Johns Hopkins conference

On Dec. 3, I’ll be at the Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, giving a keynote speech at a conference on health disparities organized by Leadership Education in Adolescent Health, an interdisciplinary program at Johns Hopkins University. The theme of the conference is “Health and the Urban Family: Promoting Healthy Futures for Urban Youth.”

Upcoming Speeches

I’ll be giving a number of speeches over the next month, including talks at:

– a conference on a “multicultural/multiracial future” this Sunday at my church: Middle Collegiate Church, in New York City

– a fundraising luncheon for Mainspring Schools in Austin on April 29.

– education conferences organized by my publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, next month in Atlanta and New Orleans.

– an event on May 16 at the Holton Career and Resource Center in Durham, N.C., organized by the East Durham Children’s Initiative.

– a school-readiness symposium in Baltimore on May 18, organized by Ready at Five.

Baltimore audio

The Baltimore Community Radio Coalition has posted audio of my talk last month at the Bolton Street Synagogue, organized by the Greater Homewood Interfaith Alliance. You can listen to the talk and the Q&A, along with the closing benediction, here.

More news from Baltimore

I was a guest today (along with Nicole Johnson, the executive director of Elev8 Baltimore) on “Midday with Dan Rodricks” on WYPR in Baltimore. Audio is now online.

And in the Baltimore Messenger, an article on my talk tonight, and on Ari Witkin, the 22-year-old events coordinator who is helping to make it happen:

President Barack Obama has called for the creation of “Promise Neighborhoods” nationwide, based on the HCZ Project.

The hope is that Tough’s talk and the public discussion that follows will lead to the creaton of a similar program in Baltimore, said Claudia Diamond, who chairs the social action committee at Bolton Street Synagogue. Diamond and Amy Myers, head of social outreach at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation in Charles Village, organized the talk with Witkin’s help.

Witkin said several nonprofit groups are applying for Promise Neighborhoods grants, including Living Classrooms, the Center for Urban Families, Towson University’s School of Education and the University of Maryland School of Social Work. And, 25 nonprofits in the area that work with children have been invited to Tough’s talk, he said.

Updates

More news on tomorrow’s talk in Baltimore and an awesome price on a used copy of “Whatever It Takes” (must be in Bay Area).

A Talk in Baltimore

Next Thursday, I’ll be giving a talk at the Bolton Street Synagogue in Baltimore. The topic: “The Harlem Children’s Zone: Can It Happen in Baltimore?” The event, which is free and open to the public, is being organized by the Greater Homewood Interfaith Alliance. There are more details here, and you can download a flyer here [pdf].

At noon on Thursday, before the talk, I’ll be a guest on Dan Rodrick’s “Midday” show on WYPR, the Baltimore public-radio station.

Promise Neighborhood Conference

This week, the Harlem Children’s Zone presented Changing the Odds: Learning from the Harlem Children’s Zone Model, a conference attended by 1,400 people from around the country who came to New York in delegations to learn more about the Zone and about Promise Neighborhoods. Several officials in the Obama administration spoke at the conference, providing new details about the Promise Neighborhood initiative, including Arne Duncan, the education secretary; Melody Barnes, the director of the president’s Domestic Policy Council; Adolfo Carrion, the special assistant to the president for urban affairs; Heather Higginbottom, the deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council; and Jim Shelton, the assistant deputy secretary of education for innovation and improvement.

In anticipation of the conference, there was local newspaper coverage in San Bernadino, whose conference delegation included Mayor Pat Morris; in Chicago, which sent delegations from three different neighborhoods; in Springfield, Mass., where Geoffrey Canada spoke last week (and I spoke three weeks ago); and in Columbia, South Carolina, where a local group is working on a Zone in the Eau Claire neighborhood.

In Baltimore, a local paper called the Urbanite had a long, detailed article about the various plans in that city for Zone replication projects:

There are at least four Promise Neighborhood proposals in the works: The mayor’s office has been working on one in Park Heights; the nonprofit Living Classrooms is involved with another; and the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins are each pushing proposals as well.

Baltimore talk on Monday

More details here on my talk at the Johns Hopkins School of Education on Monday. Registration is closed, but unclaimed tickets may be available at the door after 6:30 p.m.

A Talk in Baltimore

On March 30, I’ll be giving a talk at Johns Hopkins University. This announcement has the details:

The School of Education’s Department of Teacher Preparation will sponsor a talk by author Paul Tough, one of America’s foremost writers on poverty, education, and the achievement gap, on Monday, March 30, at 7 p.m.

Marc Steiner, president of the Center for Emerging Media and host of a talk show on WEAA, will lead a question-and-answer session following the presentation.

Baltimore City Paper

This week the Baltimore City Paper reports on Barack Obama, Whatever It Takes, and the movement to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in Baltimore:

Like Obama, Canada worked in urban communities before founding his Children’s Zone. Unlike Obama, he grew up poor and in a violent neighborhood. The problem as he saw it then in New York–and in cities like Baltimore–was that all the various interventions by social programs, schools, recreation centers, little leagues, and the like, was that they were all scattershot, often giving help in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes, through the superhuman effort of a social worker here, a school teacher or coach there, you would have the classic story of the ghetto kid who made good–like Canada himself, who made it to Bowdoin College. Those feel-good stories, however, would never and will never change the communities themselves or the lives of the vast majority of their inhabitants.