Newsletters

Curent Newsletter, Fall 2009 [PDF]

From the Desk of Director, Chris Sumner

This summer was a huge success and I want to thank all of you, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and stakeholders. This year is a pivotal year for Teacher Bound. Thirty of our Scholars will graduate in less than two years. The success of this first class impacts the success of all classes to follow.

We have some fantastic preliminary results to share with you:

• 65% of female and 34% of male Scholars attend 19 Boston Public schools and 8 Scholars are in the METCO program (Melrose, Wellesley, Newton South, and Bedford).
• 100% of the Teacher Bound Scholars live in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park, East Boston, South End, and Brighton.
• We concluded our first full academic year (2008-2009) with 13 of our Scholars on the honor roll and 9 missing it by one grade.
• This summer, five of our young men were invited to participate in a very competitive two-year leadership academy.
• We begin our second academic year with 73% of our rising juniors and 60% of our rising sophomores placed in Honors or Advance Placement Math, English or History classes as a result of their performance in our summer institute courses.
• 95% parent/caregiver attendance at our 2009-2010 back to school orientation.

We are proud of our accomplishments and we want to continue to grow in all areas of our program. The summer of 2010 will be our halfway mark and it is also when we rewrite our grant for the next three to five years. We are excited because we have reached unforeseen benchmarks.

Our goals this year are to:

• Refine academic programming to continue to propel students into Honors and Advance Placement courses
• Build a stronger cultural identity component providing opportunities for all cultural groups to learn and grow
• Refine summer and academic component in preparation of the summer 2010 grant rewrite
• Refine College life skill curriculum for Teacher Bound parent meetings
• And build and sustain an advisory board

In 2007, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu graced our campus and left us with this proclamation, "Ubuntu, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up in what is yours.'" We share in this philosophy of Ubuntu, the philosophy that each person is who they are only because of other people. This is similar to the spiritual philosophy of each human being connected to every other human; the actions of one affecting the outcome of all. Please connect with us this year as we journey through another successful chapter in the history of Teacher Bound, the Upward Bound Program at Wheelock College. Our success will be attached to our ability to stay connected to each and every one of you, family by family. Have a great year.

Newsletter Archives

• Fall, 2010 [PDF]
• June, 2009 [PDF]
• December, 2008 [PDF]