Generation of hope
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It's more rewarding than past experience, Allen-Willoughby says: "You can feel a result when you look at the kids."
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By David S. Bernstein
This is a nervous first day not only for Sheniqua but for the woman in the shawl. Joanne Allen-Willoughby may look as if she's been soothing young girls for years, but she's a relative novice. For the last eight years, as assistant dean of students at Radcliffe College, she has been helping highly educated women navigate through their undergraduate tribulations. In a daring leap of mid-career faith, she left the halls of academia to head a new church-based after-school program.
She intends to do no less than give the youths of Boston's black community every resource they need to succeed, even if she has to sit down with every one of them, one at a time, until they decide to take their coats off and stay.
A petite woman who favors loose, flowing clothing, high heels, and a rush of silver bracelets up her left forearm, Joanne Allen-Willoughby has a professional and calming presence that belies her passion for what her sister, Susan, calls "moving the field." She adds that, for Joanne, "It was always not just being a good teacher or a good administrator, but looking for a new path."
And she may have found that path as the first program director of the ambitious new Victory Generation after-school program, inaugurated in January by the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston.
As of last summer, 39-year-old Allen-Willoughby seemed ready to climb the higher-education ladder toward a provostship and perhaps a college presidency. She had worked for 10 years at Babson College, moving up from director of minority affairs to assistant dean of multicultural affairs and international students. She followed that with eight years at Radcliffe, where she counseled undergraduates and administered and supervised a host of programs, including research partnerships, mentorships, and "externships."
In addition, for five years Allen-Willoughby had been pursuing her doctoral degree; she was on schedule to receive her doctorate from Lesley College last month.
But, even while she was working at Radcliffe, Allen-Willoughby had decided that she needed a change in direction. So when the Black Ministerial Alliance came calling last summer, she stunned her boss by announcing that she was leaving Radcliffe. Her friends and family were equally surprised, but happy. One close friend, on hearing the news, "cried and said, `This is something that you wanted to do practically your whole life,' " Allen-Willoughby recalls.
She bristles at the implication that she has taken a step backward in her career: "People think, `Wow, leaving Radcliffe!' Give me strength, people! To me, that is the ultimate in elitism. So what? So that was Harvard, this is Charles Street. And the point would be?"
Victory Generation will give her ample opportunity to carry out her goal of intervening in young lives. Launched in January, in the basements and cafeterias and gathering rooms of seven churches in Roxbury and Dorchester, the program doesn't just provide child care but centers staffed with teachers and tutors armed with aggressive curricula and agendas.
Within three years, the Black Ministerial Alliance plans to operate between 30 and 40 centers, with as many as 50 children in each. This would make it one of the largest after-school providers in the city, delivering academic assistance to as many as 2,000 students.
"It feels much more rewarding than my past experience," Allen-Willoughby says in her basement office in the Charles Street AME Church in Dorchester. Her office is cluttered, mostly with religious videos, puzzles, books, and mementos from other church activities. Just outside her door, kids gather for the Charles Street AME Church's after-school program each afternoon. "You can feel a result every day when you look at the kids," Allen-Willoughby says.
The former dean is no stranger to the neighborhood. She was born on Holland Street in Roxbury, just around the corner from her current office, but her father moved the family to virtually all-white Needham when she was 4. That was not a pleasant place for a young black girl in the 1960s and '70s; she recalls taunts and epithets dating from her kindergarten days. "Nobody physically attacked me," she recalls, "but it was tough."
She would retreat to her extended family in Roxbury to feel at home. Her father, Joseph Allen, a mechanical engineer, and her mother, Gwendlyn, a homemaker, were just the beginning. "I have aunts, uncles, cousins," she says, "and we all grew up in the Boston area."
So when a friend told her about the Black Ministerial Alliance's search for an executive director for a new after-school program, it was, in a sense, an invitation to come home to her community.
"I think that there is a spiritual piece that really has driven me here, and that everything that I have done to this point has really been preparing me to do this work," says Allen-Willoughby, who lives in Milton with her husband, a computer engineer. "I want the children of this community to have the resources that they need. I mean, I personally want that."
Victory Generation is as bold a project as was Allen-Willoughby's decision to join it. This is the first time the 40-year-old Black Ministerial Alliance has tried to run an ongoing community program through its 59 member churches in Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury.
But in 1996, when the BMA membership decided to try to flex its collective muscle and run a program, there was no question that education would be the focus. "If you polled all of our members, and you asked them what is the most pressing issue facing our community, they would say education," says the Rev. Gregory Groover, chairman of the BMA's education committee.
The Victory Generation program is the result of several years of dreaming, planning, and organizing around the hot-button topic of inner-city education. Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston's superintendent of schools are supporting the effort, which is funded by a combined half-million-dollar grant from the United Way and an anonymous donor. "This is an effort by very bright, seasoned community leaders who really took the bull by the horns and put together one of the most creative proposals I have seen in over a decade," says Marian Heard, CEO of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay.
It is, in short, a daring project, say all observers. "It's a critical time; it's a critical initiative," says Jennifer Davis, executive director of Boston's 2 to 6 Initiative, an office instituted by Menino in 1998 to promote after-school programs throughout the city. It's "really the only one of its kind," says Davis, "and we want it to be successful, because we're never going to meet the mayor's goal of supporting all the children who need support in after-school hours without this kind of major initiative."
Back in 1996, the emphasis was on staying in school. The high school dropout rate in Boston public schools was 26 percent. And, as Groover points out, the city of Boston, famous for its institutions of higher education, had one of the worst rates in the country of its own schoolchildren going on to attend college.
Today, all eyes have shifted to a new perceived threat: the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS. All high school students in Massachusetts must pass the 10th-grade MCAS tests in order to receive a diploma, beginning with the class of 2003. The 1999 scores show that 80 percent of black 10th-graders failed the math portion of MCAS, while 57 percent failed the English portion. The numbers are slightly worse for Latinos. A growing fear in the city is that when the class of 2003 takes the 10th-grade test next year, thousands will do poorly and drop out.
A two-year, $55,000 study, including focus groups, convinced the BMA that its best foray into education would be in the growing niche of after-school programming. What the BMA had to offer was an abundance of church buildings that could be put to use.
There's a crying need for such a program. Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan are home to half of the city's schoolchildren. According to an analysis conducted by the 2 to 6 Initiative, there are not enough school buildings to supply after-school programming to all who want it. YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs, and a few community centers run after-school programs, but most of them are not academic.
About 27 percent of Boston schoolchildren are enrolled in some after-school programming, but another 27 percent have parents who would like to enroll them but cannot because programs are unavailable or unaffordable.
In addition, the BMA's research confirmed a common-sense assumption: Parents felt good about sending their children to a church-based program. Churches are seen as havens from crime and drugs. "The churches are really the focal point of the community," says Menino. "The ministers are the ones the community looks up to for leadership. And by them showing leadership, it sends out a message that after-school is so important in the education of the child."
The Victory Generation program emphasizes a spiritual element, focusing on building character, responsibility, and self-esteem. That's a controversial role, but one increasingly seen as vital to an after-school program. In fact, a task force of the mayor's office plans to include a section on spiritual development in a forthcoming report on after-school programming.
BMA leaders stress that this is not Bible school, and no one faith will be presented. But "we are a faith-based program," says Allen-Willoughby, and we don't want to lose that."
It's not hard to see why Allen-Willoughby would want this job - to a large extent, the Victory Generation program is her doctoral dissertation come to life.
In her dissertation, which she is postponing to dedicate time to the Victory Generation program, she argues that Afro-centric educational methods are more effective than Euro-centric approaches for children of African descent. An Afro-centric approach to the classroom and curriculum, her research found, includes increased one-on-one time, more group activities and discussions, teachers staying with students over several years, an emphasis on spiritual and community development, and reading material that reflects the children's race and culture. "All of these are elements we are trying to bring into our after-school program," she says.
And so, the children's afternoons at Faith Pentecostal begin with homework time. Tutors like Robin Palmer maneuver from table to table, mentally switching from math to spelling to history at each stop. Each child writes in a journal. After snack time, the children gather around a double set of tables as one site coordinator, the Rev. Elvina Greenaway, leads them in discussing issues from their school day - misbehavior, fighting, peer pressure, grades, and, in one discussion, the disrespect indicated by use of the middle finger. Greenaway, a former teacher, is a dignified figure whose beatific countenance demands respect.
In contrast, the other site coordinator, Byron Logan, is a young, hip, high-energy former paralegal who left his job at a downtown firm to work with the BMA. He gathers the children together in a circle for a screaming, foot-stomping affirmation called Harambee - a Swahili word meaning "pulling together." Then the children split into groups to study from a series of books depicting children of color, part of a literacy program called Freedom Schools, developed by the Children's Defense Fund.
Allen-Willoughby says she loves the curriculum and is working to add a math and science piece in the fall. She chose the Freedom Schools approach after a months-long search. "The Boston public schools do not have a multicultural focus," she says. In the books chosen by Freedom Schools, "the pictures that look back at them look like them."
Greenaway and Logan learned how to teach this curriculum in a workshop at the Charles Street AME Church just 10 days before the opening of the program. They and other newly hired Victory Generation teachers tossed their coats onto the sofa in Allen-Willoughby's basement office and gathered in the large room across the hall for a training session. Although she won't be doing the teaching, Allen-Willoughby was with them, running through a series of activities and discussions. At one point, they broke into groups to create and play-act scenes that explore different chapters of a Freedom Schools book. In her skit, Allen-Willoughby played the mother. Typecasting. She got a few laughs and a round of applause.
Now, four months into the program, Allen-Willoughby is able to see the results right outside the door of her office. The program at the Charles Street Church is bustling now in the afternoon, with more than a dozen kids and the teachers and tutors in a large circle doing Harambee.
One child - Groover's son, it turns out - gets picked to open the day with a prayer. Then they all hustle to the tables that have been set up for them to study at.
Watching, Allen-Willoughby seems content but not celebratory. The success of the Victory Generation program is hardly guaranteed. For one thing, the money is running low, thanks in large part to Allen-Willoughby's insistence on paying staff members (the BMA originally planned on using volunteers) and maintaining an unusual student-teacher ratio of 5 to 1. The city only requires 13 to 1. Paying the modest salaries has upped the cost of the program from $500,000 to $700,000 a year. This means that the half-million dollars raised so far leaves the program $1.6 million short of what it needs to stay in business for the three-year start-up phase. The good news, from the check-writers' point of view, is that Allen-Willoughby is bringing this first semester in within budget.
Enrollment has been as high as 25 children in some of the seven churches. There are 19, including Sheniqua, at Faith Pentecostal. (By contrast, just a block or so up the street, some 300 children pass through the Blue Hill Avenue Boys and Girls Club each day.) All told, more than 180 children are enrolled in the Victory Generation program. Allen-Willoughby blames any slow enrollment on the mid-school-year start. "January starts are difficult," she says, "because people already have their plans down."
There may be other factors, however. Parents must chip in $35 a week per child. That is low for most after-school programs but considerably higher than a program at the Dorchester Temple Baptist Church was previously charging. By May, several parents, including Sheniqua's mother, had temporarily pulled their children from the Faith Pentecostal program, despite Greenaway's pleas that they bring the children in regardless of their ability to pay. Some of the churches are putting together scholarships and arranging sponsorships for parents who cannot afford the fee.
Transportation is another tough issue for parents; although the city has arranged to make the Victory Generation churches drop-off points for school buses, the zoning of bus routes has left significant gaps. Some parents have had to arrange private transportation at a cost roughly equal to the price of the after-school program itself.
But Allen-Willoughby, though sympathetic to these issues, wants parents to make some sacrifice for their children. Parents who enroll their children must read a parent handbook and sign an agreement to attend at least one parent workshop each school term, at which the BMA trains them not just in helping their children with homework but in how to advocate for the child within the school system. "The goal is to increase children's academic success, to change mind-sets around academics, to involve parents, to involve school systems, so that students really understand that this is a joint effort. And that we all believe that they can succeed," Allen-Willoughby says.
But can an after-school program contribute in a meaningful way to academic success? Jennifer Davis, of 2 to 6, has a binder thick with research about after-school programs but confesses that "there is very little good data." Indeed, at Allen-Willoughby's suggestion, the BMA has backed off from its original plan of guaranteeing improvements in grade point averages. Nobody knows whether a program like this can make that kind of a difference.
And yet, the BMA must show that it makes a measurable difference. Performance-measure evaluation, says the United Way's Heard, is the "must-have" for funding, and funding is the must-have for the program's survival to the point where it can become self-sustaining. So, Allen-Willoughby has signed a three-year contract with Solutions for the Third Sector to conduct ongoing evaluations of students' progress, using a variety of criteria such as school attendance, analysis of journal entries, and behavior. Those critical results will not begin to show until at least next spring.
"I don't think that this is something you can judge in six months, a year, two years. You really need to go through a cycle where you see the kids in the program for a length of time. So, for me, it's a long-term commitment and a long-term evaluation process," Allen-Willoughby says. "I think it would be impossible to expose kids to what we're exposing them to and not have some effect."
With that faith in what she's doing, Allen-Willoughby is busy expanding the program. She is planning a more aggressive marketing campaign for next fall, reaching out not only through the churches but throughout the communities and into the schools. She has already accepted applications from churches that want to join Victory Generation in September and is trying to select up to seven more. She is petitioning potential donors. She is recruiting on college campuses for next year's tutors. She is working hard to develop evaluation methods. She is hiring staff.
"It's tiring, but I feel very enthusiastic about it," Allen-Willoughby says. "The spirit of the people in the program is incredible." She is a great optimist - she has expunged apocalyptic phrases like "there is hope" and "in this crisis" from the Victory Generation's marketing materials.
With all that she has to do, she frequently peeks out from her office to watch the children across the hall during the afternoon. She's not assessing the program, not taking notes for her dissertation. She is simply watching the children learn. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be," she says.
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