Welcome to the accompaniment site of Attendance Would Be 100%, an 826 Boston Young Authors Book Project.
826 Boston is a nonprofit youth writing and publishing organization that empowers traditionally underserved students ages 6-18 to find their voices, tell their stories, and gain communication skills to succeed in school and in life. Each of our free programs seeks to empower students to express their ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in their individual voices. To this end, we provide in-depth publishing projects. Attendance Would Be 100% is one of them.
In the 2015-2016 school year, 826 Boston partnered with English Language Arts/English as a Second Language teacher Laura Gersch and 56 12th graders to publish a bilingual proposal for the High School Redesign Boston project. High School Redesign Boston was a city-wide effort to enlist the suggestions and support of stakeholders—teachers and administrators, students, families, community partners and officials—to inform the modernization of Boston high schools by the year 2017.
After engaging in a rigorous survey of education models and theories through texts from various media and class discussion, students audited their own school—at the time, the only two-way English/Spanish high school in Massachusetts. They then researched topics ranging from bilingual education and vocational schooling to “the city as a classroom.” In addition, each student was required to conduct an interview of project stakeholders, and to complete a school audit with fieldwork notes.
In the project-based unit of study, students considered essential questions including the following that have been identified by the Boston Public Schools (BPS) and the Mayor’s Education Cabinet:
- What should future high school graduates know and be able to do to succeed in life?
- What does the high school learning experience need to look like in order to prepare all graduates for future success?
Working side-by-side with 826 Boston staff and volunteer tutors, student teams wrote persuasive pieces that supported the collective class proposal. At the end of the process, an editorial board of seven students met to discuss and consult on each of their classmate’s portfolios, and to help make selections for publication. They also discussed and voted on topics related to layout and content, including the book title.
We hope you enjoy exploring the contents of this site!