For Achieve Hartford’s newest staff member Daiana Lambrecht, the long road to Connecticut’s capital started in her native Argentina and continued with educational and professional experiences across five U.S. states and a year in China. Whether it was teaching 5^th graders as a Teach For America Corps Member in San Antonio, Texas, coaching teachers to provide quality instruction and relationship building in rural Southwestern China, organizing parents and community members to fight for educational equity in San Jose, California, or deepening her understanding of organizing and education policy at Harvard, Daiana realized through all these experiences that school improvement occurs when community partners are engaged and dedicated to improving educational outcomes for children.

Serving as Achieve Hartford’s Lead Coalition Organizer, Daiana hopes her talents will bring the organization to a new level of stakeholder engagement.

“Stakeholder engagement and organizing is the glue that holds everything together. People are complex and have their own interests,” she said.  “To move people towards action for better results for children, we must work with decision-makers and community members in a way that puts them in the drivers seat to bring new initiatives and practices into education. Without people moving in a unified direction, it is hard to accomplish education reform for children.”

What made this Harvard-educated, teacher’s daughter come to Hartford? Inspired by efforts such as the Sheff Movement, Daiana came to make a difference in a state that infamously suffers from the largest achievement gap in the country, too often leaving children of color, lower socioeconomic status, special needs, and English language deficiency affected the most – especially in Hartford.

Joining an organization that she views as taking an innovative approach to shaping educational practices through direct partnership with community organizations will bring new meaning to her belief that it takes “a village to raise a child.”

As Daiana embarks on the work of making connections across the city, she welcomes the opportunity to hear from our community of education leaders.  Reach out to her at: dlambrecht@achievehartford.org.

Over 70 supporters jammed into the Chrysalis Center on July 26 to attend a screening of the film Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope. The award-winning documentary revealed how toxic levels of stress in the form of abuse and neglect during childhood can have long-term health consequences on the brains and bodies of children and then adults, causing all sorts of health problems and leading also to barriers to learning. A panel discussion moderated by Alice Forrester, CEO of Clifford Beers Clinic in New Haven and force behind New Haven’s Trauma Coalition, followed the screening and delved into how Hartford communities and schools can become more trauma-informed.

To panelist Catherine Corto-Mergins, becoming a more trauma-informed community requires people in schools, treatment centers, youth service agencies and other entities to look at the world they work in with a “new set of lenses.” Comparing her own work as Director of The Village’s Collaborative Trauma Center to one of a brain surgeon, Corto-Mergins explained how children exhibiting behavior problems may be acting out not because they are deliberately hostile or are suffering from ADHD, but because their adverse childhood experiences have negatively altered their neurological system, thereby increasing their likelihood of aggressive conduct.

Awareness of how trauma-induced hormones wreak havoc on brains and bodies should inform policy and practice changes within schools – in areas like discipline, classroom management, and daily instruction. “A consistent, caring adult in a child’s life is one of the most important preventions for trauma,” said Corto-Mergins.

Providing effective support for children harmed by trauma is challenging on multiple levels. To Hartford community activist Kelvin Lovejoy, even if kids attend safe, supportive schools and participate in after-school activities, they still have to return to homes and communities filled with adversity.

“What happens between 3(pm) and 8(pm) affects what goes on between 8(am) and 3(pm),” Lovejoy said, noting that everyone in a community, from parents and relatives to store owners and churches, has a role to play in providing a safe environment for children to grow up in.

Fellow panelist Timothy Goodwin, founder of Community First School in the North End of Hartford, added that supportive environments need to also be built into schools.

“If you can’t reach a child, you can’t teach a child,” said Goodwin, explaining that training teachers in how to interact with students suffering from trauma is necessary to build the authentic relationships which are crucial for a successful learning environment.  Goodwin’s proposed new school is built on the notion that all adults will be trained to address trauma and working alongside community resources to get the needs of students met.

Yet the efficacy of teacher training in trauma-informed practices is limited. Collective bargaining agreements restrict the amount of time teachers receive training. Additionally, incorporating these practices is often met with hostility from a common mindset among teachers and administrators that trauma-affected children can rise above their troubled past if they just had the determination to do so.

But it is these adverse childhood experiences that often undermine how resilient a child is. Kelvin Lovejoy believes focusing on restoring a child’s emotional intelligence – their personal temperament in day-to-day life – is key to putting them on the right path.

“When you can raise the emotional quotient of a child, automatically reading, writing, and arithmetic will go up also,” said Lovejoy.

The Bottom Line

Many of those in attendance indicated in a response card before leaving an interest in forming an organized “trauma coalition” that would push for policies and resources to make Hartford and its schools more trauma-informed communities.

Getting decision makers to change policies and allocate more resources for trauma-informed training will be a challenge, but for Community First School Board Member and Founder of ScriptFlip, Trudi Lebron, it is more about changing minds than changing hearts:

“You can try to change people’s hearts, which is hard, or you can try to change people’s minds; and the way you change people’s minds is to put policies in place that require people to deal with things differently.”

With a thriving trauma coalition in Hartford sometime in the near future, Catherine Corto-Mergins hopes teachers, counselors, parents and anyone working with traumatized children will change their approach towards kids from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What’s happened to you?”

Thousands of recent high school graduates across the U.S. are now enjoying their last summer before beginning college in the fall. While many will diligently complete the enrollment process by submitting deposits, selecting courses, and preparing for a move potentially far away from home, significant numbers of students from low-income communities who have been accepted into college (or might have already even enrolled) do not ultimately show up for college on day one. Rather than continuing their education and improving their life prospects, they simply “melt” away during the summer.

The problem of “Summer Melt” is a nation-wide issue that is affecting Hartford high school graduates, too. Estimates indicate, of the 90% of graduates from Hartford’s high schools who get accepted to college, only about 60% enroll in a postsecondary institution during the first year after graduation. The “Summer Melt Project,” a first-year collaborative initiative launched by the All In! Coalition and housed within Hartford’s College Supports Network is determined to change that.

Martin Estey, Executive Director of the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education and convener of the College Supports Network, explains that, “This is a new collaborative for this city between the Higher Education community, the Hartford Public School District, and the community of providers that help students access college. We have been doing this individually for far too long, and this is an attempt to come together and combine our efforts to significantly boost the numbers of HPS graduates who enter college after high school.”

Alan Kramer, former Dean of Magnet Schools at Goodwin College, is helping lead this project to alleviate a complex problem that disproportionally affects students from inner-city communities.

“First generation students, especially those from urban settings like Hartford, tend to lack support systems to help them through the complex and often frustrating process of getting into and enrolling in college. School counselors aren’t available over the summer, relatively few family members have been to college, and peer pressure from friends who are not college-bound can actively discourage them in the process,” Kramer said.

A team of four college students and recent graduates have been as outreach specialists to reach out to 127 students who are not part of an existing support program and who were identified by their high schools as being at-risk of not enrolling in college this fall.

Efforts include taking student’s “college-going temperature” and helping them solve problems from completing financial aid forms, to identifying strategies for success in the unfamiliar social environments many colleges present. While some students only need friendly reminders about submitting deposits, completing medical clearance forms or selecting their first semester of classes, others require deeper assistance.

“They need support! I couldn’t have done it alone when I went to college. It’s a lot of work,” says Sabrina, one of the outreach specialists on staff. The unavailability of high school guidance counselors during the summer along with limited family support means Sabrina can then fill that critical assistance gap.

When asked what she believed helped her enroll in college on time, Mariana – another outreach specialist – described how the internships and mentors she had in high school stayed with her.  Many Hartford students do not have these extensive support networks. “In college, in many cases, you’re just a number. I want them to know that with us, you are not just a number.”

Despite their committed efforts, Sabrina and Mariana face practical challenges that may limit the impact they have this summer. Out of the 127 students they and the two other counselors are tasked with reaching out and assisting, they have been unsuccessful in even contacting 40 of them, despite repeated phone calls, texts, and emails.

Going Beyond Outreach

It’s a good thing the Summer Melt Project isn’t simply relying on outreach to get the job done.

Connecting directly to the colleges that have accepted Hartford students is the key to what makes this work systemic. The ‘systemic’ change happening here has to do with relationships newly forged between Hartford Public Schools, the greater Hartford higher education community and the various community-based organizations, and how these working relationships are sustainably changing behavior and practice.

Exciting improvements already include sharing more data, aligning attention and action to rally around and solve agreed upon high priority problems (e.g. Summer Melt), and joining forces to fix holes and leaks in our city’s talent pipeline.

This systemic work translates all the way down to programs too, with efforts by the Summer Melt Action Team driving changes to how the High School Senior Exit Survey is administered and how that data is shared and used.

That’s entirely new in Hartford and all three groups (Higher Education, HPS, college prep programs) will be mutually accountable. “This is something that I am very proud of,” adds Estey.

Bottom Line  

Going forward, the Summer Melt Project is committed to both understanding the extent of the problem and treating it for those currently affected. By collecting and analyzing data on these 127 Hartford students, the team hopes to develop a systemic solution that doesn’t require new money.

“While our immediate goal is to help as many of these students as possible overcome the obstacles they face right now,” said Kramer, “any long-term strategy requires that we identify leverage points that can better help future students. We’re collecting data on every intervention we try and the numbers of students who are actually helped by these interventions. We’ll use this information to develop strategies for the future.”