Saturnalia

On the day before winter break, students at BPCPS celebrate "Saturnalia."

Saturnalia was a Roman festival traditionally held in the dark of winter, where Romans would give thanks for the previous harvest. Saturnalia was a time of hope and festivity in Roman times. At BPCPS, its an opportunity to come together and to plan for the coming year.

Today, students brought home cooked food for a potluck lunch, including rice and beans, buffalo wings, and a sea of desserts. (By conservative estimates, there was 1/2 of a cake for every student in BPCPS high school.) Students were recognized with personalized cards and we performed our annual whole-school Electric Slide.

Saturnalia is one of the many ways we've worked to build a distinct school identity. We hope it's one of the many quirky traditions that help students feel grounded in this small community. A secret handshake of sorts; something students will remember long after they have left.

The Meeting

This week, parents, students, and I held an evening meeting with EF Tours.

Friendly, upbeat representatives cautioned us:

Breakfast portions in Europe are not, "American sized." Rolls and juice. No sausage, eggs, etc.

Our suitcase must NOT weigh more than 50 lbs. I don't think my entire dresser wears more than 50 lbs. But for our students--who plan to buy matching sweatsuits for the plane ride--this could be a challenge.

Many of the old Italian hotels do not have, "American" air conditioning. In other words, they can be stuffy. This shouldn't be an issue in February. They also typically lack elevators, and have small stairways. The tour operator warned us, "This is a good reason to keep your suitcase modest. You really want to be able to carry it over your head."

Going to Rome

I'm going to Rome for February Break.

I went to Italy with my best friend, after graduating from high school in 1992. We gorged on gelato and made snide remarks about the numbskulls on our tour. Who isn't a numbskull, in the eyes of a teatotalling, college-bound 18 year old?

I went to Italy with my wife, on my honeymoon in 2002. We went for long walks and stayed in amazing hotels. On one romantic walk, I pretended to "stumble" onto Saint Mark's Square, in Venice. (She didn't notice the signs on every corner, pointing to Saint Mark's Square.)

This visit will be different.

I'm going with the founding class of Boston Preparatory Charter Public School.

Drawn by lottery, my travelling companions entered the 6th grade of a brand new school in the fall of 2004. Sitting in their living rooms, I promised each of them a college acceptance letter. I promised they would grow as human beings.

These were audacious promises, since most of them would be the first in their family to attend college. Many read, wrote, and calculated well below grade level. Yet their parents, my team, and I vowed to challenge them academically and ethically, as no students in America had been challenged. With anxious smiles, they accepted.

Six years and thousands of homework assignments later, the promise made in 2004 is about to come true. Our founding class led Massachusetts on statewide Math and English tests in 2007 and 2009. A recent study ranked Boston Prep one of the top five schools in the nation, based upon our students' growth. Our founders are being aggressively recruited by college admissions officers. They are mastering Philosophy, AP US History, and Latin. They have cultivated a lifelong commitment to courage, compassion, integrity, perseverance, and respect.

We promised them a high school trip to Rome, in 2004.

To be clear: the Rome trip isn't a reward, a vacation, or a marketing gimmick. It's a mission-driven component to our instructional program, as important as any academic class. The Rome trip grounds students' studies of History, Latin (mandatory at Boston Prep) and Ethics. Just as important, it provides a high-intensity exposure to a totally different language and culture. We believe this exposure will better equip our students to navigate the foreign challenges of a college campus. Minority students without much money drop out of college due to feelings of isolation and non-belonging as frequently as they drop out for academic obstacles. We believe that students' experiences in Rome will serve as assets on middle-class, predominantly white college campuses.

Now it's time to fulfill that promise.