Textbooks. IQ tests. SAT tests. Classrooms with rows of desks.

What these all have in common is that they were designed to serve a mythical “average” student for standardized jobs and careers. However, such standardization fails to serve most students, particularly those from marginalized communities such as students of color, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families.

Instead, systems ought to acknowledge individuals’ differences and their “jagged” learning profiles and design schools in ways that accommodate variability not only across students but within them, argues Harvard University professor Todd Rose in his book The End of Average. “If you design those learning environments on average, odds are you’re designing for nobody,” Rose says in his accompanying TED Talk.

Rather than design for the average and come up short, we can instead design for the margins and develop something extraordinary. As the brilliant education and social change leaders behind the equityXdesign framework advise, “Designing at the margin means that those in privileged positions do not solve for those experiencing oppression; rather, in true community, both the privileged and marginalized build collective responsibility and innovative solutions for our most intractable problems.”

At 4.0, this means we put communities and individuals historically marginalized at the center of our work by selecting them to participate in our Fellowship programs and tapping into their insights as alumni to develop and carry out our programming. It also means ensuring that those selected founders place the needs of community members at the forefront of their efforts. In our fellowship programs, 4.0 leads founder participants through identity-affirming activities designed to heighten their awareness of self, and through empathy interviews that focus on deeply understanding the complexities of their communities rather than focusing on a narrow solution. We encourage our founders not to attach to the initial idea they joined the fellowship to explore. Instead, we challenge them to embrace adrienne maree brown’s emergent strategy of interdependence and decentralization by immersing themselves in their communities. 

We believe this leads to more effective founders who can do more robust equity work over time and develop more impactful solutions that respond to the needs of the community – and often to others as well. The curb-cut effect drives our work at the margins. This effect illustrates how designing for some leads to more access for all. Building sloped curbs that accommodate wheelchairs rather than those with hard edges benefits many others, including those with strollers, bikes, skateboards, and even pedestrians. Social and educational change work should be this way too: creating schools that work better for vulnerable students or systems that support individuals who are historically marginalized can improve the lives of all members of the community.

How to Design at the Margins

A study conducted by the University of Delaware’s Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) concluded that 4.0 emphasized “viewing venture ideas from community perspectives, challenge alumni to abandon ego, dedicate efforts to the problem and not the solution, and advance thinking, all in order to engage stakeholders in an equity-focused, design thinking-based approach.” The philosophy that underpins 4.0’s approach is social reconstruction. We genuinely believe a better society can be realized by creating programming that engages leaders in the process of:

• Analyzing themselves in relation to their community;
• Understanding the community’s equity challenges and their lived experiences;
• Conceptualizing a better world – or as we often call it, being (un)real; and 
• Actualizing that vision.

Practically speaking, for 4.0, designing at the margins means engaging founders in the hard work of reflecting on the ways their own identity intersects with the equity challenges they seek to address and centering the unique needs of the community they wish to serve through empathy interviews.

See Yourself, See The Systems: Reflect on Proximity and Power 

Before founders attend 4.0’s fellowship “camps,” they complete online exercises. These exercises guide them through identifying potential equity challenges in their communities, reflecting on what systems are at play in producing those inequities, and generating a list of things they will need to learn more about as they engage in empathy work.

Questions include:

• What inequitable patterns of experience and outcomes are playing out in your community? How do we know?
• What structures and system dynamics are contributing to these inequitable patterns?
• What has been emerging in your community relative to these patterns? 
• In what ways have interpersonal, ideological, institutional, and internalized oppression impacted you as an individual? 
• How might your venture be aiming to disrupt and fight against oppression on each of these layers?

As part of this process, founders consider their place on the wheel of privilege and interrogate their proximity to power (see below). This deep self-reflection is pivotal in helping founders  acknowledge any personal bias and blind spots that influence how they are viewing and attempting to address the equity challenges of the communities they seek to serve. This identity work leads to deeper reflection about who is uniquely situated in the community to offer alternative views and potential solutions through empathy interviewing. 

Other organizations explore these same ideas through different mechanisms, such as the Paseo or Circles of Identity protocol from the National School Reform Faculty used to facilitate an identity-mapping activity. Harvard Project Implicit tests also aim to surface unconscious ideas and preferences.

What is most important to 4.0 is that the founders we support are aware of their own identities and biases, so that they become more wedded to the community than to their ideas for solutions. Developing this mindset increases founders’ willingness to pivot in response to what they learn about the community’s needs.

See the Community, See the Challenges: Conducting Empathy Interviews

Next, founders in 4.0 Fellowship programs turn to designing and conducting 3-5 empathy interviews to understand the experiences, emotions, and motivations of the members of the community members they are designing alongside. The community members interviewed should include other leaders and educators as well as young people impacted by schools and schooling, and elders whose wisdom might be otherwise overlooked. During the empathy interview, founders seek to truly understand the needs of the individual, the community, and the work needed to dismantle unjust systems that lead to marginalization. 

There is no set list of interview questions, as these are designed to reflect both the unique community and the specific challenges that the founder is exploring. However, it is essential to spend a significant amount of time genuinely listening to the interviewee and empathizing with their experiences, needs, and desired solutions – while also being mindful of their time. Although founder Destiny Shantell Woodbury had spent decades as an educator and school leader in Houston, her project shifted dramatically in response to her empathy interviews with students, teachers, school leaders, and community members during a 4.0 fellowship in 2018. “I live in this community and thought I knew what they wanted and needed,” says Woodbury, who had planned to create a professional development organization related to equity, restorative practices, and trauma-informed instruction that would support schools.

But based on the data she gathered via empathy interviews and her Essentials pop-up, she shifted her focus to the mental health and wellness of students and educators, piloting this program during another 4.0 fellowship in 2019. She now plans to launch The Anchor School – a charter school district focused on achieving educational equity through a focus on individual student identity and a healing school environment – with the first school opening in Houston in 2024.

Over the course of the last four years, Woodbury estimates she has conducted more than 150 empathy interviews and tapped several of these participants as part of the school’s design team. “4.0 took the time to teach us the processes and to understand the why,” she reflects. “Students said they didn’t talk about who they are, just what they needed to learn, but felt like they needed to talk about mental health and wellness well before they leave for college. Between that and hearing parents say their children don’t express emotions – that helped me realize I needed to create a school that focuses on this.”

Other programs use empathy interviews as a part of their work. For example, the Washington, D.C.-based CityBridge Education programs also use empathy interviews. The leaders of Chinese immersion elementary school Yu Ying Public Charter School participated in CityBridge’s School Design Fellowship in 2019-2020. They wanted to close achievement gaps between Black and Latinx learners and students who were Asian or white and to build a more inclusive school culture. Their design team identified students of color across four grade levels – including multilingual learners, those who had experienced trauma, those who lived far from campus, and those receiving interventions already – and conducted empathy interviews and student “shadowing” to understand their lived experience in school.

This process led Yu Ying leaders to understand the problem better. The result was more robust solutions, such as a student-designed play. This play would offer students an opportunity to express themselves outside of academics in ways that allowed them to be fully seen and valued.

The practice of empathy interviewing and student shadowing is not new, of course. In fact, other organizations have several tools and resources available to support innovators in honing these skills. Transcend has a great primer on conducting empathy interviews for school design and one on shadowing a student. IDEO and the Stanford d.school also have a primer and a broader toolkit for student shadowing.

At 4.0, after founders conduct their empathy interviews, they share those results with their alumni coach and other founders in their coaching group to investigate how they might test a solution through a pop-up or pilot. Founder Laura Thomas first came to 4.0 as a participant in a 2018 fellowship program. She had been working for nearly a year on a social-emotional wellness curriculum and wanted to develop a technology product that students could use to practice those interpersonal skills. “Many kids are struggling with how to manage emotions and how to deal with the ups and downs, which can really hit hard when you’re trying to grow,” says Thomas.

As a result of her empathy interviews with students and teachers, Thomas shifted away from developing a student-facing app in favor of testing pieces of the curriculum within a school community, by adding social-emotional lessons during a yoga class at Stanton Elementary and later Garfield Elementary, both in Washington D.C.’s Ward 8. She eventually built her app while participating in 4.0’s New Normal Fellowships of 2020 and 2021, when Thomas could not go inside classrooms to deliver curriculum in person, with feedback gathered from teachers and students who had used the curriculum and lessons as well as prototypes of the technology. Rather than serving students directly, the app allows teachers to design lessons for students based on their needs and to access professional development. She also launched a separate nonprofit organization designed to build social-emotional curricula for those schools and communities that aren’t likely to use the app.

“4.0 really pushed me on co-designing from the very beginning,” says Thomas. “That has made me into a research startup designing a truly universal solution that really responds to what different students and schools need.”

As a result of activities like identity exercises and empathy interviews, CRESP researchers found that many 4.0 alumni are “forever changed” by this focus on designing at the margins. “It’s just important from an equity lens that you have someone from the ground floor that you’re designing with, and not for, a community,” said one founder. “They [4.0 staff] are able to put you in the shoes of your students, to put you in a place where you can understand what your students want, what the families of your students want, what the teachers want if you’re working with a teacher venture,” reflected another.

Many commented on the long-term impact the program has had on the ways in which they address equity challenges. Several continue to use empathy interviews long after the training and work to include conversations about lived experiences and needs in their design of potential solutions. “What we need to do is actually get out there and talk to people, gain their trust, and understand from their point of view what they need, not assume what they need,” said one founder. “It’s not about us, it’s like you got to de-center your ego.”

4.0 fellowship alumnus Pranati Kumar says she has used what she learned at 4.0 about empathy interviews to start her current venture, Rohi’s Readery, a social justice-driven children’s bookstore and learning center dedicated to critical literacy that promotes inclusivity and diversity. As a former educator, “4.0 was my first experience in seeing ideas come to life that supported liberating outcomes for marginalized communities,” Kumar reflects. “When I started the Readery, I used the content and supports from 4.0.”

Kumar also joined a local entrepreneurship accelerator in her West Palm Beach, Florida community and shared the empathy interview construct that could be used in place of “customer interviews” suggested by the accelerator. “‘Customer’ can feel very transactional, but ‘empathy’ is consciously about that person as a whole,” says Kumar. “I learned to see the need of the community and get really strong data about the way that people from marginalized communities in the downtown West Palm area feel and the way that children feel a sense of belonging.”

Conclusion

Increasingly, we believe that the best way to ensure that communities develop schools and learning environments that work for them is for them to design those solutions themselves. We are encouraged by efforts like Moonshot edVentures’ fellowship program for diverse leaders ready to start a new school in Denver and Building Excellent Schools’ fellowship programs for established school leaders ready to start their own school. But we also want to encourage more parents, educators, community leaders, and even students to step forward to rethink and redesign learning in new and more equitable ways that meet them where they are and help them achieve their dreams.
Hassan Hassan is the Chief Executive Officer at 4.0.

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I never intended to start a high school.

It was in the Spring of 2015 while walking with a junior high teacher from the private Montessori school my children attended that I asked a simple question whose answer would fundamentally alter the trajectory of my professional and personal life.

“Has anyone thought about adding a high school to our school?” I asked as we walked together up a path at a local educational farm, kicking muck off our boots as we went. Behind us followed a train of junior high (grade 7-8) Montessori students who had just finished helping a group of Primary (age 3-5) students do an exploratory “swamp walk” through the farm’s marsh to experience first-hand the features of this vital ecosystem. I had joined them as a parent volunteer for the day. The teacher shrugged and said, “It’s been talked about, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere.”

“Huh,” I replied. “Well, if you want to start one, I think I’d be interested in teaching in it.”

Just a few short months later being “interested in teaching” at a Montessori high school morphed into resigning my tenured faculty position at a local university and radically altering my career path to design and launch an urban, community-centered Montessori high school.

Fast forward 5 years to August 13, 2020. On that hot August morning, I found myself standing in a parking lot outside the education wing of a church in downtown South Bend along with my co-founder, Eileen Mariani, taking the temperature of – and handing masks to – the first students to walk through the doors of River Montessori High School (RMHS). In between a couple of arrivals, I looked at her, pulled down my mask, and quietly mouthed the words, “we did it.”

But how? RMHS is an improbable aberration, right? I mean, how did a former professor and elementary teacher go from the notion of starting a school in 2015 to actually opening one in 2020 and standing next to its first graduates in 2023? It’s a question I reflect on quite a bit as I guide others through the process of launching new private schools in my current role as the Director of the Founders Program at the Drexel Fund. Every startup journey is unique, but I’ve noticed three interconnected themes that are a part of each success story.

You ask questions. Lots of them.

Asking questions – and not being afraid of where the answers lead you – is a key part of walking the road to designing and opening a new school. When we see something “not right” in the educational environments around us we can intuitively feel that things need to be different, but we have to interrogate those feelings to get at the core reality that needs to be changed.

Why are students dropping out? What is it about their current environment that seems to be holding them back? What should a graduate be able to do? Who needs this school (i.e., what does my proposed school offer that no one else is doing or not doing well?)

These are important academic model and market demand questions, but there are also a number of vital, non-academic questions to ask, especially if your motivation is to start a school to meet your own child’s needs.

What if the school I start ends up not working for my child? Am I committed to doing this even if things don’t work out for my own family? What if the school’s needs run counter to what my child needs? Am I willing to fail?

While building a school to serve one’s own child is a powerful motivation that can sustain a person through the inevitable challenges of founding a school, it is also a dangerous one. The important takeaway is that when founding a school you need to constantly be asking – and seeking answers to – questions, and not just ones about the academic model. But where do you get your answers or even figure out the questions you need to be asking?

You build a community of supporters…and skeptics.

At a very early stage we invited supporters and skeptics into our visioning and planning process. Hearing answers to our questions from just our “cheerleaders” or our own brains wasn’t enough. We needed to know the questions and concerns of others because honestly, we didn’t know what we didn’t know.

In our case, this first took the form of spending 5 months in early 2016 meeting regularly with a group of individuals who were lovingly skeptical of what was being proposed. That gave us a chance to try out different responses and explore novel ideas. It also forced us to repeatedly narrow our focus and hone in on the core identity of our school. This moved us from general notions of what we wanted the school to look like to very specific principles for how we were going to educate students. It also created a critical mass of individuals who years later would become some of the first board members and parents.

I won’t sugarcoat it though. Hearing people push back against our ideas for innovation was hard, as was making peace with the fact that there would always be people who weren’t going to see the merit in what we were doing. But I’m glad we had so many voices – both supportive and critical – as together they kept us moving forward.

But how does a launch team move from questioning and planning to actually being able to set an opening date and recruit families?

You get your big break(s).

What do I mean by a “big break?” Well, it looks different for every startup journey. It might take the form of someone overhearing you talk about your proposed school and later coming up to you saying, “Hey, I heard you are looking for a school location. I have a place you should look at which has been vacant for the last four years.” Or, maybe a friend of yours is talking with another friend about your school idea at a wedding and as a result of that conversation this “friend of a friend” ends up becoming your school’s first major donor and board president. It could even look like getting an email out of the blue from someone you haven’t talked to in more than a year saying, “Have you heard of the Drexel Fund?”

Turns out, none of the above are hypotheticals: each was one of our “big breaks” (yes, plural). None of these are things we could have scripted or planned, and one might say we were “lucky.” But to quote Seneca, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” By relentlessly asking and answering questions and continually building a community of supporters and skeptics, we positioned ourselves for these moments of opportunity. If you talk to anyone who has successfully launched a school, I’m sure they would tell you similar stories.

So…what now?

If you have a passion for bringing a new private school to your community you might be wondering what some concrete next steps might be.

One option is to attend one of the Drexel Fund’s upcoming information sessions for private school entrepreneurs. At these sessions, you will learn about the pillars of school startup and hear about how The Drexel Fund supports the launch of new private schools. You could also apply for the 2024-25 Drexel Fund Founders Program. Even just completing the application will help you clarify your proposed school model and identify what questions you need to ask during your startup process.

Whether or not you take any of the above next steps, there is one thing I encourage everyone to do who is considering launching a school: talk about it. All the time. Let people know what you are thinking. No one does this alone, and the sooner you get your idea out of your head, build your launch team, and create awareness in your community, the more likely you are to be successful.

Dr. Eric Oglesbee is the director of the Founders Program at the Drexel Fund, a venture philanthropy organization dedicated to increasing access to high-quality private education for low-income families. He is also the co-founder and board president of River Montessori High School (RMHS) in South Bend, Indiana.

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Understanding Interventions has three main goals:

• First, to provide new insights into teaching, learning, and training through research. 
• Second, to enhance the community that understands and utilizes the results of educational interventions, by sharing information and fostering collaborations. 
• Third, to provide training and professional development for all STEM personnel, with the goal of increasing diversity in the field. 

Nearly two decades ago, Understanding Interventions was born out of a workshop that was a collaboration between the National Research Council and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Its mission is to translate insights for those responsible for educating students in STEM, to equip them with the skills and resilience needed to succeed in their careers and contribute to society. UI seeks to develop strategies and offer tools that aid practitioners in serving students and accumulating knowledge. 

Currently, black, and Latino students face high dropout rates in STEM Ph.D. programs, with 46% leaving before completion and 45% taking up to seven years to finish. Understanding Interventions is working towards changing these statistics by innovating programs that educate and empower students. Patrick Valdez, of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, believes that “our programs must also be innovative” to shape the next generation of innovators. 

I had the opportunity to ask Dr. Anthony DePass, one of the founders of UI, a few questions about the organization and its goals:

What was the impetus to start Understanding Interventions?

While there has been a long history of developing opportunities and programs to address broadening participation in science careers, much of this has been fueled by intuition and not necessarily by empirical research. This is not to say that research has not been conducted in this area. However much of this research is academically focused and not necessarily looking at translational implications. In other words, much of the research has not necessarily been sufficiently informed by practice and is often published in journals that practitioners do not read, and even if they were to read it the language can be impenetrable. In 2006, Clif Poodry, the former leader of the National Institutes of Health’s division for Training, Workforce Development, partnered with the National Research Council to investigate this issue. Clif joined the NIH back in the mid-1990s, and his efforts really pushed the idea of accountability where programs or the grant proposals to fund programs needed to start having mechanism by which they would set clear objectives and do the proper assessment to see if those objectives are being met. The next step that Clif from this foundation of accountability was to do work on the scholarship of interventions- moving from the “what,” to asking the “why” questions. 

The need for such an effort was demonstrated when a program set up to fund this type of work and disappointingly, many of the proposals failed to pose the kind of questions or employ the appropriate methodologies were appropriate to gain deeper understanding the interventions that were being utilized. These approaches and methodologies required deeper integration of those used in the social and behavioral sciences, while most practitioners and emerging researchers in this translational space were in the basic sciences like biology chemistry and math. The research involved the study of non-cognitive aspects and psychosocial factors that would be predictive or significantly influence decision and performance outcomes for individuals pursuing STEM and STEM-related careers.

This collaboration resulted in the formation of a committee that was Co-Chaired by me and Larry Hedges distinguished professor at Northwestern University, I was a professor at Long Island University at the time, where I ran several programs, and served as program evaluator and grant reviewer for many programs targeting diversity in STEM. At the end of the year, the work of the committee culminated in a workshop in Washington DC. That workshop brought together individuals from communities of practice and research, and it was clear that an area of research that is more translational needed to be defined, with venues set for collaboration across communities, and dissemination of this work. 

How has Understanding Interventions changed the STEM landscape for students?

Understanding Interventions stands to significantly impact the STEM landscape as it creates opportunities for many to develop deeper understanding of the components and factors that impact decision making and performance outcomes as it relates to STEM, especially from those individuals from underserved and marginalized communities. We see not only the generation of scholarship in this area, but that translation of the scholarship into interventions in the classroom and in the laboratory, as well as in other spaces where we train the next generation for the STEM workforce. It is through informed approaches related to STEM teaching, learning and engagement that we will more effectively expand diversity in our STEM pathways, as well as significantly integrate the careers that by necessity requires deeper understanding of STEM and quality training in STEM areas.

How has it helped STEM practitioners?

Understanding Interventions, through its training activities, dissemination of research, and the provision of resources facilitate informed practices leading to more productive outcomes related to broadening participation in STEM. There is significant evidence that some of what we see as positive outcomes from several programs and activities might have been through selection and cherry picking, rather than development of talent in individuals who otherwise would not be in STEM. We see Understanding Interventions and the work that comes out of the conferences the journal and the other resources in terms of access to the literature as helping to inform practitioners and inform activities so we can be much more effective not only in training individuals, but also bringing in communities that have been previously marginalized and minoritized and frankly excluded from this space.

What is the most significant challenge for students and practitioners of color in STEM careers?

Unfortunately, we have disproportionate numbers of students of color who also are from lower socioeconomic classes in this country, and many others in the world. Consequently, there are issues of access and not only to equipment and facilities but also to qualified teachers in this space. Success in STEM often means early access and early interventions. The realities would make it lacking for certain aspects of the population and as a result make it challenging for members of these minoritized and marginalized communities to successfully pursue STEM in ways that reflect their representation in the general population. 

What do you hope Understanding Interventions will accomplish in the next five years?

Understanding Interventions since 2007 has developed a strong community spanning several areas. We have not only trained emerging scholars and practitioners, but we have also curated scholarships in this area. We have launched an Understanding Interventions Journal that serves as a venue for published work in this area. We have also developed the UI Index that is a curated database of articles and other information that individuals who want to perform scholarship in this area or are practitioners who are looking to locate aggregated published work on Interventions. Our annual conferences provide venues for dissemination, and in finding and networking with colleagues in the areas of scholarship, practice, and evaluation. These opportunities facilitate collaboration and discourse. 

This year, we released UI IMPACTS (Inclusive Matching for Professional Advancement and Inclusion in Science) that serves as a public square for STEM. This is a social media platform that allows individuals in all areas of STEM at all levels to interact, find opportunities for mentoring, locate opportunities for post-secondary STEM training and adds a social context that STEM has lacked historically. Here is where individuals can network, form groups based on interests, recruit and provide relevant information to be recruited as users can develop and maintain a portfolio of the work that they have done across several media. There are also opportunities to include information on prior training, personal statements, and other information useful such that venues training and academic programs as well those for potential employment to identify potential candidates. This is especially valuable for those from minorities and marginalized communities. We are potential employers and programs have struggled with recruitment.

We see the Understanding Interventions community growing significantly over the next five years. Our last meeting had nearly 250 registrants we see that significantly increasing as we embark on broader collaborations with programs and the National Institutes of Health the National Science Foundation and many other agencies that provide funding that could leverage the information and training that understanding interventions provides.“Finding information about women in science and engineering, as well as underrepresented minorities in these fields, is not a challenge. However, it can be difficult to locate information about the intersection of both.” This statement was made by Mahlet Mesfin from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Understanding Interventions is broadening the impact of science by bridging these gaps and igniting innovation!

The post Understanding Interventions: Broadening The Impact of Science appeared first on Getting Smart.

NAF offers challenging, career-focused programs incorporating current industry standards and practices, project-based learning, and performance-based assessment. Through relationships with industry leaders and the business community, NAF empowers instructors to broaden classroom limits by introducing students to real-world issues in high-growth industries. Students gain important workplace skills and 21st-century competencies to be college and career-ready.

The advisory boards serve as a vital link between the classroom and business. They offer full, continuing support to NAF academy personnel and students by acting as ambassadors in their networks and communities, assisting in creating exciting new work-based learning and internship possibilities. Business professionals and community leaders serve on local advisory committees to help shape talent in high school. Members of the advisory board engage with educators to inform curricula and coordinate job-based learning activities. Advisory boards help students to form ties with mentors and learn from successful adults at an early age.

Darrell Kain, NAF’s Director of Advisory Board Activation, spoke with me about work-based learning, NAF advisory boards, and their role in the NAF process.

How did your journey at NAF begin?

My passion for real world learning stems from having exciting internships at a young age. In high school I interned at a telecommunications company that focused on EMS technical systems and in college I held internships at the U.S. Army Personnel Command where I focused on information systems. I continued my professional growth by completing my bachelor’s degree in engineering management from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and then spent five years as an Army officer where I led tactical and technical training activities. After the military, I worked in management positions in corporate America where I partnered with telecommunications and supply chain professionals and delivered professional development. My most recent career experiences have focused on building business-education partnerships at leading organizations like PLTW and NC State University and I was a volunteer on a NAF business advisory board at the Apex High School, Academy of Information Technology. I joined NAF in January 2023 as they were enhancing their services for business advisory boards and desired to better equip volunteers throughout the network. I was referred to NAF by a former NAF employee whom I had partnered with on another education-business project. 

How do NAF advisory boards work, and how many do you have nationwide?

NAF supports and partners with over 600 academies within high schools across the country and U.S. territories. We provide best practice recommendations, resources, and support for board development though each academy has the autonomy to decide the board structure that works best in their geography and local economy. There are more than 300 advisory boards at the academy, school, or district levels. At the academy level, a group of 10-12 professionals are board members each with a chairperson who leads the team’s goal-setting and planning to maximize student impact in the NAF academies. In a few major metro areas, there are career theme-based boards that focus on a specific area such as STEM, hospitality, or health science; these boards are larger and utilize a sub-committee structure to activate their work plans. Regardless of the size or structure, the board works with the academy leaders and teachers to provide students with work-based learning experiences, internships, and classroom support. The advisory board usually meets monthly or bi-monthly and implements yearly strategic plans to support the academy. 

What makes a good advisory board member?

The main quality that is important for an engaged board member is a passion for helping students prepare for their future careers. In most cases, a board member is an industry professional who has experienced success in his or her career and has the heart to volunteer their time and talent. Board members come with a variety of talents and resources, and they can either directly provide support or connect the academy with their network or their employer. The most successful boards listen to the needs and desires of the academies’ teachers and leadership and provide work-based learning opportunities that are relatable and meaningful for students. A great example of a passionate board member is Carlos Vazquez in Miami who oversees a district-wide advisory board that is focused on STEM fields. Carlos and his colleagues run an annual student conference that brings speakers and internship opportunities to over 1,800 students. 

How does the advisory board help high school students get real-world experience?

Advisory Board members work with educators to map out work-based learning opportunities each year through a strategic planning process. These activities include short experiences such as a series of informational interviews. This is where students interview industry professionals about their career paths or longer activities such as mentored industry projects or internships where students are working on authentic job-related tasks under the supervision of an employer supervisor or mentor. These activities help inform students’ career possibilities, provide opportunities for students to build their technical and future-ready skills, and make the connections they need to help them navigate their path forward. 

What have students been sharing with you about NAF?

One student shared, “Personally, getting exposed to mock interviews really opened my eyes to how the real world is. Before having a mock interview, I believed that when someone applied for a job, they immediately got it. I was completely wrong, applying is not simply just submitting a form and getting accepted right away. It is about showing who you are and what you can bring to the “table” as some would say. “

Another said, “We toured Twitter and that is where I learned more about marketing, and it intrigued me. And I already loved sports, so it became clear. Combining my budding interest in marketing with my love for sports – like soccer, hockey, and basketball – would be a great career path for myself. Because of the classes, activities, and connections to the Advisory Board, today, I am confident. I am a leader. “

A former student attended a NAF academy at Woodlawn High School in Birmingham. They shared that “NAF provided me with opportunities that allowed me to take part in the farm at Woodlawn High School and introduced me to my current employer, Jones Valley Teaching Farm. Today, as a farm & apprenticeship manager, I get to play the role that others in the NAF community played for me, helping students ignite their passion for learning.” 

NAF supports high school students’ ambitions by providing fair possibilities for a prosperous future and contributing to a creative, highly skilled, diverse workforce.

If you’re interested in learning more about NAF or joining an advisory board in your area, reach out to Darrell Kain at dkain@naf.org.

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Over much of the last decade, the education innovation community has worked to incorporate a greater focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, including a talent base that is more representative of the children that our schools serve and increasing philanthropic funding to combat systemic racism and support learners of color. At 4.0, we have also worked to evolve our approach to better meet our mission over the last several years. After we were founded in 2010 as 4.0 Schools, our early approach was heavily informed by the user-focused principles of “design thinking,” which focuses on building and testing prototypes and which dominated commercial product design, school reform, and social entrepreneurship at the time. 

However, just as others have reckoned with the ways in which their approach to teaching and schooling was insufficient to combat systemic racism and educational inequity, we too began to notice that our model’s focus on individual stakeholders and building out solutions wasn’t doing much to address the inequitable systems and outcomes that burdened communities. Ultimately, what 4.0 wants to bring about is education reimagined and run by communities, rather than education that’s done to and imposed upon communities using antiquated systems and structures.

Source: Matt Candler, 2018

To that end, 4.0 has modified our approach to put greater power in the hands of communities facing the inequity challenges, to focus not on isolated problems and solutions in education but on understanding the complexity of the inequitable systems that produce the problems in education, and to conduct measurement and evaluation in partnership with members of the communities that founders are designing alongside.

“Widening gaps between races, classes and communities are pushing us away from one another, and I believe schooling has a better shot at uniting us and drawing us back across these boundaries than any other tool on our belt,” reflected 4.0 founder Matt Candler in 2016. “That means making our equity work about both fairness/justice and about those in power creating and sharing ownership.”

First, a history lesson: What is design thinking?

The “design thinking” process rose to prominence in the 1990s thanks to the design firm IDEO, which was formed from the merger of two companies – one that designed the first laptop computer and the other the first Apple Computer mouse. The innovation of design thinking was far more human-centric, and its products more responsive to real users’ needs. Compared to engineers and marketers sitting in an office spitballing ideas, design thinking relies on “our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as being functional, and to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols,” wrote IDEO’s Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt in Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2011.

As Brown and Wyatt explain it, design thinking includes three overlapping steps:

• Inspiration: the problem or opportunity that motivates people to search for solutions, including a “brief” of constraints that give the project team objectives and benchmarks to work toward, as well as observations of people’s actual needs through interviews and shadowing;
• Ideation: distilling what the diverse interdisciplinary design team sees and hears from users into insights that can lead to solutions or opportunities for change, through a structured brainstorming process; and
• Implementation: the best ideas generated during ideation are turned into a concrete, fully conceived action plan, including prototyping to turn ideas into actual products and services that are then tested, iterated, and refined.

Ultimately, this approach was appealing to 4.0 because it put people at the center of product and systems design work. “With the user experience at the center of design, the design-thinking process helps the designer understand pain points, motivations, expectations, and direct and peripheral experiences,” observes educator and school design innovator Caroline Hill. “It provides a framework for complex, iterative, and targeted solutions. It emphasizes the need to define the problem well and build sooner to get better feedback.”

Although this human-centered design process was a critical innovation that led to some incremental innovations, it was limited in improving outcomes for communities most impacted by equity challenges. To overcome the immense disparities faced by communities historically pushed to the margins, educational change would need to look less like product development and more like complex systems change.

Today’s mandate: Infusing equity into design thinking

Fortunately for 4.0, other educators and community leaders recognized the need for an approach that could blend the human-centric methods of design thinking with the consciousness-raising of equity work. A group of these leaders came together to develop the “equityXdesign” framework, which has guided 4.0’s work to improve our approaches in designing for equity. They write:

“Design thinking provides a framework for complex, iterative, and targeted solutions: It emphasizes the need to define the problem well and build sooner to get better feedback, and it has fundamentally changed the relationship between designers and those they are designing for. If we believe design thinking is the right tool to use to redesign products, systems, and institutions to be more equitable, then we must redesign the design thinking process, mindsets and tools themselves to ensure they mitigate for the causes of inequity — the prejudices of the human designers in the process, both their explicit and implicit personal biases, and the power of mostly invisible status quo systems of oppression.”

Inspired by this framework, 4.0 has been working to infuse equity into its work so that the needs of communities are recognized, understood, and addressed, and that solutions take into account – and strive to overcome – both individual biases and flawed systems.

A study conducted by the Center for Research in Education and Social Policy (CRESP) at the University of Delaware, which surveyed hundreds of alumni of 4.0 programs to learn more about the 4.0 fellowship process, illustrates how this equity work affects founders in three key ways: by selecting founders who hail from the impacted community, by consulting them in the design of programs that serve them, and by rethinking the very systems they work within.

Rooting education change in communities by selecting founders from those communities

First and foremost, 4.0 exists not to create new products or companies for the sake of novelty, nor in the pursuit of slight improvements or benefits for advantaged populations; rather, we exist in order to dismantle barriers to access and success for communities historically marginalized. We believe that passionate people are already working toward a more equitable future of education, and our role is to support those people.

So 4.0 designs programming that centers and prioritizes those voices by selecting founders from those communities and leveraging alumni to strengthen and refine the program. Increasingly, the founders chosen for these programs hail from the communities they seek to serve: more than 75% of participants are people of color and more than 75% are women or non-binary. Several years ago, a small group of 4.0 alumni worked together to improve the recruitment and selection process so it yielded a more equitable representation of founders. “We revamped the application process to include more events where 4.0 alumni could share their experiences and hosted office hours where candidates could get support with application,” says 4.0 alumnus Marvin Pierre, “We also revamped the selection rubric so it was more holistic and structured.”

Harnessing alumni insights to develop programming

Founder recruitment and selection is now led by eight alumni community chairs, who also facilitate connections and support among different identity-based groups across the country throughout the programs. These groups include founders that identify as Black, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Latinx founders. Additional groups include founders who identify as Queer, Trans, and/or Gender Nonconforming (QTGNC), founders focused on schools or early childhood, founders who are parents and/or caregivers, founders with chronic illness or disabilities or those who care for them, and founders from underrepresented geographic regions. In addition, alumni “app coaches” help interested participants put their applications together. Another set of alumni work with the 4.0 staff to interview applicants and select participants to join the Fellowship programs.

These alumni join other 4.0 alumni contractors who serve as curriculum developers, integrating survey feedback gathered from their peers. “When I came into the program, the majority of participants were people of color, but the pedagogical approach was from a very cis white hetero male perspective,” says Kynita Stringer-Stanback, a founder who has participated in several 4.0 fellowships. We shared this constructive criticism with 4.0 staff and alumni working on revising the program curriculum. “The way we started was not the way we ended,” we reflect. “I have seen the indigenous, black, queer and feminist pedagogies that have been more integrated. This year’s folks have a completely different experience than when I entered last year.”

Over the last several years, 4.0 has also shifted away from staff coaches and external “expert” coaches, instead training and preparing 4.0 alumni to serve as coaches to subsequent cohorts of founders and guide them through their fellowship program year. Where possible, founders are paired with alumni coaches whose philosophies, areas of expertise, and geographical locations align with their own. At 4.0, the alumni experience is integral to the coaching experience. When coaches have familiarity with our fellowships, they can build more meaningful coaching relationships with founders, a longer and more intentional pipeline of support, and more leadership development.

At 4.0, the goal is for our programming to be completely alumni-led and alumni-driven. For this reason, we invest in the continuous development of our alumni community. Hence, our participants become leaders who, in turn, identify the next generation of participants and what success looks like in a field that continues to evolve. “4.0 is not just telling us to design with our community, they are designing with their community,” agrees stringer-stanback. “We know what we want, we know what we need, we just need someone to ask us.”

Rethinking inequitable systems and how we define success

Moreover, the founders that 4.0 works with focus not on isolated problems and solutions but on considering solutions within the context of oppressive systems – such as white-dominant culture, racism, classism, ageism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism – that manifest in traditional schooling.

4.0 founders investigate these systems as part of their individual and collective work to abolish and rebuild new worlds with other changemakers. “The connections I made through the fellowship were valuable and those relationships are built through the work that 4.0 had us do,” says Danielle Stewart, who participated in several 4.0 fellowship programs. “The information gathered through empathy interviews encourages you to dive deep into what you’re trying to create, and that is what forms the connections with others who are trying to build things and change systems.”

As we move away from definitions of success rooted in traditional, predominantly white institutions and driven by philanthropic wealth – such as test scores and scope of influence – 4.0 and its participants are exploring new ways of measuring and evaluating our impact. “Countless research surveys mine communities for the raw material of lived experiences, without yielding much for the community—or worse,” writes impact investor Chicago Beyond in its groundbreaking guidebook “Why Am I Always Being Researched?” “Without shared ownership, the process of research can take from, rather than build up, the community, and the inputs and answers are incomplete.”

To remedy this dynamic, 4.0 listens to the individuals we work with to learn what is working and what we must adapt. Our funders and our founders have asked 4.0 for greater clarity about the data we ask for and the outcomes we seek. We took initial steps toward this consistency by launching a Measurement & Evaluation Collaborative alongside our New Normal Fellowships that focused on responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, connecting founders with a network of researchers who helped them craft logic models and metrics that fit their approach. We also partnered with CRESP at the University of Delaware to design surveys that evaluated the impact of founders’ pilot projects on participants’ social and emotional learning (SEL) skills.

In addition, 4.0 emphasizes not only whether these are the right questions, but whether they’ve been developed alongside the community. We also encourage founders to bring those answers back to that community. “Some people were driven by the numbers versus driven by outcomes,” recalls Stewart of her experiences with 4.0 fellowship programs several years ago. Today, Stewart continues to run a for-profit diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting practice, iChange Collaborative, which guides clients through strategic planning and execution to create more inclusive workplaces – including the gathering and sharing of meaningful data. “What is most important is how you create a relationship with your community to use those results,” she says.

Conclusion

Today, 4.0 is creating a space for members of communities to become founders, harnessing the experiences of 4.0 alumni to refine our programming, and redefining success alongside the communities those founders serve. This work is our contribution to moving the center of gravity away from isolated designs that privilege the perspective of entrepreneurs and closer to community-led educational designs imagined by families and children.

We also invite and applaud others in the field who are stepping forward to advance equity by sharing power with affected communities. “Strategies to rebuild a stronger and more equitable society not only need to focus on including the voices from the community, but to do so in ways that truly shift agency, capital, and power,” note Nate Wong and Andrea McGrath of the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University. “This work requires real changes to the structures, organizations, cultures, and norms within which so many of us operate.”

Hassan Hassan is the Chief Executive Officer at 4.0.

The post Balancing Design Thinking with Equity appeared first on Getting Smart.

Feeling Invisible: The Implications of Eliminating Affirmative Action

Throughout American history, the scope, breadth, and meaning of Affirmative Action have taken on many definitions. On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court reversed Affirmative Action by stating it might no longer be necessary for 25 years. The structural frames of higher education in the context of Affirmative Action acted as a lever so students of color would not feel invisible at their respective institutions. The ruling by the Supreme Court explicitly imposes a new practice in higher education. A mindset consisting of a superficial lens of race blindness in America. The influence of overturning Affirmative Action exacerbates the legacy of discrimination while promulgating a statistical metric that plagues higher education – inequities with admission practices. Discrimination and racism have carried a pernicious undertone where this decision has the proxies of Black and Brown students becoming invisible in higher education. Despite future implications with regard to the negative ramifications of civil equity and collective intellectual growth, there are practices rooted in the Disruptive Excellence Framework that would evade new segregationist policies because of the ruling. Through the lens of the Excellence Loop, there are opportunities to mitigate a decision that inevitability will bring the sullied past of America to the forefront. Let’s explore strategies through the elements of the Excellence Loop to ensure Black and Brown students are not invisible at our universities. 

Intentionally, Boldly, and Unapologetically Challenging the Affirmative Action Reversal Decision

The legacy of racial exclusion and the continued effects of segregation still exist despite the myopic responses to overturn Affirmative Action. Through the Excellence Loop, we can intentionally, boldly, and unapologetically continue to strengthen the equity scope of admission policies where Black and Brown students are not invisible. We must act to ensure that representation mirrors the broader demographic in public education. You can start with the strategies below.

Expectations Gap: Universities must establish an expectation to ensure equitable percentages of racial diversity are rooted in the university’s student demographics. Also, race-based or legacy decisions at the university level must be eradicated. For example, a university could designate percentages from historically excluded student groups for admission in accordance with their equity policies. We see this practice implemented at the high school level where there is a guarantee for equitable representation in rigorous courses.

Preparation Gap: Colleges and universities should assess alternatives to root policies that eliminate discriminatory admission practices. Boards of Trustees and university officials should review alternatives on a quarterly basis that include the voices of professors, staff, and students representing the institution.

Performance Gap: Without Affirmative Action, it is believed that universities will accept students only on academic merit. To amend future discriminatory acts with admission procedures, moving beyond standardized metrics to a holistic model should be a mandate at ALL institutions. 

Access Gap: Since the Supreme Court ruling, there are theoretical claims that the representation of Black and Latino students will decrease exponentially at universities over time. Moreover, a significant decrease is forecasted at elite schools. Within any thread of the education ecosystem, specifically at the higher education level, policies, and admission trends must be interrogated by boards of trustees with a lens of access and opportunity. The ruling by the Supreme Court has an insidious opportunity to create institutional marginalization. Thus, in collaboration with boards of trustees, university officials must reevaluate admission policies with vigor and vitality. Criteria that promote holistic qualities to concertize access beyond traditional academic measures.

The Supreme Court’s ruling regarding Affirmative Action reminds us of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka of 1954. The outcomes of the 1954 ruling acknowledged the persistence of segregation in education. I am afraid the long-term implications have moved our country into the modern-era civil rights movement. However, to achieve excellence and equity for Generation Z and Generation Alpha, we cannot accept the predicted outcomes from the reversal of Affirmative Action. Our efforts will demonstrate progress.

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We shall overcome.”

The post Feeling Invisible: A Response to the Affirmative Action Decision through the Lens of the Disruptive Excellence Framework appeared first on Getting Smart.

Women fill the significant majority of teaching roles in schools, yet they hold fewer than a third of superintendent positions nationwide. One potential silver lining in the turnover seen across many districts through the pandemic was the opportunity to correct this disparity. Yet the gap persists: 83% of the 500 largest school districts have completed superintendent transitions and appointed a new superintendent since the pandemic began, and 70% of those replacements have been men. To enact change in this area, school districts must enact deliberate programs to develop female leadership pipelines.

Consider these six strategies to address gender gaps in district leadership:

1. Establish models to track gender inclusion

Tracking and sharing an organization’s gender diversity metrics is an important tool in progressing on the path toward achieving equitable workplace practices. This means tracking all levels of your workforce and examining how representation changes at each level. This is important work not only for gender representation but for all under-represented groups. Once the statistics are clear, critical next steps include goal-setting and improved representation, with aligned recruitment and promotion targets. Sharing transparent data and goals with your workforce keeps you accountable for improvement and makes a clear statement about what matters.

2. Increase exposure to leadership experiences

One study of assistant principals in Texas found that women with more years of experience were still “less likely to be promoted to high school principal”. Secondary school principals manage larger school buildings and typically a greater variety of programs, which often translates to the superintendency position when candidates are being compared. Schools can combat this by creating more leadership opportunities in combination with teaching positions to give more access to experience-building that will be relevant to senior leadership roles. This includes adding additional grade or department leads, asking educators to work on projects alongside the principal, and rotating leadership opportunities where appropriate.

3. Offer schedule and location flexibility

Many educators are working moms or primary caregivers, so schedule control is key to retention. Teachers have cited that greater flexibility and control over their schedule is one of the most impactful ways districts can make a difference for educators considering leaving the classroom. Flexibility does not have to mean fully remote work; there are many degrees of freedom to consider when designing for flexibility, including flexible morning and evening hours, and four-day work weeks.

4. Develop internal mentoring and coaching programs

Formal mentorship pairing is essential to running a structured approach to talent development within an organization. Common drivers of workplace stress include receiving unclear directions and being uncertain about promotion paths, which often stem from and create feelings of isolation. Having a personal connection to someone responsible for guiding early career moves has a high impact. Superintendent Mary Elizabeth Davis shared, “The opportunity we have as educational leaders to continue investing in people and stretching their own belief in their capacity is one of the most rewarding things we get to do in this field. It requires belief in one’s team, a disciplined approach to coaching, and an acknowledgment that there are smarter and stronger leaders in this profession than oneself; and it is time to let them know it.”

5. Provide access to external career development resources

An increasing number of female executives are receiving employer-sponsored access to senior-level talent development resources to position them for their next leadership role. Chief, a private professional network for women leaders, has emerged as a cross-industry resource for rising executives, with a membership of 20,000. Specialized organizations focusing entirely on elevating women in the education sector are also emerging, most notably Women Leading Ed, a national network for current and aspiring district and state women superintendents. From increasing professional development opportunities to funding external conference attendance, school leaders can proactively identify and encourage educators to pursue the ever-growing resources geared toward elevating women in education.

6. Create diverse ways for voices to be heard

As we evolve school leadership to be more diverse, it’s critical to create working environments that support varied perspectives and communication styles. To rise in their organizations, underrepresented leaders often simply need their organizations to listen to them and make space for more voices to be heard. Creating open forums and feedback loops at all levels of the organization will uncover strong voices that already exist within the organization and are ready for more.

Women have long been underrepresented in educational leadership and with continued talent shifts in schools, now is the time to act and put in place deliberate strategies for placing more women in leadership roles. To achieve this goal, leaders must reimagine their approach to leadership and cultivate skills that enable them to build diverse and inclusive teams. By implementing the strategies outlined above, school organizations will be better positioned to represent and retain their teacher workforce by providing career pathways that not only reach but excel at the top of the organization.

Kate Eberle Walker is the CEO of Presence (formerly PresenceLearning), the leading provider of teletherapy solutions for children with diverse needs.

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The EALA New Champions Program

The Educating All Learners Alliance (EALA)’s New Champions Fund Program is an annual competitive subgrant created to provide unrestricted funding and a one-year mentorship to a leader doing exceptional work at the intersection of equity and students with disabilities or learning differences, including students who are also marginalized, come from underserved communities, or experience poverty. This competitive grant was created to elevate the work and profile of not-yet-recognized leaders who are doing exceptional work but who may struggle to gain recognition in traditional national fundraising and communication efforts. We believe this effort is not just about extending financial capital, but social and human capital.  

In 2023, only the second year after the program’s launch, EALA received an unprecedented number of applications. Over 170 leaders from across the nation applied for the opportunity to be named 2023 New Champion to grow their work. For many applicants, this was their first grant application experience. Upon attending the New Champions office hours created to support early-stage grant applicants, applicants remarked on the impact this program was able to provide. For those who had applied to grants before, this was the first program they encountered that could provide feedback on applications not chosen and grow the capacity of the sector. The office hour sessions not only answered their questions on the grant, but also provided space for applicants to meet and hear from other leaders from across the country who are also centering equity and students with disabilities – a first for many in the room.

Meet the 2023 New Champion: Kim Riley

In 2019, Kim Riley founded The Transition Academy (TTA) with a mission to make economic inclusion a reality for youth with disabilities, especially for young people of color who have been historically failed by systems. As the mom of a young adult son who was not adequately prepared to be successful after high school, she designed this organization as a solution to this problem impacting her family and others like hers. She gathered families, teachers, counselors, employers, colleges and universities, Social Security Benefits counselors, and others to form The Transition Academy (TTA), where mostly African American students with disabilities in the Kansas City, Missouri Public School system could participate in actively creating their paths forward beyond graduation and to close the opportunity gap that existed. 

In 2022, Riley held the first-ever Greater Kansas City DiversAbility College and Career Fair, a free metro-wide event bringing representatives from universities and employers to help students plan their next steps. In 2023, TTA tripled the number of schools served, exceeding its original target of serving 100 students and their families, and the 2023 KC DiversAbility fair drew more than 400 attendees who met one-on-one with college professionals, job recruiters, social security benefits professionals, and others. TTA has exciting plans for their programming in 2023, including bus tours to colleges and universities and new in-class discovery and job training work. TTA is continually evolving to meet the needs of those being served, and plans to use funding from the EALA New Champions Grant to achieve its ambitious 2023 growth goals.

In an introductory blog on The Transition Academy website, Kim states, “For far too long, parents of youth with disabilities have described life after high school as ‘falling off a cliff.’ These feelings of dread are because the preschool to high school process is easy to follow. But life after high school is a different story. And the systems (i.e. employment, benefits) are confusing. In fact, it seems like you need a secret knock and password to understand what employment and benefits opportunities are available and match you or your child’s interests. We, at The Transition Academy, believe every youth of every ability level deserves the right to live a happy and productive life.”

The Power of Representation

The Transition Academy is the only African American-led organization in the Greater Kansas City Area focusing on improving postsecondary outcomes for youth of color with disabilities.

This kind of representation in leadership matters. In her application, Kim shared how this representation helps strengthen communities and provides opportunities for underrepresented youth to see themselves in leadership roles, inspiring them to imagine bigger and bolder dreams for themselves. 

After the print and television media coverage on the impact of the KC DiversAbility College and Career Fair this year, Kim said it was a comment from a 19-year-old African American youth with autism that stood out. According to his mom, he had never experienced people of color in disability leadership. When he saw TTA’s black and brown team, he smiled and pointed to his brown hand and said, “Look mom. They’re black like me.”

A Network of Changemakers

Alongside Kim Riley, both Antoinette Banks of Expert IEP and Nekia Wright of Ujamaa Inc. were named 2023 New Champions Runners Up. Four other leaders were named finalists by the 2023 judging panel: Jillian Moses of The Inspired Community Project, Momi Robins-Makaila of Kamaile Academy, Natalie Tung of Homeworks Trenton, and Luca Guacci of Moran Center of Youth Advocacy.  

The EALA New Champions Program goes beyond individual recognition; it aims to build a community of changemakers who collectively transform education and drive lasting impact. The combined efforts of Kim Riley, Antoinette Banks, Nekia Wright, and past EALA New Champions represent a powerful force for equity, inclusion, and innovation in education. We cannot wait to see where the expanding network of New Champions leads.

Treah Hutchings is the Director of the Educating All Learners Alliance at InnovateEDU.

The post The Importance of Amplifying New Voices in Education: Meet the 2023 EALA New Champion appeared first on Getting Smart.

A report by American Progress says, “Developing and implementing a clear education continuum for youth as they enter, stay in, and return home from a juvenile detention facility can make the difference between having access to opportunities and being forced to drop out of school.” One thing is evident when we think about the many problems with the criminal justice system today: too many young people do not get the help they need to do well. On any given day, close to 60,000 kids under 18 are in jail, and more than 500 are under the age of 12.

One program striving to change this risk factor for recidivism is E.A.R.N. the Right Inc. The goal of E.A.R.N. the Right, Inc., (ETR) is to empower at-risk youth and prepare them for opportunity, says Joe Sicilio, founder of ERT.

E.A.R.N. the Right, Inc. has done over 500 hours of community service by delivering the E.A.R.N. the Right workshop to the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and school districts throughout the state. 

Coach Joe and the EARN the Right team believe that “success is not an entitlement – one must EARN the Right to be successful.” EARN the Right teaches adolescents communication and social skills so that they may successfully advocate for themselves throughout their lives. ERT teaches youth how to climb above their current situations and achieve their professional, educational, and personal goals. Over the last decade, EARN the Right has worked with over 1,000 young people and those who serve them.

I sat with Joe Sicilio (Coach Joe) for a Q&A about the program:

What made you start EARN the Right?  

I really do not know how to answer this. The only thing I can say is that it was put on my heart to reach out to our youth providing them with skillsets that will allow them to self-advocate in educational, workplace and community settings.

What is your main goal for the students in the program?

One of the main goals is to have them understand they are worth it, and to instill self-confidence in them so they will want to move forward in a positive manner. 

What are some of the positive outcomes of the program?

We have discovered leaders who never knew they were leaders. We have had kids open up and talk through some of their circumstances. We have discovered career paths. We have even had students go on and get their High school diploma, and GED, and even go on to higher education.

Describe the impact of EARN the Right on a particular student.

In our program, there is a lot of role-play. As we started the program at Camp Aspen one of the young men was so nervous and shaking, he would not role-play. Come to find out he was the lowest-ranking person, the other guys did not want him to participate because they would have to if he did. As the classes continued and we were able to work independently he began to open. Role-playing became easier and he led his group in an activity and was the lead presenter. We found out he loved technology, so the role play was selling me a cell phone using the skill sets learned in EARN the Right. He was then when released and went on to Tech School in the upstate.

What is your vision for the next few years?

My vision is to grow the EARN the Right organization so we can reach more of our youth. Connect with the students as they move forward to provide mentoring. Our goal is to connect them with local businesses for employment opportunities. For those who excel in the program, we want to bring them back into the loop to help facilitate the EARN the Right program.   

The post E.A.R.N. The Right: Empowering At-Risk Youth with Opportunity appeared first on Getting Smart.

Young Men United (YMU) is an evidence-based initiative that provides wrap-around services to college-ready high school students beginning in the tenth or eleventh year to develop barrier-free pathways for young Black men to achieve their academic and career goals.

YMU supports individuals as they complete high school, enter and progress through their chosen post-secondary track, and transition from their post-secondary pathway to the workforce.

Young Men United was founded in 2020 as an extension of the revitalized Milwaukee Fellows program, in collaboration with United Way Worldwide. The project boasts an 85% college graduation rate for Black males, compared to the national average of 40%. The program is presently in thirty-one pilot cities, with an emphasis on the five Core Pillars that comprise a YMU Fellow. These five fundamental pillars are as follows:

• Mentorship
• Career and Professional Development
• Scholarship Opportunities
• Internships and Job Experiences
• Civic Engagement

Whether it is technology, coaching, or a financial donation, YMU is committed to assisting our young Black men in thriving, from internships and college readiness to career certainty.

In my community, the United Way of the Midlands runs the program, which will scale up to 200 total students by the conclusion of its fifth year. The current goal is to be at 75 total students by December 2023. The effort will establish new collaborations with four local Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as well as other institutions of higher learning in the Midlands. The program’s purpose is to boost postsecondary education attainment while also improving retention and workforce development.

Dr. Jabari Bodrick, Director of Education and Resiliency at my local United Way, spoke with me about the YMU program and his hopes for its influence on young black men in my community. “Young Men United gives us another avenue to create generational change throughout the Midlands,” he said. We are excited to collaborate with school systems across the Midlands to offer young Black men with the vital support they require to create bright futures.”

Jabari received his Ph.D. in College Student Counseling and Personnel Services from the University of Georgia. He wishes for other young men to have the same opportunity he did to attend college. Jabari worked in higher education before being asked to run YMU. Jabari said, “I witnessed firsthand how difficult it is for young Black men to navigate the educational system.” He worked at the University of South Carolina, the University of Maryland, and Elon University with the athletic program. Most PWIs have less than 5% African American male students, and Jabari stated that “these young men are looking for help and support that is not readily available.” “Neither do these young men find many faculty members who look like them.” YMU will offer campus and workplace tours to provide these young men with early exposure and information. “Young men who are prepared for college and careers feel ownership and feel comfortable networking to support them in life in general,” according to Jabari. “We will provide comprehensive services, free computer software, and even family support services.”

Why should young Black males be mentored?

Why should you support programs like Young Men United?

Black mentors serve as constructive influences that may confront any negative internalized attitudes about their own race that underprivileged youngsters may have. Black male mentors give Black adolescents a revitalized sense of worth, which influences their attitude and conduct.

The Top Reasons Why Black Male Mentors Are Important:

#1: They are culturally aware.

It is well recognized that black boys face many challenges growing up, including the failure of critical structures that are designed to aid in their development. Given that Black males have a particular set of experiences growing up that frequently effects their development, it is critical that their mentors have had those experiences as well. To fully address those difficulties, they must first be recognized. Relationships between a mentor and a mentee might be prone to cultural misunderstandings and mistrust if the mentor has not dealt with these problems as a Black man. Like any other connection, a good mentorship is built on empathy and trust.

#2: They help to strengthen healthy racial identification.

While discussing race is not always easy, it eventually leads to a stronger racial identity  and emotions of connectedness within the community. Underserved adolescents who once felt isolated and misunderstood can now use the common ground they share with their mentor to increase their own self-esteem. Black mentors serve as constructive influences that may confront any negative internalized attitudes about their own race that underprivileged youngsters may have.

Black male mentors provide Black adolescents a revitalized sense of worth, which influences their attitude and conduct. Furthermore, research indicates that positive racial identification is substantially connected with higher levels of academic motivation in African American middle and high school students. When youth can define themselves in terms of their race, they feel more group pride and perform better academically.

 #3: They are critical thinkers.

Black male mentors and young Black men can have genuine interactions because they share a common understanding. By discussing the effects of race and socioeconomic class, the mentee will see how they affect their daily lives and develop a critical mind. The ability to notice and comprehend social, political, and economic oppressions is referred to as critical consciousness. With critical consciousness, we can address these challenges and take corrective action that will result in visible change for our underserved youth.

If under-served youth have the tools to discuss and understand racial and socioeconomic issues, they can position themselves to not be conquered by it. This empowerment gives young Black men the capacity to understand their strengths and have a respect for the perseverance and resilience of their community, which will then help them persevere through the challenges they  may face growing up.

#4: They help in closing opportunity gaps.

Because of the special problems that young Black men may endure, they may face disproportionate economic and social disadvantages. Over-referral for school disciplinary action and special education, as well as impediments to college enrollment and completion, can all have significant and long-term ramifications for their future earning potential. Mentoring, on the other hand, can serve as both an intervention and a networking connection to help turn those obstacles into possibilities. Black male mentors offer Black youth proactive supports to help them succeed as well as a second chance to reconnect with the critical structures that will help them realize their full potential.

The constantly supportive character of mentorship provides a secure space for young Black males to work through their issues and problems in completing crucial milestones in academic and interpersonal relationships. Mentoring lets the mentor share their personal and professional knowledge and experience, which can help young Black men get through these milestones and think about their futures more broadly. For example, to do well in the job market today, Black professionals have had to develop skills that make them independent and stand out. They can share these methods and provide crucial advice to their mentees as a Black mentor.

As a mentor, I am enthused about the potential of Young Men United. The capacity to expose these young men to job and college opportunities, as well as to empower them to make informed decisions with the help of a caring adult, has been demonstrated to be critical to their success.

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