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20 JunGala 2024News

Meet Tracy Coutts & Christy Nelson: Classroom Partners & Ardent Early Childhood Student Advocates

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Meet Tracy Coutts & Christy Nelson: Classroom Partners & Ardent Early Childhood Student Advocates

Tracy Coutts (left) and Christy Nelson (right)
"Christy and Tracy are early childhood champions and advocates for the rights of young children. They are deeply thoughtful about curriculum planning with a focus on making content accessible to all students. BPS is lucky to have such engaged and reflective educators teaching our youngest learners."
Marina Boni
Program Developer of Early Childhood, Boston Public Schools

Tracy Coutts and Christy Nelson are the embodiment of partnership. As co-leads of their kindergarten classroom for 15 years at Gardner Pilot Academy, a Boston Public School, they have always worked together to support their young students. 

Says Christy, “We’re always asking ourselves, ‘What are the barriers of to learning for our students, and what can we do to bring down those barriers?’”

In Tracy and Christy, Discovering Justice has been fortunate to find partners for our Children Discovering Justice (CDJ) curriculum. CDJ is a Massachusetts standards-based K-5 civics curriculum that engages 20,000 students every year in topics such as community, rules, leadership, and equity while answering the essential question, “What is justice, and how do I use my voice to advocate for it?”

Working with Discovering Justice Chief Program Officer Laura Brenner and K-5 Curriculum Developer Victoria Suri, Tracy and Christy have been crucial partners in refining lessons, piloting new modules, and assuring the CDJ curriculum is accessible for all early-childhood and English Language Learners, who represent 70% of their kindergarten students.

You can celebrate Tracy and Christy, and all of our 2024 Partners for Justice Awardees, at Discovering Justice’s Annual Gala 2024: Partners for Justice on June 26th.

Christy and Tracy recognize that CDJ meets an underserved need for civics programming in early-childhood classrooms like theirs, with lessons designed to help the Commonwealth’s youngest learners engage with the concepts of justice and fairness and explore school and community issues. 

And their kindergartners are hungry for it! According to Gardner Pilot Academy colleague Gaby Haywood, “Through CDJ, Christy and Tracy provide their students with a strong foundation of the understanding of what is justice and injustice in the world, and their students learn to use the language from the lessons in everyday conversations.”

Gaby adds, “These rich conversations are thanks to the hard work and dedication from Christy and Tracy!”

 

Tracy and Christy’s partnership with each other and with Discovering Justice means that our CDJ curriculum helps a growing number of young students jumpstart their justice journey as they begin to explore and engage with civic education and action. As Tracy puts it, “Partnership makes us successful.”

Discovering Justice is grateful for Tracy and Christy’s partnership over the years. We’re looking forward to hearing from Tracy and Christy on the importance of making civic education accessible to our youngest learners at our Annual Gala on June 26th.

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Kayla Nordman

Kayla Nordman believes strongly in expanding access to comprehensive civic education to provide the next generation with the resources they need to uphold and expand upon the values of American democracy and create a more equitable future. Before joining Discovering Justice, she worked as a Legislative Intern at the Massachusetts State House and as a Program Manager for the Massachusetts Center for Civic Education. Kayla graduated from Suffolk University with a BA in International Relations.