I’ve always been passionate and driven. I’ve always had a clear vision for the direction and arc of my life and a strong set of hypotheses about how to set about making that vision a reality. I believe that there is meaningful, impactful, and urgent work for me to do at the nexus of community and schools. I believe that we can create equitable and just educational systems truer to promise of the ideals that launched the great American democracy experiment. This sense of purpose and vision formed early for me–at sixteen, in a public high school in rural Vermont. My teachers, my classmates, my community, my family all played central roles in forging my identity as an achiever, activist, and educator.
At points in my career, I have struggled to identify the best way forward–this past couple of months of career and life transition being the most recent example. Happily, this past weekend at Teachers College provided enough perspective and opportunity for deep thinking and reflection to allow me to find some clarity and articulate a strong set of hypotheses about the arc of my life and work in education.
Hypothesis 1: University-School Partnerships is the best lens for my academic and professional work going forward.
I have a diverse set of interests and competencies: teaching literacy across the high school curriculum, history curriculum development, school leadership, new teacher development, bilingual education, dropout prevention, equity in classrooms, participatory action research, teacher leadership, building a culture of achievement in low-performing schools, school-community partnerships, family engagement, community service learning, technology in the classroom, professional development, inclusion/special education. These represent what I have done and have been interested in as a practitioner and as a researcher over the past ten years in urban schools. I am stepping in the Urban Education Leaders Program recognizing these as assets and potential areas of further development in my pursuit of my own personal development to become a district leader in urban school reform.
In my work with establishing New Mission’s dropout initiative with professors Theresa Perry, John Diamond, and Terry Meier in Boston, I have experienced the power of university-school partnerships to catalyze change in schools. In reading about examples of schools that have created a culture of achievement for students of color–like the University Park School in Worcester, MA–I have been inspired to explore further just how deep and powerful those university-school partnerships can be. My recent interest in larger-scale urban reform like the Harlem Children’s Zone has pushed me to consider the yet-to-be-realized possibilities for university, school, government, and community organization partnerships to create expansive change in urban districts in terms of increased equity for students and families.
I think my diverse interests (past, present, and future) all can find a home under the research umbrella of university-school partnerships, and I’d like to use this lens to focus my dissertation research and my practice.
Hypothesis 2: In my practice I can have the greatest impact in urban education reform by becoming a principal, launching one or more schools in concert with university partners. Down the road I will seek both district leadership positions and eventually a college/university professor position to the end of improving school leadership and equity.
I know that I have the capacity to be an outstanding school leader, and I would like the opportunity to create a team of educators, university partners, and families to found a 6-12 school centered on Literacy for Freedom–rooted in the traditions and history of African American, Latino/a, and other groups’ struggles to achieve full citizenship, freedom, and liberation in America and around the globe through literacy and education. I see my time at Teachers College as a way to study efforts like the Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science, and Engineering (as well as other examples) in order to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully launch my own school. I can imagine collaborating with professors like Theresa Perry at Simmons and Terry Meier at Wheelock College whom I have already begun working with over this past year to embed the transformative ideas and legacy of freedom for literacy in the curriculum and school culture of one Boston pilot school.
This is an ambitious project, but my work in Boston over the past 10 years and the opportunity to do the Urban Education Leaders Program in New York at Teachers College over the next four years should afford me the contacts, knowledge, and resources to begin implementing this vision.
I propose the Boston Literacy for Freedom Schools Initiative.
