City Weekly

City Weekly

Boston Sunday Globe - January 26, 2003

Teaching Tools

"In reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, teaching them how to ring the bell"

By Paul Massari, Globe Correspondent

Although Guy was only in sixth grade, the Cambridge boy was already in danger of becoming a statistic.

"[He] was really just getting in trouble the whole time," says Earl Martin Phalen, founder and CEO of Building Educated Leaders for Life, a Boston-based after-school program that tutors K-6 children from some of Cambridge's poorest neighborhoods. "His dad was in jail, his older brother was getting involved in drugs. These were his role models. That's who he looked up to....He was heading down the same path."

Guy's mother enrolled him in BELL at Cambridge's Agassiz School. He had regular one-on-one contact with BELL's passionate volunteer tutors, a group of college and graduate students from school such as Wellesley, Boston College, Harvard, and Boston University. They asked him to visualize himself getting straight A's and to have faith in them and in himself.

Guy's work improved. He became interested in school again. The semester following his enrollment in BELL, he made the honor role.

Since Phalen, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School, started BELL in September of 1993, there have been many such "Guys."

This month, the group received a $1 million 5-year grant from the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation in Chestnut Hill to expand capacity in Boston. They hope to serve more than 2,500 Boston-area children by 2007.

BELL students who lag in literacy skills are introduced to Voices of Love and Freedom -- a multi-cultural literacy curriculum -- and achieve "advanced" and "proficient" reading scores on standardized tests, according to Phalen. Virtually all of the kids who enter at the "failing" level in math on standardized tests move up and out of that category, according to the nonprofit group.

"Here, it doesn't matter where you start," says Phalen. "We'll stay with you until you master that skill."

His favorite statistic is "20 for 20." Of the program's original 20 "scholars," all have gone on to college.

"They're pretty amazing," says Erika Reese of the children with whom she works. Reese is the site coordinator at the Holland Elementary School in Dorchester. She started tutoring at BELL during her freshman year at Boston College and stayed for three years. After graduation, she got a job in banking, but left it last year to rejoin BELL."I thought it was really important to work with African-American and Latino children in an urban environment. Being African-American, it was a way for me to get involved and give something back." While the program's focus is on students, tutors also talk about the way that BELL transformed their own lives.

Volunteering at BELL "was a life-changing moment," says Angie Burks, one of the program's original tutors. "It required me to look outside myself." It also inspired her as she worked her way through law school at Boston University and thought about public service. IN 2000, Burks ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Indiana's 2d district. Today she is a principal in a consulting firm she co-founded.

BELL's growth has been almost as remarkable as its success with students. The program that started with one site, 20 students, and 15 volunteers, at the Agassiz School, now has 17 sites nationally and serves 1,500 children with 350 tutors.

Although his work week often approaches 100 hours, Phalen still finds time to keep in touch with former scholars, including Guy, who is now at Morris Brown College in Atlanta. "Guy called at the end of last semester," Phalen says. "He said, 'I want to start a business. I'm gong to really push my grades this semester, so that I can get the transcript I need to transfer out.' He had matured to such a point that he knew that the academics [at Morris Brown] weren't pushing him to be his best and that he was going to reach out and aspire for more."