The Comer Method Turns 50

In a ballroom packed with acolytes who have taken the school-based model for child development that bears his name and spread the gospel from New Haven to the rest of the world, Dr. James Comer could see the fruits of five decades of labor.

But he still had a question: Why isn’t it being used more?

Comer was the guest of honor Monday night as more than 300 people gathered at the Omni Hotel Monday to celebrate his life’s work turning half a century old. He posed his question to let people know that he expects them to do more than celebrate.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Yale Child Study Center’s Comer School Development Program, which helps schools address children’s social and emotional needs, the challenges they bring into the classroom from outside school. Comer said that he expected his devotees to try to answer his question and to think about next steps. In addition to Monday night’s celebratory dinner, an all-day symposium entitled ​“Why Are We Still Waiting? The School Development Program: Looking Back, Looking Forward” will be held Tuesday.

During the dinner educators and child advocates from Connecticut and around the country made it a point to stop Comer to pay homage to his work and to take pictures with the legendary child development thought leader. And they listened intently when he gave them their charge.

“We’re looking back, we’re looking at the present, and we’re looking forward into the future at what needs to be done to give all children the opportunity to be successful in school and in life,” Comer said.

For, in fact, that is what started it all for Comer.

In 1968 he was just 34 years old. Though he wasn’t a trained educator he went on to pioneer an education model that centered on children’s social and emotional needs and prioritized creating a school culture that supports those needs rather than just focusing on improving their test scores. That work started out in two of the lowest performing schools at the time in New Haven; it is now used to varying degrees throughout the city’s public schools.

Today, the ​“Comer Model” also is used in more than 1,000 schools across the nation and globally. In fact, the Comer model made it all the way to the White House under President Barack Obama.

(Read more about that here. Click here to read about how New Haven revived and updated the method; click on the video to watch it in action at a New Haven school.)

Comer, who is trained in psychiatry and now 84 years old, said he didn’t know anything about education then but he knew about children. And he was struck by how people charged with the important task of educating children and ultimately helping them be successful in life had no background or training in child development.

He wanted to change that. That goal is what still motivates him five decades later.

“We believe, we know, we’ve experienced that it can be done,” he said of creating an environment where the lowest performing students can achieve. ​“A lot of people know that it can be done. And so the question is: Why isn’t it being done and what actions can be taken to ensure that all children have the developmental experiences they all need?”

One of Comer’s devotees, Timothy Shriver, had an idea for the next 50 years: Comerize the world. Make social and emotional development central in the upbringing of the next generation of citizens.

Shriver (who began his career doing Comer work at Hillhouse High School) made the case Monday that, now more than ever, the United States needs people who have had the advantages of the kind of social and emotional skills that are the hallmark of the Comer Method. The country needs people who know how to form healthy relationships and solve problems. He said only then can the country solve what he noted Comer defined in his book Beyond Black and White as ​“an American problem.”

“He writes that it is the pernicious quality in this country, despite all of its strengths, continually creating structures that marginalize children and make it difficult for families to grow up whole and healthy,” Shriver said. ​“And he points out … that the problems you see in communities that have been marginalized excessively by racism or discrimination are the same problems that exist in the rest of the culture. It’s just a matter of time. And aren’t we seeing that today?”

Shriver said what Comer stands for isn’t partisan. It’s something that all people can support regardless of their political affiliation and it is one of the ways to bridge the divide and ​“create a common language.”

In addition to giving Comer a proclamation from the City of New Haven declaring Tuesday ​“Comer School Development Program Day,” Mayor Toni Harp announced Monday night that Comer’s work will further be cemented in the Elm City with a star etched into city sidewalk.

“Your work beginning in just a couple of schools has informed and transformed the accepted approach and standard practices now used district-wide here in New Haven and in more than 1,000 schools across the nation,” Harp said. ​“Your ambition on behalf of each child that you work with and his or her aspirations put New Haven at the cutting edge of child development and public education, and how one interacts with the other.

“You’ve made New Haven proud these past 50 years,” she added.