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.