Roxbury/Harvard

Roxbury High is a five-story building of tan stone with Doric columns and statues of Greek goddesses over the green front door and spray-painted first names and last initials around the back. Inside, as classes change, the first thing you notice is that most of the students are black, Chinese, or Spanish and most of the teachers are white.

The second thing you notice is the apparent absence of racial tension. Students pull at the arm of Chuck Williams, a blond, frizzy-haired English teacher. "Mr. Williams, Mr. Williams, what is brown and sounds like a bell?" Williams rolls his eyes and lets his head vibrate. "Dung."

Two years ago, when Federal Judge Arthur Garrity paired Boston high schools with local colleges in the hope that shared experiences would improve educational quality, he paired Harvard with Roxbury. Joyce Grant, director of the Roxbury/Harvard Project, which coordinates the pairing, remembers the raised hopes. "People thought Harvard could somehow swoop in and take care of business," she said last week. Charles Ray, Roxbury High headmaster, said people thought Harvard had unlimited funds, and forgot Harvard has a budget, too. After three semesters of operation, a program has emerged that Grant and Ray think is in line with realistic expectations.

The most visible Harvard contribution, and the one that involves the most Harvard people, is the tutoring program. This fall, 60 undergraduates and graduates tutored two students apiece, or roughly one-fifth of Roxbury's 560 students. Many of the tutors had a huge cultural gap to cross.

"We entered their home turf," Gordon Atkinson '77, who coordinated the tutoring program said, "They own the place and we had to prove ourselves. Then they accepted us and really related to us." Most tutors reported establishing good relationships with their tutees. "I have rapport with both my kids," Robert Lindsey '78 said. "There's no resentment of me because I'm a Harvard kid, or because I'm white." Roxbury students interviewed seemed to agree. "It was cool," Leroy Adair said. "My tutor let me read some poetry. He didn't try to teach me nothing I didn't want to know."

However, some tutors, especially the reading tutors, assigned to students who did not volunteer for help said there is a severe tutee absentee problem. Only half the reading tutees attended the twice-weekly sessions regularly. Reading tutors explained that their kids were turned off to reading at an early age. One tutor, Valerie Wright '77, said many of the kids have part-time jobs and were not oriented towards school work.

Seven of the 30 reading tutors, and a smaller number of the tutors who taught other subjects this semester, were black. Marvin Comick '77 thinks more blacks would have become involved if the tutoring had more publicity. "A lot of people who have a cultural bond with the students should be working but aren't, because they did not know about the program" Comick said. Atkinson said he had hpoed for more black tutors, and had planned to approach black organizations for volunteers. But, he added, so many people signed up at registration and Phillips Brooks open house, that it would have been difficult to accommodate more tutors. Everyone had the same chance to sign up at registration, he said.

Overall, the tutoring program seems to have fostered good will between the two schools. Karen Falkenstein '78 said she feels that she has a purpose, that she "wasn't just patching up." Ray said tutors have helped Roxbury kids not only as teachers but also as friends, and Nancy O'Neill, last year's Roxbury liaison to Harvard, said, "When the parents see-one-on-one, they think it's just super."

Currently, the tutoring program suffers from a lack of continuity. Christmas vacation, a week's snow vacation, and Harvard's exam period have Roxbury students speaking of their tutors in the past tense. Right now, the tutoring program seems to be at a critical point. The Ed School course that reading tutors must take for training is not offered next semester and so far only half of the tutors have signed up to continue with the program. The tutors will insist on strict tutee attendence next semester. But a decision on an alternative training program for reading tutors must be made soon if the program is going to accept new reading tutees and maintain its current size.

Tutoring, Joyce Grant says, provides the most direct service to students but is only one part of the total Roxbury/Harvard effort. Six or seven other programs are underway, and the two which Grant says command the most energy are the reading and career development programs.

Besides tutoring, the reading program has tested the reading skill levels of all Roxbury students, conducted workshops on teaching skills for the Roxbury faculty, and established a reading resource center by redecorating, painting, and refurnishing an unused locker room. The program will launch a reading campaign next semester to promote the idea that reading can be fun. The project considers reading Roxbury's most serious academic problem.

Last spring, the career development program found jobs for over 70 per cent of 76 Roxbury students desiring full-time or summer employment, a written project summary shows. "I'm proud of that," Grant said, adding that the development program is one of the Roxury/Harvard's major accomplishments. This year's career development program will also focus on teaching students how to write resumes and take interviews. The program hopes to expose students to different careers through presentations and site visits.

Other programs include a parent outreach program, a bilingual program to deal with the problems of students whose first language is Spanish or Chinese, and a computer program which recently benefitted from the installation of two terminals to the high school for student use. In addition to the formal programs, Roxbury can ask for and receive any resource or facility Harvard can conveniently offer, Jim Mullan, Lason to Harvard said.

The Roxbury/Harvard program is a "high priority in the University" Grant said. Under state mandate Harvard and Roxbury each get approximately $40,000 this year to finance their joint programs. With a full-time staff of three based at Harvard and several part-time employees working at Roxbury, Grant estimated that Harvard will invest an additional $30,000 into the project this year.

Harvard's efforts have not saved the project from struggling through its share of snags and disappointments. One chronic snag is the requirement that all funding go through the fiscal offices of Boston Public Schools, a process Grant described as causing enough red tape to make any simple project a lot of work. Several months ago, the state approved a $55,000 grant to the career development program, but Harvard still has not gotten any money. Somewhere on its journey through the public bureaucracy the contract got lost. As a result, the career development program has fallen behind schedule, Grant said.

During the first year of the project, Harvard worked with Roxbury to develop "clustering," a system in which six teachers worked together as a group and taught core courses to all ninth graders. "We had something going," Nancy Banton, a math teacher said. Math teacher Chuck Williams said the cluster had close contact with Harvard and the cluster's structure facilitated field trips and utilization of resources in general. Over the summer, the city transferred 13 teachers, including two of the six cluster teachers, to other schools. This year the cluster did not start up again, and the remaining teachers are discouraged. "We've stopped scurrying out for new resources," Banton said.

One of the biggest disappointments of the Roxbury/Harvard project is that slightly over half of Roxbury's teachers remain uninvolved with the inservice workshops and apparently uninterested in the project. Banton argues that until the project involves the faculty, it can only supplement Roxbury education--it can't really change it.

The reason for low teacher participation, everyone agrees, is that the Roxbury schedule does not include time for teachers to get together and plan during the school day. The only time available is after school when some teachers have commitments. Additionally, teachers argue, it's not fair to expect them to stay after school when they have five days of teaching and administrative duties.

Teachers need to be paid for taking part, but the project doesn't have the money, Grant says. When her office identifies Harvard resources that Roxbury might find useful, it sends the information to the liason and to faculty members for whom it seems appropriate. Grant adds that the program tries to follow up by contacting faculty members individually.

Grant places a heavy emphasis on keeping all aspects of the project a joint venture between the two schools. Each of the major programs has a Harvard coordinator and a counterpart from the Roxbury faculty. These are not programs Harvard has lodged in the school, Grant said. "All the decisions have to go through the headmaster, and I try to have faculty committees."

Even so, Nancy O'Neill, last year's liason to Harvard, said, "Harvard runs the program. They have full-time staff people who have a handle on what's going on." The only people involved at Roxbury, she added, work full-time teaching.

Charles Ray and Joyce Grant worked together when Grant was director of alternative services at the University of Massachusetts, and one of her programs involved working at Roxbury High. Their proven ability to work together, Grant said, plus her 16 years working in various capacities with Boston schools, were probably the reasons Harvard tapped her. Charles Ray, a soft spoken man, is unpreturbed by Harvard's strong influence in the project's direction. "Joyce Grant," he says, "has a better understanding of people in high school than anyone here, including me."

One of the most striking things about talking to both Harvard and Roxbury people is the extreme caution with thich they speak of the project. No one wants to blame any of the delays, problems, or missed opportunities on anyone from the other school. One misstep, Harvard fears, and Roxbury faculty will lose all interest in assistance. One disparagement of Harvard efforts, Roxbury fears, and Harvard will quit them.

But the caution, even the tension surrounding this delicate alliance suggests something positive about its potential. None of the people involved are completely satisfied with the project, but almost everyone seems to believe something worthwhile, something they do not want to risk upsetting is taking place.