Ed Boland

Ed Boland left a career as a fundraising exec to become a teacher at a tough NYC school. He wasn’t successful. But his experience taught him that we’ll only improve our most troubled public schools when we truly understand the lives of the children enrolled. With first-hand insights into his students’ battles with poverty, immigration, and incarceration, Boland is helping revitalize the debate over American education.

Ed Boland has nearly 25 years of professional experience in a broad array of educational settings. He started by teaching swimming to five-year olds and art history to senior citizens. He served as an admissions officer at his alma mater, Fordham, and later at Yale. He taught English in China as a Princeton in Asia fellow immediately after the Tianamen Square massacre. He was a fundraiser for Barnard College, the all-women’s school affiliated with Columbia. He is now a senior administrator at the nation’s premier educational access program, which places gifted students of color at leading private schools.

His first book, The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City Public School will be released in February, 2016. It was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Current Events Books for the spring. “With humor, insight, and grim persistence,” writes James E. Ryan, Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, “Boland grapples with the realities of his students’ lives as they all face the enduring issue of poverty. This memoir is a humbling reminder that no teacher is an island, and that schools, systems, and communities all share a responsibility to ensure that every child has access to a quality education.” In recent years, he has spoken at the Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference, Fundraising Day in New York, the Westside Y Writer’s Voice, and the 92nd Street Y Tribeca. In February, he has been invited to speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Distinguished Author series.