Critical Race Theory Takes Center Stage

While Critical Race Theory (CRT) has overtaken the media and become heavily politicized in recent years, this academic concept that examines race as a social construct is more than 40 years old. This year’s opening keynote “Unraveling Myths About Critical Race Theory in Education” explored the debate over CRT and unraveled myths and misconceptions that challenge the opposition and featured Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Co-Founder & Executive Director of The African American Policy Forum and leading scholar of CRT, and Jonathan Cox, Vice President of the Center Policy Analysis & Research (CPAR) at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. (CBCF). 

The conversation started with a light-hearted, five-question quiz to determine if the audience members held beliefs aligned with critical race theory (CRT). This approach brought the controversial topic into focus in a humorous and thoughtful way. The speakers then delved into the basics of CRT, emphasizing it as a recognition of historical and current injustices. They discussed the importance of incorporating CRT into academic and political discussions as a vital move toward justice. This integration is seen as a crucial step in upholding the constitutional rights of Black individuals and other marginalized communities.

CRT provides a framework for examining how systemic racism has shaped institutions and perpetuated inequalities in society. While 23 states—impacting 22 million school children—have passed legislation that limits the way race and racism can be taught, teaching CRT in schools can help students develop a deeper understanding of historical and contemporary issues related to race, privilege, and power dynamics. This knowledge empowers educators and students to critically analyze and challenge systems of oppression, ultimately fostering a more just and equitable society for all. 

Anti-CRT legislation has been introduced in 46 states, but blocking CRT from being taught in schools not only limits students’ exposure to diverse perspectives but also impedes progress toward achieving racial justice and equality. It’s essential to prioritize inclusive education that equips students with the tools to navigate and dismantle systemic inequalities, ultimately fostering empathy, understanding, and social change. Tackling CRT and a few of the misconceptions surrounding it pulled attendees in and allowed them to see how their own actions, thoughts, and assumptions could and possibly should be stretched if we are truly in the business of being learners as so many of us profess. 

Unrestricted Knowledge

In addition to anti-CRT legislation sweeping the nation, literacy and book bans also continue to be a locus of debate. According to data from the American Library Association (ALA), a record 4,240 unique book titles were targeted for censorship in 2023, a 65% increase over the 2,571 unique titles targeted in 2022 and a staggering 128% increase over 2021 numbers. Since many book bans are happening in states where CRT is being rejected, it is no surprise that 47% of the books targeted for censorship were titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals.

The African American Policy Forum (AAPF) hosted a powerful installation called “Books Unbanned”. The interactive exhibit was stationed outside of the main auditorium to share the history of banned books, boost critical cultural literacy and to empower attendees to defend the freedom to learn, read, and teach history. AAPF provides free copies of titles such as All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brandon Kiely, This is Your Time by Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margret Atwood to attendees. 

This exhibit exuded actionable ways to embed freedom to learn in community. The open shelves lined with both classic and contemporary titles were a powerful call to educators about the sense of urgency of protecting learners’ right to diverse and reflective reading options. 

Unite Against Book Bans held a session titled “How to be a Freedom Fighter,” with author Angie Thomas (whose novel The Hate U Give has found its way on banned book lists), a student advocate, a librarian, and community organizer where they examined how censorship harms communities and threatens democratic principles. Attendees learned proven ways to engage their communities, defend intellectual freedom, and support educators and librarians.

In addition to those featured at SXSW EDU, several other organizations have collaborated to help educators and community members fight book bans locally and nationally:

• PEN America has accumulated important data, resources, and a place to report book bans in your community.  
• The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) developed This Story Matters, a book rationale database where you can search for and contribute rationales for banned books.

Spencer Russell led another standout keynote illuminating the dire condition of the nationwide literacy crisis. Out of the gate, Russell delivered a sharp blow by sharing that over two million students in 4th grade are reading below grade level and how it will impact their formal learning experiences, career choices, and America as a whole. Crescendoing, Russell shared the number of adults who read below a 3rd-grade reading level (the number? 52 million!). Russell’s passion for literacy started after he learned some hard lessons as a teacher. It motivated him to empower caregivers and parents in their own literacy journeys and for young people. He created Toddlers Can Read, where he provides resources to support literacy development. 

The keynote offered five short ways to make a difference in the lives of anyone who wants to support developing a more literate world. In the event you don’t have time to watch the powerful address, here are the steps: 

1. Know the research
2. Stop theorizing, start teaching
3. Keep it simple
4. Partner with parents/caregivers
5. Get started now

Protect Literacy and Learning

Fighting censorship in schools requires a collective effort to uphold the principles of academic freedom and intellectual diversity. When facing challenges such as book bans and anti-CRT legislation, there are several proactive steps that educators, parents, and advocates can take.

• Education and Advocacy: Educate the community about the importance of diverse perspectives in education and the harmful impacts of censorship. Advocate for policies that promote intellectual freedom and inclusive curricula.
• Engage in Dialogue: Foster open and constructive dialogue with stakeholders, including school boards, administrators, and policymakers. Highlight the value of exposing students to a variety of viewpoints and critical thinking skills.

• Defend Access to Information: Oppose book bans and challenges to educational materials by defending access to diverse literature and resources. Support librarians and educators in their efforts to provide students with access to a wide range of ideas and perspectives.
• Mobilize Support: Build coalitions and mobilize support from community members, educators, and organizations that value intellectual freedom and equity in education. Work together to oppose censorship efforts and promote inclusive learning environments.

By taking proactive steps to fight censorship in schools, we can uphold the principles of academic freedom, foster intellectual diversity, and ensure that all students have access to a well-rounded education that prepares them for active and engaged citizenship in a diverse society.

The post Banned Books, Critical Race Theory and Literacy at SXSW EDU appeared first on Getting Smart.

Multilingual learners (MLs) face unique challenges as they navigate learning a new language and culture while also pursuing academic learning. An increasing number of multilingual students arrive in the U.S. also having endured trauma resulting from war, instability, or persecution in their home countries. Language barriers and cultural differences can further exacerbate students’ challenges, underscoring the critical need for educators to address their social and emotional needs. 

Though MLs comprise nearly 10% of the school-age population, the most widely-used social-emotional skills frameworks and programs currently lack an intentional focus on how to support multilingual students’ unique strengths and challenges. To foster MLs’ academic success and well-being, educators must consider students’ cultures, languages, assets, expectations, norms, and life experiences when integrating social-emotional practices. All students thrive when they are validated and supported to achieve their goals, empathize with others, build relationships, and make responsible decisions. 

Strong evidence shows that social-emotional skills support students’ well-being, however, a one-size-fits-all approach can undermine cultural heritage, limiting the potential benefit to multilingual learners. Culturally relevant assessments offer a crucial starting point for meeting the needs of multilingual students. These assessments not only help educators gain a deeper understanding of their students but also foster a more inclusive and supportive learning environment that allows students to have the same experience as their peers with support in their native language. 

Creating Culturally Relevant Assessments 

The first step in creating culturally relevant assessments is ensuring accurate translation. Best practices recommend a certified translation company that will create a consensus translation that considers regional dialects. Guidance from the International Testing Commission suggests that translation alone is not enough to guarantee the cultural relevance of an assessment, particularly for constructs influenced by language and culture. A comprehensive cultural review by native speakers can bring to light constructs or items that might pose potential issues. This expert cultural review can be done by native speakers of the relevant language who have expertise in education or child development. 

Next, studies investigating measurement invariance evaluate the comparability of the translated and English versions of the assessment to show whether the assessment functions similarly across groups. Invariance suggests that comparisons can be made across groups and that results can be interpreted in similar ways. 

At Aperture Education, we have used this process to create several translated versions of the DESSA Student Self-Report social and emotional assessments, including Spanish and Chinese, two of the most common languages other than English used in the K-12 school system. After translating the DESSA into these languages, we worked with expert reviewers to determine the cultural relevance of the items and constructs included. Reviewers in both languages agreed that the items and constructs of the DESSA were culturally meaningful for Spanish and Chinese-speaking students. 

However, the reviewers also noted some items that could warrant additional review when interpreting an individual student’s results. For example, a reviewer noted that the item, “believe that you can make a difference”, is less emphasized in Chinese cultures because there tends to be a greater focus on collective efforts to make a difference. 

We used the results of our expert reviews to prepare guidance for educators who work with multilingual students. We included notes like the example above to help educators interpret assessment results more thoughtfully and to better understand their students’ needs. Furthermore, it can pave the way for conversations that help educators delve deeper into their students’ cultures, languages, and unique life experiences. 

Community Engagement

Strong family and community engagement is a key component of effective SEL programs. Families new to the U.S. benefit from inclusive practices, and sharing culturally relevant social and emotional assessments. Some school sites using culturally adapted versions of the student self-report also choose to share copies of the assessment in the relevant language with families. Sharing assessment items in their native language helps families feel included and can support their engagement in schools’ SEL efforts. It can also help families discuss the social and emotional skills included in the assessment and consider how to support students’ development of these skills at home. 

Other sites have not only shared the assessments but also invited families to complete and share the assessment of the student with the school. This promotes active engagement, and can also provide the school with a more holistic assessment of a students’ social and emotional skills. If there are notable differences in how certain items are rated for example, a community liaison or educator can reach out to families to learn more. 

Social-emotional skills play a crucial role in students’ academic success and well-being. Adopting culturally relevant assessments and inclusive community engagement practices can ensure that the unique strengths and challenges of multilingual students are addressed. Engaging multilingual learners and their families through culturally adapted assessments fosters a more supportive learning environment and can better support students’ social and emotional development.

For more information on what a culturally responsive classroom could look like, listen to a conversation with Alex Red Corn and a conversation with Hollie Mackey. 

Evelyn Johnson is the Vice President of Research & Development for Aperture Education and Professor Emeritus of Early and Special Education at Boise State University.

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One example of a responsive NPA is the Children’s Institute for Learning Differences (CHILD). CHILD is not just an educational institution; it’s a transformative solution designed to serve learners on the fringes, offering them a chance to thrive and reach their full potential. In the late 1990’s, CHILD’s founder discovered that the primary beliefs that fuel their work most closely matched those of the Collaborative and Proactive Solutions Model developed by Dr. Ross Greene, which is driven by the belief that “kids do well if they can.” This empathy-driven, non-punitive, psycho-educational approach helps solve the problems that are causing concerning behaviors.

Walking through their campus, one sees children laughing with adults, creating cardboard villages, swinging on an indoor swing, or walking outdoors together. Engaged, happy children are the centerpiece of the school.

CHILD’s winning combination includes an empathetic philosophy, committed teamwork, and collaboration with parents and districts. The following components make CHILD a beacon of hope for learners with unique needs.

Embracing An Empathy-Driven, Non-Punitive Philosophy

A key part of this philosophy is CHILD’s deep rooting in empathy. The school refrains from punitive measures and employs a psycho-educational approach to solving the problems that are causing concerning behaviors. 

Using Dr. Ross Green’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions Model, CHILD builds on the belief that “kids do well if they can.” This emphasizes that kids lack certain skills, not motivation, and require help in becoming more flexible, adaptable, and equipped with frustration tolerance and problem-solving abilities. Staff at CHILD learn to identify the triggers for counterproductive behavior to build new skills, identifying and addressing each child’s lagging skills.

CHILD acknowledges that every learner possesses unique gifts and abilities, a different kind of giftedness. Their approach is not solely focused on academic achievement but on nurturing the potential within each student.

Dedicated and Impactful Teacher and Staff Team

CHILD has a long-standing legacy. This year-round model for learners with IEPs was founded in 1977. In 2017, CHILD Founder, Trina Westerlund, and Executive Director, Carrie Fannin discussed the 40 years of the CHILD Way, the founding beliefs that continue to fuel CHILD. 

Additionally, CHILD’s teaching staff boasts an impressive 9 to 11-year average tenure, compared to the average of less than 5 years for special education teachers elsewhere. Teachers, staff, and specialists stay because they understand the “why” and see the significant impact they make in the lives of learners. Collaboration is a core piece of the team’s success. They work together through a rigorous student screening process (turning away up to 90% of applicants if they believe they cannot help). They are clear about who they can serve, which sets them up for success and apart from other NPAs that face challenges from accepting students without having the proper support available.

Collaboration with Parents and School Districts

Recognizing that parental involvement is crucial, CHILD incorporates an active parent training component into its program. As they rightly say, “If we don’t have parents on board, it doesn’t work.” Simultaneously, CHILD collaborates closely with school districts, understanding that successful reintegration is vital. Monthly check-ins with school districts help keep the lines of communication open, and CHILD is seen as an integral part of the team, contributing to the district’s understanding and service of unique learners.

CHILD has the goal of preparing and empowering learners to return to their home school districts within one to three years. This entails close collaboration with the district representatives to create a team approach and long-term planning for each learner.

Challenges in the Face of Federal Law

Federal laws, such as the Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) regulations, present challenges for NPAs like CHILD. Often, students must experience years of failure within their school districts before being referred to an NPA. By the time they arrive at CHILD, they may have lost hope in the education system.

While NPA services are expensive for school districts, some districts may not want the learner back because they lack relational, human-centered programs for K-12 students to return to. 

A Singular Model

Many microschools find it difficult to scale or replicate — CHILD included. CHILD’s success is not just about the program but the people behind it. Over 60 staff members serve 52 learners, making it a proactive financial investment that transforms lives, builds long-term productive citizens, and saves the community and justice systems millions of dollars. It is not a cookie-cutter model to be duplicated, but rather a shining example of the success that deliberate, multidisciplinary strengths-based learning can create…one we can all learn from. The structure of CHILD supports a culture of continuous improvement, demonstrating that the future of education lies in innovative, human-centered approaches that recognize the uniqueness of each learner. Our learners deserve to experience nimble models like the CHILD microschool without the years of failure in the rigid “system.” Our learners deserve to thrive! Without going through years of failure in “the system,” our learners deserve early access to models like the CHILD microschool…to break down barriers and thrive as learners and humans.

The post CHILD: A Microschool Unlocking the Potential for Unique Learners appeared first on Getting Smart.

At the time, Jeanes Teachers were funded through the Negro Rural School Fund, established by the Anna T. Jeanes Foundation in 1907 with an endowment of $1 million and recruiting Booker T. Washington to be the chairman of the Trustees. By 1909 -1910, there were 129 Jeanes Teachers operating in thirteen southern states. Soon, North Carolina took the lead with 36 Jeanes teachers by 1915.

To build on this legacy, in 2022 North Carolina created the Jeanes Fellowship. The Jeanes Fellows Program is a partnership between The Innovation Project (TIP) and the Dudley Flood Center designed to provide consistent and intentional infrastructure to support community-school relationships using an equity lens. 

The revitalized program builds upon and operationalizes needed action from 3 foundational documents: 

• The Leandro Action Plan: Sound Basic Education for All: An Action Plan for North Carolina can be found here. A few key recommendations called for a qualified and well-prepared teacher in every classroom and finance and resource allocation. 
• DRIVE Task Force Final Report and Recommendations: a report with 10 key recommendations to increase teacher diversity. Recommendations include affordable postsecondary access, diversity goals for schools and districts, and support networks for educators of color.
• NC State Board of Education Statewide Strategic Plan: a plan grounded in the guiding principles of equity and the whole child with goals to eliminate opportunity gaps, improve school and district performance, and increase educator preparedness to meet the needs of every student, all to be fulfilled by 2025.

This first cohort of fellows is working hard to advance equity, diversity and cultural responsiveness in districts across North Carolina. From EdPrep partnerships with community colleges to micro-credentials through the diversity office, these educators and district-level leaders are making a huge difference in North Carolina. 

A New Approach to Advocacy Curriculum

One Jeanes Fellow, Saletta Ureña, is laser-focused on advancing racial and culturally responsive curriculum across Guilford County Schools in a new district role focused on supports and leaning into her fellowship position. As a veteran classroom teacher (Spanish and Language Arts), it is important to her not to get too far removed from “what kids are doing in the classroom.” 

Her new district-level position allows her to find a unique space within schools and systems change. “Some people told me to try for principal, but I’ve never wanted that role,” said Saletta. In her current role, she reports directly to the Chief of Staff and is grateful for the ways that the district has supported her growth and recent training in access mapping and liberatory design. “[Guillford has] all the bells and whistles,” she says.

In her classroom days, Saletta began to recognize that she heavily focused on building a decolonized curriculum. This became the unifying thread that tied each of her roles together. She began to notice that students were not participating in spaces that encouraged good civic behavior: discourse, tolerance and advocacy. “Student councils are a great practice ground for some of the core mechanisms of civics, but they’re not diverse, and their goals aren’t diverse.” With the Jeanes Fellowship, Saletta was able to start changing that narrative. 

Using her curriculum background, Saletta focused on creating a no-prep lesson for social studies teachers with a focus on advocacy. Much of this curriculum hinged on a children’s book that was perfect for second graders. Unfortunately, that book was flagged by some recent legal challenges, and Saletta had to do a quick pivot. At a time in which the political landscape is uniquely fraught, particularly around what’s being taught, Saletta adds, “This work is not about indoctrination, it’s about systems recognition.”

Saletta was able to use the unveiling of a recent newcomer school named after the de-segregationist Sylvia Mendez to build and announce a curriculum around her book Separate is Never Equal. Currently, the curriculum is best suited for 5th-8th graders. She already has one school on board and ample funding for many more students to participate, so she begins the courting process to make the lesson a whole grade requirement or, perhaps even, a whole course. 

“North Carolina is one of the states that is constitutionally bound to provide an ‘adequate education’ to all learners,” said Saletta. “If we’re not graduating children with core literacies, character and understanding of the systems they are in and how to participate we are quite literally breaking the law.” 

An Iterative Journey

During the planning phase of the project, the Jeanes Fellows began working with Open Way Learning (OWL) to hone their liberatory design skills. In one half-day design sprint, Fellows analyzed historical Jeanes supervisors’ case studies along with current data from their home districts. This analysis helped to ground their projects in empathy data of their place and people, including the district’s learners, their families, communities, and educators. With this foundation, they then built empathy maps around each stakeholder’s point of view, uncovering common problems hindering their learning, health, and opportunities in school, home, and the community.  

This session engaged Saletta and gave her the materials she needed to communicate an emerging project idea to her leadership teams. She later explained, “Liberatory Design is EYE OPENING. My immediate takeaway from the initial session was that this was a more in-depth way of looking at and including stakeholder groups.”

In another example, Jessica Parker in Edgecombe County Schools led community co-design sessions in order to build trust between communities and support this shifting population of learners (and their conflicted families). Her experience using design thinking in prior school team collaborations, also to great effect for her learners and educators, gave her a valuable foundation for picking up and shaping liberatory design tools to engage and connect the goals of her district leadership, affected communities, and their learners and families.

In a second half-day sprint as the school year started their projects, Fellows reconvened to iterate on their original ideas with agile prototyping tools, starting with a revised problem definition based on the power of story and NOISE strategic planning. In this meeting, they were encouraged to see their role as developing and engaging with their district’s equity “coalition of the willing” by identifying the innovators and early adopters they could build relationships and partnerships with as they piloted their Fellowship efforts.

Saletta believes that this experience has given her a name for something that she has always had, a “Jeanes Fellowship Mindset,” and she hopes to spread that message at educator gatherings in the years to come. This mindset can help her and other Fellows ensure that their projects’ outcomes translate into equitable change in their districts based on a foundation of trust, collaboration, and innovation.

“You can make changes from wherever you are.”

The post Honoring A Legacy of Leaders: The Jeanes Fellowship appeared first on Getting Smart.

As the summer neared, TPS Superintendent Dr. Josh Garcia addressed the City of Tacoma Joint Municipal Action Committee (JMAC), an assembly of officials from various governmental organizations, with a challenge to not let the tragedy of the last year go unnoticed. The community needed to act. 

The response to Dr. Garcia’s challenge was the establishment of the Summer Late Nights in Tacoma. This initiative was an incredible demonstration of what rapid and effective community collaboration can look like. Metro Parks Tacoma spearheaded marketing and grant writing, while nonprofits like the YMCA and Boys & Girls Clubs provided staffing and programming. Their combined efforts raised over $1.4 million from both public and private funders. The result was 12 safe spaces across the city, which, throughout the summer, hosted over 12,000 participants. There were no gun violence-related injuries or deaths among students that summer.

The Beginnings of JMAC

Understanding the roots of JMAC is crucial to appreciating this success. Initially formed in the 1970s to bring the Head Start program to Tacoma, JMAC evolved significantly over the years. The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point, transforming JMAC from a social meeting group into an action-oriented body. Under the leadership of Chair Elizabeth Bonbright and Vice Chair Kristina Walker, JMAC focused on Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (J.E.D.I), Health and Security, and Community Wealth Building. The redefined vision and commitment to action laid the groundwork for future collaborative successes like the Summer Late Nights program.

During this period of reinvigorating the action committee, the team hosted a summit of 60 and invited community partners (including business, non-profit, and faith leaders) to share JMAC’s new united direction and ask for ways to engage with them so that their collective work would be aligned. Even after the urgency of COVID had begun to wane, a group of 75-100 attendees—mostly comprised of interested staff from participating organizations and community partners—continued to move their collaborative work forward. 

In December 2022, they held another Summit and were proud of the significant impact they achieved by shifting away from agency-siloed thinking in favor of aligned policies and funding.  

Leveraging Relationships

TPS already had a collaboration framework in place, having worked with Metro Parks Tacoma and Greentrike on the Beyond the Bell and Club Beyond programs. These programs provided after-school care to meet the post-COVID child care void and were quickly adapted for the summer initiative. The district offers TPS families free or low-cost (pay as you can) extended learning opportunities after school between the hours of 3 – 6 p.m. every weekday during the school year. The community vendors provide a wide range of engaging activities including STEAM programs, tutoring, sports, art, music, theater, and leadership opportunities. Metro Parks coordinates and Greentrike manages the vendors by recruiting vendors, performing background checks and paying for their services. By leveraging the existing infrastructure and partnerships, the community was able to quickly deploy the Summer Late Nights program.

In late April/early May of 2023, Dr. Garcia challenged JMAC members to commit dollars to stand up a program for Middle School and High School students during the summer every weekday from 5 – 10 p.m. for the 10 weeks of summer.  “We adapted the Beyond the Bell/Club B model with similar staffing but a less structured environment. And we provided hot nutritious dinners to all participants at all 12 sites.”

Throughout the program, TPS maintained a strong leadership role. Dr. Garcia’s involvement was pivotal in rallying community support and ensuring the program’s alignment with the “Whole Child, Whole Educator” approach. Half of the 12 sites were housed at a TPS Middle School and the district provided janitorial services and other in-kind supports for our 6 sites.  In addition, TPS staff often dropped in on the 12 sites throughout the summer to speak with students and Late Night staff to learn more about the impact and any suggestions for improvement and canvassing to ensure the community knew about the great opportunity.

One of the key components of Beyond the Bell, Club B and Summer Late Nights is that all staff working with TPS Students are trained in and must use their “warm welcome” and  “zones of regulation”. 

“Warm welcomes” and “zones of regulation” are components of the Tacoma Public Schools Whole Child approach to education. A “warm welcome” involves greeting each student by name and asking each student about their “zones of regulation” (how they are feeling at that moment: GREEN = Good/Happy or YELLOW = anxious/nervous/worried or BLUE = sad/depressed or RED = angry/highly emotional). These basic self-disclosed bits of the real-time emotional status of each student provide TPS teachers and afterschool providers with critical information to help them best operate a successful environment for all the students in their classrooms/activity space.

The story of the Summer Late Nights program in Tacoma is a shining example of how community collaboration can address and mitigate pressing social issues. By pooling resources, expertise, and commitment, TPS and the Tacoma community created a safe, engaging summer environment for their youth. 

The post Community Collaboration: The Success Story of Tacoma Public Schools’ Summer Late Nights Program appeared first on Getting Smart.

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.

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