rosenberg a few minutes ago, where is he?”), […]
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Neighborhood By Design
Over the Bourne Bridge and down Route 151 a few miles, then a stone’s throw from a weathered wood sign bearing the legend “Land of the Wampanoag,” is the stylish studio apartment Donna Wesley, a 43-year-old pharmacy technician, shares with her husband, Stephen, and their cat, Higgins. It’s Cape Cod, all right. But Wesley isn’t […]
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Bringing up Children
Dinner is over at the Morgan household, but the woven placemats, flecked with crumbs of food, have not been cleared. It is hot and mom, Rebecca Morgan, fiddles with the fan in the kitchen to get some air moving. The girls–Abby, 7, and Emily, 4–burst in through the back door, arguing. Emily apparently picked flowers […]