Culture
What Can Substitute Teachers Do for City Schools?
This start-up dispatches artists and activists to fill in for full-time instructors and teach kids new real-world skills.
On a Friday morning in September, at the Donald McKay Elementary School in East Boston, Massachusetts, Alexis Daniels shushes a roomful of 13- and 14-year-olds. Daniels doesn’t regularly teach this eighth grade math class, but she’s subbing today: Ms. White is out taking a personal day. Standing in front of a slide that reads, “Mapping [Ideas & Food Systems]: How is food connected to health, society, the environment, and me?” Daniels throws a rhetorical question out to the class.
“How does an apple get to our plate?” she asks.