Profile

Dana Polson helped plan and now is the Co-Director of ConneXions Community Leadership Academy, a Baltimore City public middle school serving 120 students in grades 6-8 as part of the New Schools Initiative of BCPSS. ConneXions is a teacher-led school in which teachers collectively make school-wide policies and decisions. It has a rich electives program including African Drum and Dance, Martial Arts, Spanish, and Art.

As Co-Director of ConneXions, Dana is working to develop a school-wide portfolio program. She also coordinates the teacher professional development program; oversees the school’s budget, technology, and maintenance needs; and responds to requests for data from BCPSS headquarters.

After graduating from the University of Virginia with a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on music and history, she completed an MA in Music at UVA. She then attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, studying viola performance with John Graham, and received a Master of Music degree there in 1993. She worked in music administration at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music for two years, teaching and freelancing in the Southern New Hampshire Area. She also took graduate classes in education at the College of Notre Dame through the Resident Teacher Program, an alternative certification program for career-changers, and currently holds an Advanced Professional Teaching Certificate.  Prior to her work at ConneXions, Dana taught US History and Law at Carver Vocational Technical High School, a Baltimore City Public High School, and coached the Policy Debate Team.

Dana’s research emerges from her work with ConneXions and in Baltimore City schools where many students, despite clearly displayed intelligence, are not achieving up to their potential in school. She is interested in identity in the role of African American children’s education, the effects of poverty on learning and how home and school discourses can collide in schools.

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