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NEWTON, MASS. (WHDH) – Boston music legend Ronnie Devoe visited Newton North High School Thursday where he was honored by the Newton Public Schools with a first-of-its-kind award. <\/p>\n
Devoe, the 58-year-old Roxbury native who rose to worldwide fame with chart-topping Boston boyband New Edition, was the first recipient of the Newton Portrait of a Learner Award. The award highlights qualities that school administrators say exemplify the values of the community. <\/p>\n
Devoe visited music classes at the school, getting to speak with students one-on-one. He said engaging and making connections with people is one of the most important lessons they can learn. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want to be heard, and supported and valued, whether it\u2019s in entertainment or technology or medicine or sports, no matter what that is, they need to see the reflection of themselves,\u201d Devoe said. \u201cWhere there\u2019s a will, there\u2019s a way, and I just want to pass that message on to kids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following his success in New Edition, Devoe went on to pioneer the genre new jack swing with some of his former bandmates in Bell Biv Devoe, the trio best known for the multi-platinum selling\u00a0Poison<\/em>\u00a0(1990). <\/p>\nIn addition to his music career, Devoe is now a real-estate developer and wealth-building advocate. He said he wants to pass along what he\u2019s learned to future generations so they can achieve anything they want to. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about me, really, it\u2019s about the people that you\u2019re talking to, and what they\u2019re going to be able to get out of it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\t
Join our Newsletter for the latest news right to your inbox<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source whdh.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWTON, MASS. (WHDH) – Boston music legend Ronnie Devoe visited Newton North High School Thursday where he was honored by the Newton Public Schools with a first-of-its-kind award. Devoe, the 58-year-old Roxbury native who rose to worldwide fame with chart-topping Boston boyband New Edition, was the first recipient of the Newton Portrait of a Learner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2436797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2436796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Boston-music-legend-Ronnie-Devoe-honored-by-Newton-Public-Schools.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436798,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436796\/revisions\/2436798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2436797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}