About

I am a College-Bound Counselor at the The Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, MA. The Springfield Renaissance School is an Expeditionary Learning School, and a college-bound school that just graduated its first class in 2010! We acheived 100% college acceptances with our first graduating class! Now we are all working to prepare our students well for “life after Renaissance”.  We aren’t just interested in have our students graduate and attend college, we expect them to finish college and/graduate school be ready to change the world!

Renaissance College Road Trip is something I cooked up to help me better understand what it is about colleges that have higher graduation rates for urban students. My goal is return from my Renaissance College Road Trip with information that will help me better inform Renaissance students and families about the significance of graduation rate when selecting colleges to consider. The Fund for Teachers is generously funding my travels.

I visited colleges on the East Coast and the West Coast that have the smallest graduation rate gap between white and African-American students (a common Census Bureau measure). My visits will had me meeting with admissions officers, going on tours, and eating cafeteria food. I also checked out the towns to see the overall culture and climate of these schools. The schools I saw were mostly urban, suburban but there is a rural school…

Now that we’ve graduated 77 students, all of whom were accepted into college, we are going to be working to refine the college search process at The Springfield Renaissance School!!!