Education Initiative

An affiliated program of the Jandon Center for Community Engagement, our programs provide opportunities for Smith students to transfer what they are learning in the classroom to real-world experiences alongside mentors—many of whom are Smith alumnae—across a range of educational settings. Our students apprentice in classrooms, schools, educational policy placements and community organizations.

We believe that profound learning and self-discovery comes when experiences are supported by mentoring, context-specific foundational knowledge, intellectual analysis, and cycles of individual and group reflection. Our programs structure opportunities for students to learn about themselves, work at innovative educational placements, engage with mentors, and connect with networks of educators to explore the complex and urgent problems in education at the individual, classroom and community level. At the center of this multidisciplinary process is engagement in systemic analyses of structural, cultural and political forces impacting education in the United States. These opportunities align with and connect to a variety of Smith programs, including the Community Engagement & Social Change Concentration, and programs in the Department of Education and Child Study, and, in particular, the youth, community and policy strand.

Community-engaged scholarship and research remains central to our mission. Our programs are also laboratories where Smith students and faculty test and discover what works in education and share what we learn in the world. In Project Coach, we wrestle with critical questions in youth development, particularly for children born into disadvantage. In the Education Initiative, we address the critical question of education equity across the widening socioeconomic schism in American society. Our students, youth coaches and staff regularly present at conferences and are engaged in state and federally funded research that delves into essential questions about equity, education and social justice.

The Smith College Mindich Teaching Fellowship introduces students from Smith and other liberal arts colleges to the unique challenges of classroom teaching and its power to change the course of a child’s life. The program integrates best practices of university-based teacher education and school-based teaching practica during the one-month apprenticeship. Over the past 20 years, the program has advanced a diverse cohort of Smith students on pathways that have led to urban teaching and education-centered careers. Many aspects of the program are made possible through generous funding honoring the legacy of Dan Mindich, a high school English teacher and lifetime educator who loved teaching and learning. Smith students will be named Mindich Fellows—a title that honors Dan’s belief that students benefit the most when teachers work in communities where they learn together and support each other.

Read the Grécourt Gate article: Julie Destine ’21: Finding Her Place in the Classroom, a 2019–20 Mindich Fellow who reflects on her experience in the fellowship, which included four weeks of teaching in a New York City classroom, and how it has shaped her thinking about her future and career.

To learn more about Project Coach and how you can become involved, please contact Brittany Gaetano (bgaetano@smith.edu).