Worth a Listen, Look or Read — Two Guideposts for Catalysts of Change
Jeff Ikler here for Kirsten Richert with our weekly Getting Unstuck mini feature: “Worth a Listen, Look or Read.” Here in under five minutes, we suggest a new way of thinking, unique content, or critical skills to help school leaders at any level get unstuck.
The Mini Lesson
This week we reintroduced you to Jamahl Hines, an Assistant Principal at Conard High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. Jamahl the founder of the Future Educators of Diversity (FEOD), a powerful program that champions equity for students in his district and creates a pipeline for developing teachers of color. The good news since we first told Jamahl’s story in November 2020 is that FEOD is now on track become a national program.
Catalyst Guidepost 1: FEOD is a beautiful example of the power of starting with a small step. Jamahl saw a need: kids of color desperately wanted to see more teachers who look like them in the front of the classroom. So, he built a program that put high school students of color on a college track to ultimately become educators back in their community.
Jamahl’s story inspired me to look for other young educators who are trying to reshape America’s schools. Meet Emily Pilloton-Lam, a designer, builder, educator, and Founder/Executive Director of the nonprofit Girls Garage (formerly Project H Design). There she has she has taught thousands of young girls how to put power tools together with science and math principles to build projects for their communities.
You can get a brief overview of Emily’s work with “Girls Garage” in the following video.
Clearly, Girls Garage is more than a real-world STEM program as important as that work is. It’s a place where young women can gain confidence in themselves and contribute to their community.
And community is at the heart of Emily’s philosophy. I quote her here:
“We would do well to build our schools as sources of community, rather than as reflections of the community. We need to rethink schools as incubators and producers of vision and progress for the places in which they exist, with students learning through real-world, applied subjects that are contextualized to their own backyard, and families, business, and citizens who contribute to, benefit from, and rally around that engagement.”
(Forbes, Sept 6, 2011)
“Incubators and producers of vision and progress for the places in which they exist.” Priceless.
Putting the Idea to Work
And Emily put that philosophy to work as early as 2010 when she applied her design skills in the poorest county in rural North Carolina. You can watch her inspiring story in the following video.
Catalyst Guidepost 2: And while we applaud Emily’s work there, it’s important to remind ourselves that a catalyst for change doesn’t go it alone. In her work in North Carolina, for example, Emily coordinated closely with the area superintendent, school faculty, the community, businesses and most importantly, the kids.
Emily carries on that spirit of collaboration today as she continues to work with educators and schools to reinvent learning through personalized and often politically engaged project-based learning.