Lissa Hodder spent 40 years in the classroom. She taught four-year-olds and continuing education students and everyone in between. She worked at Harvard Graduate School of Education, placing student teachers in their observation posts for certification. She knows what good teaching looks like.
So when Lissa tells you that Breakthrough Cambridge is special, you listen.
She first encountered the program in the 1990’s. Harvard students were teaching there as part of their certification requirements, and Lissa visited to see how they were doing. What she found was something remarkable: middle school students and college students learning together, both groups pushing themselves toward deeper understanding.
“The structure met the goals of the ideals,” Lissa recalls. “Everyone there seemed to be a learner. You never stopped learning because there was curriculum development, new ways to teach. The young teachers were interns who learned teaching daily from their students and from the more senior educators.”
This is what drew Lissa and her late husband, Mel—a longtime CCF board member—to establish the Hodder Fund for Learning and Teaching, a CCF donor-advised fund they use each year to support Breakthrough’s work in Cambridge and its long-term commitment to students and schools.
For Lissa, Breakthrough represents something she wishes more students and teachers could experience: the connection between high expectations and genuine support. “A high standard and a high value on education are ways to have a full life,” she explains. “You can’t work hard for something you don’t value.”
The students-teaching-students model matters for another reason too: the teacher pipeline. Those college students learning to teach don’t just help middle schoolers succeed. They become the next generation of educators who understand what rigorous, supportive teaching looks like.
Her hope: “How much more could education be if it followed a Breakthrough model?”
