City High School Project Wins 100K Grant From Foundation

In the summer of 1991, officials at a local public high school launched a project designed to introduce incoming ninth graders to the opportunities of the job market.

Only two years later, "City Works," now an integral part of the first-year curriculum at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School of Technical Arts (RSTA), is one of 10 national winners of the 1992 Innovations in State and Local Government Awards.

CityWorks was selected from a pool of 1622 applicants, and at a ceremony in New York last week received a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

"[CityWorks] is a creative approach to a terribly important problem...it will help schools all over the country," said Ellen Shall, a professor at New York University and a member of the national that chose the winners.

"The quality of vocational education is one of the most important public issues," added Alan M. Altshuler, director of the Innovations program and Stanton professor of urban policy and planning. "[CityWorks] was one that we viewed as particularly striking, notable, fresh, interesting and important," Altshuler said.

The RSTA program was founded to change the scope and purpose of vocational education, which in the past, according to program director Larry Rosenstock, has been considered an alternative for academic underachievers.

"The poorer the kids are, the more pressures they have to make a vocational living," said Rosenstock, noting that children tend to follow the income and educational paths of their parents.

CityWorks' goal is to teach students that in order to succeed they have to be able to work well not only with their hands but with their heads.

"[CityWorks] teaches us to be independent and to become more mature," said Billy Penrose, a ninth grader who has just entered the program. "It teaches us to stop being clowns and to get our lives together."

For an hour every day, the ninth graders enter the CityWorks arena, a large space divided into six studio classrooms which the students built themselves. In the studios, they learn about problem solving and teamwork in addition to the technical skills of different trades.

As part of the program, the Rindge and Latin students explore Cambridge neighborhoods and learn about local residents and industries through interviews conducted in the city's streets.

"CityWorks has kids understand the city in which they live," said Rosenstock. "It breaks down the wall between school and city and creates a portrait of the city in which they live."

Wilnelia "D. J." Rodriguez, an RSTA 10th grader who worked on a CityWorks project to plan, build and manage an autoshop, said the program was both enjoyable and interesting.

"CityWorks gives us a feel for what different careers we can go into," she said. "It's like training while you're in regular school."

"We really deserve the prize," she added, referring to the Ford grant. "We worked hard and the teachers worked hard."