Kitty Boles, TEP Faculty

FACTS: Katherine Boles is a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she teaches about school reform, teacher research, the links between research and practice, and new forms of teacher leadership. She also coordinates Harvard's Professional Development School partnership with the Cambridge, Massachusetts public schools. "I work directly with mentors and interns at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School as we develop a partnership for improving the education of the young people of Cambridge. I also teach a course on Teacher Research and Teacher Leadership to all the TEP students," she explains.

Boles has written extensively on teacher leadership and school restructuring initiated by teachers. She reports, "The education of today's urban youth is one of the two or three most critical issues in America today. We must do a better job of preparing these underserved young people to become successful citizens in this nation. These young people are an enormously valuable resource. We cannot afford to lose them." Boles knows this first hand - she was a classroom teacher for 25 years before joining the Graduate School of Education faculty, and while co-teaching a fourth-grade class at the Edward Devotion School, a public school in Brookline, Massachusetts she helped co-found, with Vivien Troen, the Learning/Teaching Collaborative, a Professional Development School that links the public schools of Boston and Brookline with Wheelock College and Simmons College in Boston. Boles earned her doctorate in from Harvard in 1991.

Her book, Who's Teaching Your Children? Why the Teacher Crisis is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It, written with co-author Vivian Troen, will be published in March, 2003 by Yale University Press.

THE INSIDE SCOOP: "TEP is special for a number of reasons. First and foremost it is special because it provides a determined focus on the education of urban youth. The program is also special because we are working to develop a true partnership with urban schools and teachers, recognizing that the university and the schools, working collaboratively, can reshape urban education in powerful and important ways. We are determined to work with our urban public schools to create schools that work, where students are well-educated, where they gain broad and deep knowledge, learn to be confident, and where they learn to think critically and gain the skills to function at optimal level in this increasingly complex society. We need to prepare highly-qualified teachers for jobs in these schools - indeed we need to educate teachers who will work with other professionals to CREATE such schools. That is our mission at Harvard."

"Recognize that this is very hard work, probably the hardest work they've ever done. It is also work that will be immensely rewarding and meaningful."