Transformation Journey: Bostonia

In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Rebecca Midles talks with Nerel Winter (CEO of Bostonia Global), Johanna Simko (Principal of Bostonia Global High School), and David Rios (a Bostonia Global alumnus) about building an in-district dependent charter high school inside a K-8 district, one shaped by competency-based learning, a K-12 world of work curriculum, and an advisory model where every adult in the building is also a mentor.

Transcript

Intro

Rebecca: When I first met Nerel, he was working with a team of district leaders in the middle of designing something that didn’t really exist yet, a dependent charter high school inside of a K-8 district. Cajon Valley is a K-8 district in East County, San Diego, surrounded by high school districts where students typically go after eighth grade. But Cajon Valley had already been building something different at Bostonia Global, an elementary and middle school experience that was grounded in the world of work and helping students understand their strengths and interests with a bilingual and global focus.

So they began asking a bigger question.

What if that learner-centered experience didn’t have to end in eighth grade? What would it look like to build a high school around what kids need and around a commitment to authentic learning, community connections, internships, and real work experience?

There were plenty of questions about how they would actually make that work, but listening to this story, you’ll hear that question, “What do students need?”, show up again and again in the design of the school, the way they think about learning, and especially in the relationships that are at the heart of it.

Nerel Winter: My name’s Nerel Winter, the CEO of Bostonia Global.

The original, uh, vision of Bostonia Global was how do you change the world around each one of these babies that is ours and create an environment where every single one of them can be their best version of themselves. And so we originally were a K- a K-five, which then at the end of fifth grade, our families asked what would it look like for us to do a redesign of middle school. And so then we became a K-eight, uh, which was a, a really interesting experience. And once we finished that experience around K-eight, then our family said, “Hey, what would it look like for us to continue this experience and to move the work that we’re doing around connecting students between who they are to their future selves into the high school realm?” And that became the, the initiative of Bostonia Global, which was the development of an in-district dependent charter, allowing us to support students from, uh, baby to almost adulthood,

California has, um, a, a wide range of districts, and so you’ll have K-twelve districts, you’ll have elementary districts, you’ll have K-eight districts, and they– none of them talk to each other.

And so in came the idea of, well, what happens if we design our own high school within a K-eight district? And so we are an in-district dependent charter, which basically means that we retain our union, and we also retain our board.

Including Community

Rebecca: So they had the idea, a high school designed around what kids need, but then came the harder question: what does that actually look like, and who gets to decide? At Bostonia, they started by turning to their community. Families, students, educators, and community partners all had a voice in shaping the school. And one of the ways they did that was through something called the Committee of 100.

Nerel Winter: We had created a, a systematic approach to the Committee of Ten around US education, and we designed what was called the Committee of 100. And the Committee of 100 designed out these endpoints that we put into what was our Portrait of a Graduate. And those endpoints were focusing in on things such as communication around durable skills, around the aspect of our students to be able to be, uh, capable of connecting between who they are to their future selves.

At the beginning stage, a lot of the work was around how do we develop out a high school where kids are known and where they feel that their voice actually matters. And so the, the work around the Committee of 100, um, revolved around three main design areas. The first being the idea that we are all a relationships-based system, right?

So every human within our system is an advisor. Um, and that was a lot of work with our unions around how do you change mindset with regards to the teacher role and the responsibility of the role, and so developing out MOUs with the union around the role of advisory, not just being a homework club, but truly the, the core central nucleus of what school is meant to be, right?

Is this, the relationship piece. The second aspect is this idea that all kids, um, have voice, right? And so we do as a district a tremendous amount of work around TEDx and, and having students do presentation literacy and connecting who they are to the world around them. Um, and you’ll find our students within Bostonia Global have a lot of confidence in their ability to share their story. David being a prime example of a student who’s gone through that with many, many different opportunities to share his voice to the world. Um, and then the third piece, which is I, I would say one of the more complicated ones, is the idea that every single student is their own individualized pathway. And so in order to do that, then that means you have to redesign the system, right?

And so you have to redesign school to allow for flexibility, for seat time requirements to be able to actually be supportive of what students’ needs are, to be able to look at how you do assessment, how do you approach competency-based learning, how do you design out pathways for students, and how do you actually look at every single student as their own individual human rather than part of a system.

So you design the system for the kids rather than creating kids who are part of a system. Um, and so all of that then revolves around the ethos of what Bostonia Global is meant to be, which is really a deeply personalized, learner-centered environment where

David Rios: My name is David Rios. I’m an alumni of Bostonia Global High School. Um, you know, when I was in school, uh, I started out Going to Bostonia Bobcats, like that was right across my street. As far as proximity, it was the closest school, so my mom, as someone who didn’t really have a car at the time, it just the best option was to go to the closest school.

And, you know, before Bostonia Global, what– it was Bostonia Language Academy, and before Language Academy, it was a regular school. And my mom didn’t really know English, so she would struggle with communicating. So when K- when the K through 5 came in with the Language Academy, this bilingual idea of how can we get students to both learn English and Spanish while in school, and how can we allow these English speakers to learn a whole new language, right?

Not only just two, but three. You know, we would focus on Spanish, coding, and English. Um, and so my mom just chose that school because they knew how to speak Spanish, and she finally could find a place where she knew what her kid was doing, she knew how her kid was doing, and how she could support me better.

And I think that was the biggest door for my mom as an immigrant mother who only knows Spanish, is like, “How can I have my s- how can I have my son go into school, and how can I know how he’s doing into school– how he’s doing in school without having to worry so much with– because I don’t know English. I don’t know the, the language of, of the US.”

Um, and then it shifted from the K through 5 Spanish school to, I remember this, from the fifth grade to eighth grade, um, we first merged with, uh, Greenfield, and that was super interesting. Uh, I’m very close to all the schools, so I, I– it was walking distance for me. So I walked everywhere, and my mom loved it.

She’s like, “I have to stick with this place, this program, because I can actually understand them.” The teachers there, y- from when I started in third grade to now, they all are very communicative to parents. They’re all very communicative to, um, other teachers and how– or, and other advisors on how they could help the student and grow.

And I think that part of communication is what really sold my mom into the school. She’s like, “I have– finally have somewhere where I know how my kid is doing through the feedback of the teachers.” And then when we got to that high school decision, my mom’s like, “I’m gonna give you the decision to choose to keep going with Bostonia, or you can go to a regular s- we can go to the regular local school, and I’ll let you choose that.”

And I told her, “What do you feel more comfortable with?” She’s like, “I would choose Bostonia 100%,” is when they started developing the high school. And I asked her why, and she told me about the communication again. And then I started hearing the idea of this new school where letter grades are not the norm, ’cause that’s when they started, uh, modifying it around eighth grade, and middle school is when they started telling them, “You know, we’re, we’re kind of moving away from letter grades into competency-based learning.”

And I had to explain that to my mom. That was a bit complicated. So I was looking at this idea of changing the norm of letter grades to this competency-based learning, where it’s no longer grading a student based off of how well they can do a single product, but how they did it and their process through learning.

And I think that was the biggest selling, was like, I cannot– I’m not just a letter. I’m more of a individual that has an incredible s- asset of skills and s- and an incredible amount of like things to work on, right?

Um, and so that was the biggest selling point. And then I heard about the mentorship program, and everything went completely… It went as good as I could have imagined it. That internship program or the mentorship program was incredible. It changed my, my, I guess you could say, my entire career path. It definitely changed, uh, how I thought about what I wanna do in the future, and it changed my idea and as well as how big I dreamed.

I always like to apply project-based learning into my learning right now, whether it be learning about economics and th-thinking about a model and how I can apply that to my learning. How can I apply that to the final that’s coming up? May- Let me, let me, let me make a model to where I can remember, one, the concepts, two, the, to the actual learning that they want me to, want me to know, and then finally, to the test grade, right?

You know, before growing up in a household that my mom came from Mexico to America without much opportunity, I grew up with that idea that I can’t go, uh, past that. I can’t go more than that. But Bostonia was telling me, “You have such a life ahead of you. You can reach for the stars, and I know you can achieve it, and we’re here to support you for that.”

Design and Staffing

Rebecca: A different design requires a different kind of commitment and the conditions to make it possible. For Bostonia, that meant building a team ready not just to teach differently, but to learn, adapt, and design alongside their students.

Nerel Winter: The, the beauty about the design of Bostonia Global at the beginning was it was not educator-led, and I think that’s really crucial as you’re designing out systems or for those listening to the podcast around how do we do truly learner-centered environments.

You have to take into consideration where do students end up what is the endpoint in terms of what you’re designing for. So we had industry, um, at the table. We had two-year, four-year at the table. We had parents at the table. We had students at the table in terms of what, what does the design need to look like, and how do we allow this to take place in a, in a world where it’s anything but student-centered, right?

And it’s, it’s really difficult to create change, especially in California, where A through G requirements own the landscape and where the UC system has a tremendous amount of power in terms of what the ultimate transcript looks like, right? So we, we were doing an experiment, an uphill battle in terms of creating something that truly could shift the tide in terms of how we approach school in California. and that meant spending time with our unions, spending time with our district leadership, spending time educating anybody and everybody who’s willing to listen about what does it look like to create a competency-based system and how do you do so in a way that, that is actually tangible. And Johanna, you did a tremendous amount of work around bringing teachers into the landscape of competency-based education and around shifting the mindset that this is not a traditional school system, right? And that we create school around kids. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about that piece? What, what does it look like to really help teachers shift mindset and working through that?

Johanna Simko: Hi, my name is Johanna Simko, and I am the principal at Bostonia Global High School. when I joined the team in year three, um, one of the most important things was really listening to the teachers. We all know that educators need autonomy in their classrooms to be able to serve the students in the way that they are seeing and meeting those needs in real time. Um, so it’s as much about listening as it is any other aspect for a leader. Um, the staff was really hungry to serve the students, to do right by the students, to see the students succeed in their future, but the steps that it takes to get there weren’t as clear.

to start, we start with a whole hiring process, right? our seasoned, um, educators in our school district did not opt to transfer into these spots.

Um, some of it was credentialing, but some of it was also starting something new. You know, we had our team, um, that wanted to join. We actually had one teacher that worked at the old school that stayed that was really interested in project-based learning and wanting to do school differently, but that was one, and everybody else, um, was new.

There was one other transfer that came, um, two years, so really just two teachers from within our district, and the rest were outside. So we structure a hiring process that engages, um, teachers who want to work for a school like this. It’s project-based learning. It’s competency-based. We’re trying to design a pathway for every student. Um, we are gonna have Tuesdays and Thursdays are a different schedule that’s all electives, so if you sign up to teach at this school, you’re not signing up to just teach math. You’re signing up to teach projects, and you’re also signing up to take, uh, teach a pathway on Tuesday and Thursday to show students something that they might love to do in the future. So the interview process is very intentional and very clear, and we find that the applicants are aware of what they’re signing up for before they start. So I don’t have a lot of veteran teachers. I have a handful of teachers that were in the district and a lot of newer teachers, some that have worked at other charters with a range of experience, some that are new to the teaching profession, um, and some, uh, just a handful that were within our district that really were aligned with our vision

So all new teachers get a mentor. Um, so if David was the English teacher next door that’s been here for three years, and I’m brand new, David gets to become my mentor, right? And there’s money that’s set aside in the MOU for those teachers to stay and plan and meet in the summer, and it’s really job alikes, right?

Because I could sit and talk at people forever, but it’s not gonna help them as much as the person in the door right next to them that’s doing the same work that they’re doing. They can feel free to ask all of the questions. The defenses are down. That person’s not evaluating them. They can be really raw and honest.

And then I meet with the mentors, and I make sure that the mentors have everything that they need to support the new teacher. Um, we also check on the new teachers, of course, as the administrative team, but that’s not, um, direct support in terms of their day-to-day operations. That’s always done with their mentor. and then the second piece of it is really listening to teachers and where they are. This year we spent a lot of time building competency-based rubrics using AI, that was just coming out of listening to teachers. What do we need? We want some common assessment language. We want a rubric for the science team so that we’re all using it. We really want to know that we’re calibrating assessment, looking at student work together, and we need some rubrics to be able to do that. Um, so we use the competencies, and we use different AI platforms, and we generated rubrics, and we had a commitment to go out and try them with students and come back with some work and give some feedback.

Um, crucial conversations around assessment is really what it was about. Um, competencies are amazing, and they’re 21st c- century skills aligned to future skills that we want students to have. But really, it’s, it was about assessment and about teachers being able to talk through, again, what student work should look like and what the, the outcomes of projects are that we really want.

So one simple task became a larger conversation about instruction and assessment.

Yeah. So we have twice as much time as the, um, schools in our district. Everybody else has one hour a week, and we have two. Um, so Tuesdays is a staff meeting where we meet together. Again, we focus on, um, different things that teachers are struggling through. We have, um, s- um, we look at projects together, we look at rubrics together. It kinda depends on, um, what’s happening at the time. Um, but we also every Thursday give the time back to the teachers. So there’s cycles of meetings that are PLCs on Tuesday, or on Thursdays that allow teachers to get the work done that they need to get done. And the general cycle is pretty traditional, it’s grade levels meet, and then departments meet, and then we have some time for SPED planning. Um, but one thing that we are implementing which has been amazing is i- the advisory piece. We’re really looking at what we’re doing in advisory, what’s working, what’s not working, and always refining our advisory practices to best m- meet the needs of the students

Nerel Winter: So I, I would say three things. One is mindset. I think the most difficult part of everything is, is shifting mindset. a lot of the work that we do with our, our community of practice is mindset work, and, and really ch- helping folks understand, to Johanna’s point, right, that what you’re doing is entering not as a teacher. I’m very excited that you can teach math, but you’re not here to teach math solely, right? Math is a part of what you do. Your role here is an advisor, and advisors are here to change the world and to be the number one relationship builders of any human on Earth, right? And so the, the real shift that has to take place, which is the most difficult part of all of this, is mindset work, right?

And, and really changing everything that you were taught in your credentialing program as being important, throw that out. Think instead about what kids actually need, and really get to know who they are. And, and to Johanna’s point around hiring, we ask questions around what hobbies they have, right? And really, what is it that they love to do?

Because ultimately, we’re not looking for passionate math educators. We’re looking for passionate humans, and I think that-that’s really a, a shift in mindset that has to take place, right? Because they have to connect with our kids and connect with our students and know who they are. So that’s a big one. The second piece is because it’s always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way, and it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. And so, um, Johanna and I have gotten to be really, really good, and Rebecca, you were a big part of this at the beginning, at finding loopholes. And so there, there’s a lot of work that’s we can do in, in the state with, um, you know, instructional minutes, with how we approach master schedules, with how we look into where time is allocated.

And what we found was that we spend way, way too much of our time in school, and we can play with what we do during the day and play with how we approach dual enrollment, play with how we approach independent study, play with how we approach instructional minutes to allow for us to give students the ultimate amount of flexibility possible.

And the third piece, which is also complicated, is you also have to be willing to listen and to iterate based off what the design is, is looking like. And so, you know, we, we had many, many moments during our, our first years where students would tell us whether or not something was working or not, uh, where staff would give us impact around it’s, it’s, “This needs to shift,” or, “That needs to shift,” and we iterated. And I think part of what we have to model is failure is okay, and failing forward is, is a good thing, and being able to be, um, willing to listen throughout the process is really just a, a key component. And to your point, it, it does build trust as we’re, as you’re going through that. So at now year six of the high school, right?

Year 10 of the system at large, and it’s really a place where, um, yeah, where, where we can now say staff come to Bostonia

Johanna Simko: Um, I think the most significant transformation at Bostonia has been, um, my own understanding of leadership. I’ve learned that leading, um, change is not about having all of the answers or moving the organization as quickly as possible. I can be kind of impatient, so I love for things to happen quickly. Um, but it’s really about creating the conditions for people to believe in the work that we’re doing, um, for my advisors to know why they’re at school every day and develop the capacity to do it well, and ultimately, really take ownership of it for themselves. Um, right? I can, um, do a lot, and ask Nerel, I, I really did my first three years. Um, but the, the realization that the organization can’t rely solely on me to be doing the work and step in and solve the problems, carry all the weight of implementation, um, really is not sustainable. So, that is, um, the realization that how I lead needed to change.

I needed to think more intentionally about distributive leadership, developing others, creating clear structures, asking the right questions instead of having all of the right ansen- answers, right? And, uh, you know, ironically, it’s all, all of that I learned by being a project-based learning teacher myself, right?

And we are all always teachers. So even though I’m a principal, now I’m a teacher of teachers instead of a teacher of my students that I used to be, So everything that we do in good teaching is really what we do in good leadership

Nerel Winter: in year two, off the Band-Aid and said, “We’re just gonna go into a pure competency-based model, and we’re gonna look into transcripts across the US and systems across the US that are able to support us in, in this work and support us in scaling it.”

So one, one of those systems was One Stone. It’s a very interesting system based out of Boise, Idaho. Um, and we used what was called our growth transcript, which was a transcript focusing in on growth over time rather than moments of time, which is ultimately what the purpose of competency-based education is, right?

And so that year three, then we started to say, “Okay, we have our first graduating class heading off to university or career, what do we do about that, and how do we approach it?” Right? And how do we ultimately allow for something that is, um, typically accepted in the university system to not drive what the work is that we’re doing, right?

And so, we had to scale that, and we had to play with it. So we sent students off using the growth transcript with a credit transcript attached, all of the A-G requirements the students needed in order to get into school, but then also focused on the growth the students had over their four years and showing all of the other aspects of their life that truly were relevant.

And this is where the work of the world of work came into play. Because when students have nine years of career integration, by the time they get into high school, their high school experience can be much more focused into really what it is that they love to do and helping them really dive in to the areas of focus that they wanna go through.

world of work is an initiative connecting students, um, to many different careers through a four-level process, um, supporting students through the understanding that the more exposure students have to opportunity, the more likelihood they have in terms of identifying who they are through the process. And so the world of work, um, starts in TK. It exposes students to about sixty different careers by the time they graduate eighth grade. And then the high school component then is the continuation of that into every single student is their own pathway, and so designing our school. And so all that to be set, for all intents and purposes, Bostonia Global is a public school system within a public school district with the context of, um, the challenges of working within a board, working within a union, working within, um, our demographics, which we represent over sixty different languages.

And so Johanna, would you mind speaking a little bit about the different options that students have? Um, not just apprenticeships, right? Because there’s a lot of different angles that they can take within their high school experience that allows them to really focus in on their pathway.

Johanna Simko: Yeah. So part of the intentional design of the school was putting all of our A through G requirements on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and reserving Tuesday and Thursday for career exploration. So at the high school level, we have a CT or a, um, a grant for Golden State Pathways, and we have nine different pathways that we offer students courses in, in different pathways and/or the trajectory on the same pathway if they’ve really found something that they love. Um, and we’re really intentional about making sure that advisory supports that growth, and there’s an incremental steps that students are taking. They’re doing their elevator pitch, right? David’s making his resume. He’s doing a mock interview, and all of that is leading up to the apex of having a mentorship opportunity. It could be a paid mentorship opportunity. It could be a mentorship within the school district. Some of those are not paid. Um, every year our paid internships grows and of course, you know, um, the students all love that. We gave them financial literacy. They had bank accounts. It’s been really exciting growth that we’ve had. Um, so the students have the opportunity to not only explore the pathway that they like, but also to have this real world experience, which is really important because the mentorship allows them to have an adult in their life that isn’t their advisor, that’s a mentor. And both of those different options show somebody like David how to be an adult in a professional setting and also have their social and emotional needs taken care of while they’re at school

Nerel Winter: So what that leads to then is then when we send students off to university or to career, the transcript has value to both. And I think that, that’s really the ultimate desire in a competency-based system, is that the transcript speaks to industry and the transcript speaks to university. And so the ability for a student when they’re heading into university– let’s say David as an example, who is at a UC systems university, right?

And was accepted with a zero point zero zero GPA. Um, he is capable of demonstrating with confidence that the area that he’s focused in on is not just because it’s some whim of the imagination, it’s because he spent years focusing in on that pathway. It’s something that he ultimately desires to move into, and it’s something that he’s had a lot of time and experience in, which is a very strong selling point for those listening around how on earth can you get universities on board. Universities are businesses ultimately, and so there is a challenge with keeping kids in a major. And so when we have students that have had so much time in an area of focus that is of interest to them and had so many options in terms of exposure, then they’re able to really push in, in the direction that they want to go.

And so Johanna’s point around nine pathways, that’s because of staffing numbers. Ultimately, if a student comes to us around any pathway, we can support them and design out the day to allow them to push on that, right? And so they can go through paid apprenticeships, they can go through dual enrollment, they can go through any angle they want to. It’s open with anywhere they wanna go. And so that, that’s part of the design. A system has to be flexible to be, uh, capable of moving wherever students are needing

The Power of Advisor Model

Rebecca: Nerel mentioned earlier that every adult is an advisor. David’s story gives us a pretty powerful example of what that actually means.

David Rios: Yeah. So the first two years was the most interesting, you know. We had very small, small group of students, maybe like less than 100. And this small community of students would come, uh, on, I think it was the first half hour and the last half hour of school, we would have this time of advisory. Um, and it was very focused on implementing the world of work, how we can build that resume, build the career-building skills, as well as learning RIASEC.

You know, uh, are you realistic, uh, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising or conventional? Um, and how can we apply these three letters and kind of build your career or your aspirations towards this kind of, uh, figure that you are or this kind of model that kind of tells you what are your strengths are.

And that was the advisory idea. And the most important part or the– what I took home the most about advisory was building this relationship between this one specific advisor that I would see 30 minutes every sing– or for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes after school or, uh, for the last 30 minutes of school, I would, I would see him.

Uh, and my first year I had one, and then halfway it switched to another person, and now it’s– now I know him as Mr. Shawn. Uh, we always go by first name basis. It’s never last name, so that was a big shocker for me. But Mr. Shawn and I, man, I love that guy. Um, he coached me through all of high school, and I think the purpose of Bostonia and that advisory idea is: how can we replicate these students with a lot of money that have their parents buy them life coaches from since the beginning of kindergarten to 12th grade?

These people are having a life coach that’s telling them, “We’re gonna get you to Harvard. We’re gonna get you to the highest and top schools, and you’re gonna have this completely successful built life.” How can we replicate that at a high school level, but not only a high school level, our K through 12 model?

And the biggest step towards that was that advisory model is how can we get students to connect with the advisor that is solely focused on these 30 or 20 students, a small group of students, and their job is: how can I coach these young students into growing, one, into adults, and secondly, growing into their career, growing into that one individual path that they all have, that it’s all different.

You know, none of them have the same path, and maybe some of them do. Some– maybe they might have the same field. I wanna go into medical field, but someone wants to go into radiology, and the other wants to be in ER. Uh, one s- wants– one wants to be a field medic. And it’s– there’s– while, yes, they’re in the same field, they’re completely different paths.

And so advisory time was to focus on building that trust with the advisor and building that career, uh, mindset, that growth mindset.

Nerel Winter: I, I just love David bringing up the idea of a life coach. Um, and I, I think that’s, that’s such an interesting way to present it, right? Because the idea is– part of the mindset we’re going back to that point, not here to teach a student for a year. You’re here to support a student throughout their lifetime and to really support them through where they’re heading.

We– There’s so much work going on in the nation right now about this idea of flourishing, And ultimately, if you’re moving to this idea of, of it’s not just about happiness, it’s about flourishing in life. What David is describing about the relationship that he has with the advisor, right, his, his coach, is really about flourishing to where he is now, right?

And so I think that that’s ultimately was the, the original vision was every single person within our system has somebody who knows them and that they feel like they can belong, right? And that,

that really

David Rios: I think I’m gonna add on something to what Nerel said about, you know, that lifetime coach. I talk with Sean like at least on a monthly basis. Like me and him touch base every month, and then, you know, we kinda get busy, and then we touch again– touch base again. Even after high school, like I- I’ve already been a year out of high school, and I still talk with, uh, you know, a, a good friend of mine.

It’s weird to call him just Sean ’cause he’s not my teacher anymore, so but I still call him Mr. Sean ’cause it’s just engraved in my brain that I can’t call him just Sean. But I, I absolutely love, uh, you know, him and, and overall his wisdom and overall his experience that he’s, he’s able to give us. You know, he’s told us about his hardship.

He, he’s also, he’s also been very vulnerable with the students, and I think having an advisor that can be vulnerable with students and that can kinda show them, “Listen, I am– as a teacher, I am also no better than you,” you know what I mean? “We’ve all had our– we’ve all been students. We have all made our own mistakes, and I’m here to coach you through those mistakes that I have committed and as well as coach you through the mistakes you will eventually commit.

I mean, we’re not all perfect.” And I think that’s one of the reasons why I connected so much with Sean was because me and him were super personable. We’re very relatable in a lot of aspects, and honestly, because of this school, I was able to receive that kind of a relationship and network connection.

Conclusion

David Rios: As an alumni It’s almost my job to show the students that the system does work, and that it is successful for one, and two, it’s better than what we ha- used to have. You know what I mean? Or what a lot of students in Bostonia Global High School, when I was there, a lot of them would be like, “I don’t know why I didn’t go to a traditional high school.

I wish I did.” And I think it’s my job now to show these are the reasons why. Like we– If I can make it to a certain level, you guys can not only make it to my level, but I hope you can surpass my level. I hope you can surpass whatever achievements I can make because the school is ultimately always growing, developing.

You know, we have the new paid internships that I wasn’t a part of. We had the financial literacy classes, which we had as an elective at the time because of a, of a certain advisor, but now it’s an implemented, uh, course. And so because of the development of the high school, it’s always continuous and it’s perpetual. I hope that these students can constantly surpass me.

Resources

Bostonia Global (Getting Smart profile):

Cajon Valley Union School District:

One Stone, Boise, Idaho (Getting Smart profile)

Golden State Pathways Program (California Department of Education)