Post-Pandemic Strategies for Tackling Chronic Absenteeism and Reinventing Parent Engagement and Community Schools
The Benefit and Impact of Charter Schools
The history of charter schools in Baltimore City is part of a broader narrative about school choice and equitable access to education. In the early 2000s, Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) implemented a high school choice program, allowing incoming ninth graders and their families to select the city high school they wished to attend. […]
Empowering Middle School Leaders for Real-time Impact and Long-term Change
Twelve years ago, a group of us at Hampstead Hill Academy, a Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP) neighborhood conversion public charter school in South Baltimore, launched Leaders Go Places (LGP) with our middle school. The initial idea and early funding for the incentive-based program to encourage and empower 6th through 8th graders to focus on academics, […]
The Healing Impact of Peaceful Parenting
This fall, Andria Cole, founder of The Restorative Project and a nationally noted educator and Restorative Practices facilitator, launched a series of Peaceful Parenting Workshop and weekly Circles at Pimlico Elementary / Middle School for its parent community. She began working with Pimlico in fall 2023 for teacher and staff professional development and expanded to […]
Learning to Lead: Engaging Middle Schoolers in Civic Responsibility
Teaching civic engagement and civic responsibility to middle schoolers is always interesting. This particular presidential election and moment in our country’s polarized political climate makes it especially interesting. Civics instruction is important from a young age because students oftentimes feel powerless at their age. They know that adults are making decisions that impact their […]
The Economics and Educational Necessity of School Attendance
As the new school year begins, let’s take a pause to talk about the importance of enrollment and attendance. Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP) believes in sharing information about our schools’ operations to further strengthen relationships with our families and the general public. As educators, we know how critical daily attendance is to a child’s success […]
BCP’s History with Direct Instruction and NIFDI
When I was a graduate student in Special Education and Rehabilitation at the University of Oregon, the direction of my life changed when I met Jerry Silbert, one of the leaders and program authors of the four-decade Direct Instruction (DI) movement with the National Institute for Direct Instruction (NIFDI). In 1996, BCP, in partnership with […]
Deepening the Impact of Community Schools
There are 454 community schools in Maryland, located in every county with the highest concentration in Baltimore City. These community schools offer far more than a solid public school education. By their mission, these schools focus on the well-being of their community members and the high-need neighborhoods in which they are located. Research routinely shows […]
Improving Math Proficiency and Success at Baltimore Curriculum Project Schools
Everybody can be good at math. I’m a former middle school math teacher and know that many people feel like they’re not good at math. But if it’s taught well, everybody can be good at math. As a partner with Baltimore City Public Schools and as Maryland’s largest and oldest charter school operator, Baltimore Curriculum […]
Making Children’s Mental Health a Classroom Priority: A BCP Teacher’s Story
May is Children’s Mental Health Month. We asked Kat Locke-Jones,7th grade English Language Arts teacher at Hampstead Hill Academy, part of the Baltimore Curriculum Project’s (BCP) network of neighborhood conversion charter schools, to share her story as a mental health advocate in her classroom and across the Mid-Atlantic. In 2018, following the suicide of her younger brother Sean, her […]