Doherty
Coming back to Doherty as a teacher after attending for two years as a student felt like I was being welcomed home. Even though I hadn’t entered the building for nearly half a decade, I knew the way to the classroom I was teaching in immediately. Teachers who teach at Doherty stay at Doherty, so I saw my old teachers walking around, getting ready for the day. On the walls in the hallways where there aren’t lockers, student-made art fills the spaces. There was nothing like being able to walk by murals every morning and being able to say that I knew the person who painted it. Doherty has history in every corner - every student, every teacher, and every administrator leaves their mark on the building.
One of the many murals on the walls at Doherty. This one was done by friends I had gone to Doherty with.
Demographics
Like most Worcester Public Schools, Doherty serves a diverse population. This made culturally responsive teaching all the more important.
I heard many languages spoken in my classroom before class. It was interesting to hear pre-class chatter in all sorts of languages. For example, I'm more familiar with the Spanish word for "pencil box" now!
Not shown is that Doherty also serves a large population of the city's Greek and Albanian communities. I got to learn a great deal about each of these cultures as a student teacher.
Doherty has a wide range students. More than half the community speaks a first language other than English, a nearly a fifth of all students are English Language Learners. Additionally, Doherty has a high percentage of students with high needs, and nearly half the community is considered to be economically disadvantaged.
For example, in Worcester, all students receive free school lunch and breakfast. I never let any student in my class who took advantage of that get made fun of - instead, I would often discuss how I ate free school lunch at Doherty. This allowed for some interesting conversations on how the lunch menu has changed!
Academic Performance
On average, Doherty does better on both the ELA and Mathematics MCAS than the district, but it is still slightly below average. Additionally, both the district and the school are only partially meeting expectations. However, Doherty is classified as making moderate progress towards targets.
From the Massachusetts Department of Education. All statistics are for 2019.
Accountability classification for Doherty in 2020.