ALUMNI MAGAZINE / WINTER 2018 / EDITION XXXI
How to Design a School as a Safe Haven Lessons from a Veteran Principal
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Letter to the Alumni Community Dear friends, From The Boxcar Children to Harry Potter, my 6-year-old son’s favorite bedtime books share a common theme: Kids rule. Every evening, he revels in the characters’ independence. But then, in the middle of night, he races to our room and climbs into our bed, a safe haven where he can dream of adventures.
When you are accepted into IDEA’s Principal in Residence Program, you join a cohort of the highest performing future school leaders in the country. Join us for residency in IDEA schools across Texas and Louisiana.
In this, he’s hardly unique among 6-year-olds or anyone else. Whether in work or relationships, we seek independence in one moment, comfort and community in the next.
Mott Haven Academy sixth graders Jaylynn Perez (center) and Enphani Huskey (right) worked with their teacher, Meg Cassedy-Blum (N.Y. ’08), on identifying the parts of a body paragraph.
In this issue’s feature stories, independence plays a starring role. In Chicago, district principals are using their freedom from traditional constraints to build successful schools tailored to their students and communities. In Stockton, California, young activists are asserting their independence from an oppressive past by uncovering and teaching the history of the Central Valley’s diverse communities. Independence is more complicated for the children at the heart of our cover story, some of whom are among the more than 400,000 in the U.S. who are in foster care. At a school in the Bronx, teachers employ the tools of attachment theory to provide them a safe haven from which to dream, learn, and explore. To reach One Day, we need independent thinkers and people with the courage to act and lead against inequity and oppression. But we also need safe havens, where we can be restored before facing the world’s breathtaking challenges. Let’s embrace independence but be each other’s safe havens, too. Connect with your alum friends—the ones fighting hard for what is fair and right. Let them know you’ve got their backs, even when it’s darkest outside.
Gerald Boyd, M.Ed. (Houston ‘10) IDEA Principal in Residence, 2015-16 Cohort Founding Principal, IDEA Mays College Prep
Leah Fabel (Chi–NWI ’01) Contributing Editor
NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR OUR 2018-19 COHORT.
Upon completion of the program, Principals will lead IDEA schools in Austin, Baton Rouge, El Paso, Houston, Tarrant County, New Orleans, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley. 2 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
ideapublicschools.org/PIROneDay
On the cover: Fourth grade teacher Andrea Ruiz-López (N.Y. ’13) works with a student on a reading assignment. Photograph by Saskia Kahn
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“
A true liberal arts education—which fosters critical thinking and independence of thought— cannot be joined to a No Excuses culture that emphasizes silence and compliance. It is a flagrant contradiction. Steven Wilson, Founder and CEO
CONTENTS / FEATURES
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FOSTERING HOPE Kids in foster care often face the fiercest educational challenges. The principal of a school serving foster students shares how those challenges can be overcome. And a remarkable woman who grew up in foster care shares her story.
44 CHICAGO ON THE RISE Chicago’s public schools, long considered among the worst in the nation, are showing signs of a lively comeback. What’s behind their success?
50 RECOVERING FROM HISTORICAL AMNESIA A group of young activists and educators are unearthing the buried past of California’s Central Valley. In doing so, they’re finding reasons for students to celebrate, to fight, and most of all, to stay.
50
h Second grader Kahari
44
Perrington takes flight during dance class at Mott Haven Academy in the Bronx.
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CONTENTS
94
TAKE YOUR
ADVOCACY
8 | Big Picture Half way through her first year in the classroom, Jazmin Reyes still looks forward to the sunrise each morning over rural Louisiana.
FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE COURTROOM
12 | Take 5 Puerto Rico’s schools have barely begun to recover from Hurricane Maria. Kristin Ehrgood is asking us not to forget.
“I wouldn’t be in law school if it weren’t for Miami Scholars which provides a cohort of like-minded students who are just as engaged and enraged on issues involving social justice and community outreach.”
16 | Teach For All We must reimagine education (and more lessons learned in 10 years of work to expand educational opportunities worldwide). 18 | Pathways From a small-town mayor to the go-to recycling guy, five alums share how they landed in local government and why they love it. 20 | Career Coach So it’s not your dream job. Should you take it anyway?
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21 | What Happened Next? A community had high hopes for a bold district-charter partnership in Texas. They haven’t been disappointed.
34 | No Small Feat After years of hard work, advocates are cheering major changes to education policy in Minnesota and Illinois.
22 | The College Quest If Alvin Abraham knew as a principal what he knows as a college dean, he would’ve done a few things differently.
59 | Class Notes News and notes from all over.
24 | Media Diet Motor Trend Executive Editor Ed Loh kicked off his media career snapping shots of student sporting events at Pasadena High. 26 | More of Us If Philly doubles its number of black male teachers, these fast friends will be a part of the reason why. 30 | Innovation What the tech industry needs to do for students, and what CS teachers need to do to prepare students for the tech industry.
Ashley Rodon, University of Miami School of Law Miami Scholar Class of 2018 Teach For America Corps (2011)
60 | Match.Corps A “TFA legend” wins love through bike rides and mariachi music. 93 | Regional Alumni Contacts From Alabama to Washington, your contacts. 94 | Work-Life Balance In Miami, lessonplanning can wait till Sunday.
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BIG PICTURE
RISE AND SHINE By PAULA ANN SOLIS
Photographs by COLLIN RICHIE
IT’S AN ORDINARY MORNING for third grade teacher
Jazmin Reyes (S. Louisiana ’17) during an extraordinary time of life. She’s days away from her first winter break since joining the 28th class of corps members in South Louisiana (one of six Teach For America charter regions). She has taught for exactly 81 days—long enough to know that it’s the hardest work she’s ever done. But with each 15-hour day she loves her students more wholly. One Day followed this first-year teacher on one ordinary extraordinary morning.
5 a.m. Reyes puts on makeup, pausing to eat small bites from a grapefruit to fight off a head cold. Her feet tap to the music pulsing from her iPhone as she prepares for the day ahead.
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h As 6 a.m. nears, Reyes darts around her onebedroom apartment flipping off the lights and heat. She looks over a stack of vocabulary tests for her her third grade English language arts class, printed the night before at the Teach For America office.
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f Just after 6 a.m., Reyes begins her 40-minute
f Jackson Elementary
commute north along Louisiana Highway 68, tracing the Mississippi River into rural East Feliciana Parish. A train rattles past in the distance, but she’s nearly alone on the road as she anticipates the sunrise over the delta.
serves about 300 students, 95 percent of whom come from low-income households. Principal Megan Phillips (S. Louisiana ’01) started her career at Jackson as a third grade teacher, like Reyes. In all, eight alumni and two corps members work at Jackson. “This school is the center of the community,” Phillips says.
g 7:15 a.m. Reyes prepares her classroom for the day ahead. Students will learn the differences between persuasive and informative texts. They’ll earn points toward a popcorn party for listening well to others and helping out around the classroom. Later, she’ll jokingly tell the class she’s giving herself a few points today, too, for persisting despite her cold. “The kids know that I’m showing up for them,” she says.
i Every morning, Reyes listens to the Rickey Smiley Morning Show on the radio. It keeps her mind off of how much money she spends on gasoline. But thoughts linger of her students and their progress. She worries she’s not getting good enough fast enough. “I thought I would be the best teacher ever,” she says with a laugh.
h 6:20 a.m. Reyes passes farm fields, a concrete mill, and a handful of small country churches on the way into Jackson, a town of about 3,500 people just south of the Mississippi border. A white wooden fence marking the grounds of the Dixon Correctional Institute, home to about 1,800 inmates, reminds her that she’s about three minutes away from school.
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g 7 a.m. Before the school day starts, Reyes’s students eat waffles dripping with syrup and tug at each other’s winter coats, worn for the first cold day of the school year. She compliments the coats’ bright colors and remembers colder, snowy winter days in her hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
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TAKE FIVE
Puerto Rico Is Calling
After Hurricane Maria leveled Puerto Rico in September, Kristin Ehrgood’s Flamboyan Foundation provided support to schools like Instituto Nueva Escuela (above) so students could return to class.
What will it take to get students on track in the United States’ fourth largest school district? By LEAH FABEL (CHI-NWI ’01) Photographs courtesy of Flamboyan Foundation
HURRICANE MARIA SLAMMED into Puerto Rico
on September 20, but residents of the island still reckon with its awful impacts daily. At press time, about 40 percent of the island remains without power. Communities are in disrepair, unable to secure supplies to clean and rebuild. While most schools have reopened, many suffer extensive mold damage and the loss not only of materials, but also of students. Enrollment is down by more than 22,000 since before the storm. Kristin Ehrgood (New Jersey ’92) is co-founder of the Flamboyan Foundation, which works to improve education in Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, where Ehrgood lived from 2001 to 2008. In the storm’s immediate aftermath, Flamboyan operated like an emergency relief agency. But as schools return to operation, the team is refocusing on the work they started in 2008, largely related to supporting literacy in elementary schools. “We can’t let this deteriorated state become the new normal,” Ehrgood says. “We’ve got to figure out how to deliver on people’s needs. They immediately need electricity. They also need a high-quality education.”
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You visited Puerto Rico soon after Maria hit. What sticks with you from that visit? I saw teachers coming into school, scrubbing classrooms with Clorox they found somewhere. I hang on to that image, and to school directors trying to get schools open for children and their families. I continue to be struck by the need for people in Puerto Rico to solve their own problems because systemic solutions are not being implemented. Still, there’s a constant recognition of shared humanity and pride in the island. That pride is deep—and it is inspiring. 1
How has your work there changed 2 since the storm? We’ve worked with more than 60 schools on the island in various ways. Historically, we’ve worked on ensuring that kids are able to read in Spanish effectively by third grade. We’ve also built Colaborativo PR, a collaboration with other funders, nonprofits, government agencies, and universities to support the college and career pathways for high school students from the community of Loiza. Through this work, we knew that many of our schools didn’t have the learning materials they needed. Following the storm, our team
is even clearer that we need to help teachers get back to the task of teaching reading, and that students need even more support to get to and through college. The storm threw off many students’ college plans. Has that been a challenge in Loiza? In November, The Colaborativo staff had a meeting for students from the graduating class to talk about how to cope following the hurricane and how to plan for college and career. We hosted a College Board review class to help them prepare for the SAT. Communication networks on the island were down, but our team went out door to door to make sure students could attend, and they arranged transportation. Of 118 students, 104 attended the review, despite the extreme conditions. And on testing day, we had 92 percent attendance. Yet, students still need to figure out how to pay for college. The hurricane has destroyed homes and left people without jobs. That makes college even more challenging. 3
In places like New Orleans, disaster has been used as an opportunity to re-set the school system. Does that feel relevant in Puerto Rico? 4
We don’t have a choice but to use this as a way to improve the system. But I don’t see this as a blessing by any stretch. It is a catastrophe. People need electricity and reliable drinking water. They need a federal government that recognizes their U.S. citizenship through immediate action. And they need a local education system that is effective. As a nation, it is our responsibility to ensure the children of Puerto Rico have access to high-quality schools. This responsibility is urgent and I hope that the hurricane illuminates to those in the mainland the dire state of schools. What does the long-term work look like? The fractures that were already there in Puerto Rico’s educational system have been made into gaping holes following Maria. The challenge is to repair those holes, and that requires a different level of attention and commitment. There are a lot of conversations right now around how to evolve the system of education in Puerto Rico. The people best positioned to be in those conversations are educators from the island. Certainly, there’s room for expertise from others, but the vision, direction, and decision-making need to come from people on the island. OD 5
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DON’T WAIT. CREATE IT. BELIEVE. BE RELENTLESS. BE TRUE. STAND UP. ADVOCATE. DISRUPT. BE PART OF SOMETHING BIGGER. MAKE AN IMPACT. MAKE IT FUN. CRY LAUGHING. CONNECT. GROW. STUMBLE. PERSEVERE. FIND POSSIBLE. CHANGE LIVES.
Join the Team. SUCCESSCAREERS.ORG
THIS IS SUCCESS
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proach is foundational for lifetime commitments to taking on the obstacles that hold millions of children back.
Teach For All at 10 Years HAVING GROWN TO INCLUDE partners in 46 countries on six continents,
the Teach For All global network is now a decade old. CEO and co-founder Wendy Kopp marked the anniversary by sharing four key lessons with the Teach For All community. Full text at teachforall.org/10-year-report. 1. We can move more quickly if we’re learning from each other across borders. For a long time, most of us have assumed that education is a local issue—that we can trade lessons across borders about everything from economic development to public health to environmental sustainability, but we need to solve the challenges facing children and education on our own. Yet given the similarities in the roots of these challenges, I’ve realized solutions are far more shareable than we’ve understood… It’s exciting to see the potential to move from separate, national learning curves to interlinked learning curves that are growing the collective wisdom around how to ensure all of our children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. To make the most of this possibility, Teach For All is facilitating Communities of Practice to bring together alumni from around the world who are working on shared challenges, like designing new schools, strengthening teacher development programs, and reshaping policy. And our newly forming Global Learning Lab is capturing and spreading lessons from classrooms and communities that are making the most progress, both within and outside of our network. 2. Our approach is developing the kind of leadership we need. At the outset of this journey, I wasn’t certain how our approach would play out across contexts. Now, however, I think we can safely say that recruiting cohorts of promising future leaders to teach in communities that experience economic and social injustice, and
Photograph by Catherine Awitta 16 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
Ten partners have joined the network since 2016 including Teach for Ghana (pictured above). Newly represented nations include Uganda, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Ukraine.
providing intensive support along the way, is a broadly effective way for developing lifelong leadership in pursuit of equity and justice. One of my favorite things to do when I visit Teach For All partners is to ask alumni a simple question: What was their biggest learning during their two-year teaching commitment? Regardless of whether they taught in Dhaka or Dallas, Bangkok or Bogota, alumni share two things over and over. First, they gain a powerful sense of possibility that both they and their students have the potential to accomplish anything they set out to do. And second, they gain a recognition of the magnitude and complexity of the inequities facing children in their countries. I’ve come to think that the consistent nature of these answers provides important insight into the ways in which our network’s ap-
3. We need to orient our work towards developing collective leadership. This work to develop individual leaders at every level of the system and across sectors contributes to the collective leadership we need. But over the last decade, we’ve become more focused on two things that I’ve come to understand are also integral to the notion of collective leadership. First is the imperative of ensuring that we’re developing leadership among those who are least privileged by the status quo and have the greatest stake in changing it. This means we must recruit and develop individuals who have experienced the inequities we’re working to address, as Teach For America has worked to do for years, and as many other partners are working to do today. It also means working to foster the leadership of students themselves, their parents, and other community stakeholders…When we orient our work around geographic centers and prioritize creating space for building relationships, having difficult discussions, co-creating shared visions, reflecting on lessons learned, and thinking together about what more we must do, we ensure that we’re growing the collective wisdom, leveraging each other’s strengths, and rowing forward together as quickly as possible. 4. We must dedicate ourselves to reimagining education, in addition to achieving equity. The centrality of the imperative to reimagine education finally struck me a couple of years ago as I worked together with a diverse team of network partners and global organization staff to consider what we want to accomplish over the coming 25 years. We engaged experts to understand how the global economy is changing and the range of challenges today’s children must be prepared to tackle. Like many others, I was daunted by the recognition of what it will take for today’s children to navigate the changing economy and take on exceedingly complex problems, from conflict to climate change, in our increasingly interconnected world. To help prepare today’s kids for the challenges of tomorrow, we need to ensure that students are growing as leaders who have the competencies, dispositions, agency, and awareness to shape a better future for themselves and all of us. This will take reimagining education altogether. The truth is, achieving equity within today’s system won’t do the students with whom we work justice. OD
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PATHWAYS
Greetings from City Hall Five alums pursuing careers in local government share what the work is like—and spill a few things you didn’t know about their cities (and one tiny town). By PAULA ANN SOLIS Illustration by ALEXANDER MOSTOV
What do you do? Dillon: As mayor in Harrington, a farming community of about 430 people in the wheat belt of eastern Washington, I develop the city budget, manage personnel, and handle infrastructure improvements. It also means taking middle-of-the-night calls, especially as one of the volunteer firefighters. I stay up late for everything from EMT support and escorting a barking dog back home to going over budget numbers and calculating the hours it would take to catalog the public library. I’ve learned it takes twice as long to run errands; I’m often stopped and asked about a variety of matters while I walk to the post office. Also, getting engaged while a small-town mayor is considered big news. Courtney S.: As an economic developer, I attract, retain, and grow businesses in New Orleans that create jobs and amenities. Small business owners take more risks before noon each day than many of us take in a year. I support them by connecting them to resources and working to enact policies and programs that will make it easier to do business.
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Brian: As the chief innovation officer for Jersey City, I manage the city’s new Office of Innovation. Currently, we’re working to promote environmental sustainability and revitalize local businesses using a datadriven, collaborative approach. Courtney W.: As a special projects manager in a small but mighty office of three women of color, every day looks different. We work to advance racial equity through local government. I facilitate workshops and work with leaders who represent marginalized groups. We are currently working with the city on using racially disaggregated community indicators to help move the needle on closing disparities. Braden: As the sustainability manager for the city of Tempe, I work with the city manager to create a livable, vibrant, and more sustainable city. I support policy development and pilot projects in renewable energy, water conservation, transportation, waste and recycling, housing, land use, local food, and social issues. What called you to this work? Courtney S.: When I was a kid, I wanted to be the president of the United States. But teaching and working in public schools in New Orleans for seven years confirmed for me the role that local government plays in creating meaningful change for our communities. Braden: I started gardening at the Upshur Street youth garden in Washington, D.C., at 6 years old. I started cooking at a small business at age 14. I was raised to care about urban development, the environment, and equity at a young age. My work in Tempe is my attempt to let my life speak for my values. Which stops along your career path have been the most relevant? Dillon: A minor in economics proves very helpful when analyzing budgets, trends, and opportunity costs. Courtney W.: I taught poetry at a juvenile detention center for boys, where I worked with some of the wisest and most critically conscious people I have ever met. It was there I understood the compounding and cumulative impacts of structural racism. Advice for a fellow alum looking to find a job like yours? Dillon: Start by volunteering, get out into the community you are planning to serve,
Dillon Haas (Mississippi ’12) is Mayor of Harrington, Washington. Earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience. Courtney Stuckwisch (Greater New Orleans– Louisiana Delta ’07) is Economic Development Policy and Program Manager for the City of New Orleans. Earned a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in public administration. Brian Platt (New Jersey ’07) is Chief Innovation Officer of Jersey City, New Jersey. Earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in public affairs. Courtney Wai (Rio Grande Valley ’11) is Special Projects Manager, City of San Antonio’s Office of Equity. Earned bachelor’s degrees in humanities and Spanish. Braden Kay (St. Louis ’05) is Sustainability Manager, City of Tempe, Arizona. Earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and a doctorate in sustainability.
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WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
CAREER COACH NEW YORK-BASED K ALANI LEIFER (N.Y. ’08) is the founder and executive director of
COOP (pronounced “co-op”), connecting first-generation college graduates to meaningful careers and networks of peers and mentors. More than 80 percent of COOP’s alumni work in full-time salaried positions where they’re earning, on average, $69,000 three years into their careers. Q: Is it okay to take a good job, even if it’s not my dream job? Unless you’re incredibly lucky, there’s no such thing as the dream job when it’s your first, or second, or even third job out of college. So think about your next few jobs as prototypes. Expect that they’ll be great in some ways and terrible in others. Learn from those experiences and let them guide you. They can and should change which direction you want to go in pursuit of your dream job. Young people in particular often put too much weight on the next job, which leads to paralysis, which leads to unhappiness. Instead of the next job, think about the next 10 years. Learn what matters to you. We have a tendency to optimize before we prioritize. We go after the best salary and the most prestige before stepping back and figuring out what we really want to do. You have plenty of work years ahead of you. Why would you bet on the winning horse in the first 10 meters of the race?
THE CHARTERDISTRICT SKY PARTNERSHIP TAKES ON COLLEGE By TING YU (N.Y. ’03)
Photograph by GARY CORONADO
and keep both ears wide open. And most importantly, always follow through on what you say you are going to do. Courtney S.: Attending public meetings is a great place to start. Brian: You are never “stuck” on a particular path. After teaching kindergarten in Newark, I began working for McKinsey & Company, focusing on the health care and pharmaceutical industries. It was an awesome opportunity, but it wasn’t for me. Late one night, in the middle of a grueling project for my day job, I read about this guy running for mayor. I went on his campaign website and sent a message asking if there were opportunities to get involved. The rest is history. How does your teaching experience apply? Brian: The behavior management skills I learned through teaching kindergarten are absolutely applicable to my current job working for a city, or any other job for that matter. Braden: People always tell me that I seem comfortable in front of crowds. My middle school special education classroom prepared me to be engaging and to expect the unexpected.
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What stereotypes about your town/city do you want to put to rest? Dillon: That there is nothing to do here. I know people who are busier and wear more hats in this small town than I knew was possible. Pastors maintain school buses, run food banks, and unload trucks of wheat during harvest. Farmers are EMT/fire volunteers and basketball coaches. Our librarian writes for the newspaper. Courtney W.: In Texas, San Antonio is portrayed as a poor, dirty city that’s “behind” other cities like Austin. It’s an incredibly racialized stereotype saying that a majority black and Latinx city cannot be beautiful, which only perpetuates white supremacy. Braden: Arizona State University, in Tempe, has been ranked the most innovative university in the country for three straight years (according to U.S. News & World Report). We have given up our party-school image for a creative, solution-oriented thinking cap. Brian: None—it’s all true. What feature of your community do you wish more people could appreciate? Courtney S.: With more than 130 annual festivals and more parades than I can count in New Orleans, you can be a lawyer, a
doctor, or even a government employee during the day, and at night you can be an artist, play guitar in a band, or join a Mardi Gras dance troupe. Brian: Our diversity. More than 40 percent of Jersey City residents were born in a foreign country, and 75 languages are spoken here. Braden: The Sonoran Desert is the second most biodiverse ecosystem in the world after the Amazon. This is not your sand-dunecovered wasteland of the Sahara. We are home to palo verde trees, ocotillos, javelinas (skunk pigs), and the tallest cactus in America, the saguaro. How does your work benefit kids? Courtney S.: My current role is a continuation of the mission I shared with Teach For America: to create opportunities for all. I believe everyone should have access to a wealth-building job that allows them to take care of their families. Courtney W.: We know that individual students, especially students of color from low-income backgrounds, face a myriad of barriers to a high-quality life and self-determination. My job is to help knock down those barriers. Braden: We’re creating healthy environments, livable cities, and a more sustainable world. OD
IN SPRING 2015, One Day reported on the SKY Partnership in Texas, a groundbreaking, six-school charter-district collaboration that co-located KIPP and YES Prep charter schools within traditional Spring Branch district school buildings. (Four of the six principals are TFA alumni: Sarah Guerrero (Houston ’07), Bryan Reed (G.N.O.LAD ’03), Jeremy Jones (G.N.O.-LAD ’05), and Eric Schmidt (Houston ’07). Unlike most co-locations, the SKY schools went beyond space sharing, encouraging faculty to learn from each other and students to come together in activities like band and sports. Elliott Witney (Houston ’97), who oversaw the launch of the SKY partnership and now serves as an associate superintendent of the Spring Branch district, reports that the collaboration, now in its sixth year, has yielded progress on several fronts. Achievement is up at the two middle schools, with both moving out of the “improvement required” category. Disciplinary infractions are down thanks to joint implementation of restorative justice practices. The SKY partners also teamed up to deliver joint training for a cohort of more than 20 assistant principals and staff members from all three organizations. And two of the co-located middle schools (Northbrook Middle and YES Prep Northbrook Middle) are among the three schools that won a $1.6 million grant to pilot personalized learning programs. Fostering a unified culture at co-located schools remains a challenge, but Witney says that overall, SKY students see themselves as “we” not “me.” The SKY partnership is also delivering on the long-elusive potential of charter schools to be incubators for district innovations. Two years ago, three Spring Branch principals asked to try out the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment being utilized by their in-house charter partners. MAP is an adaptive computer test in reading and math that instantly provides data on a student’s individual skills and needs. Witney says that “within six weeks we were using it—that’s fast in a huge system like ours,” which launched the assessment in all its K-8 schools this year. The wins of the SKY partnership may soon expand beyond Spring Branch. In the most recent Texas legislative session, a bill was passed that gives incentives for charters and districts to collaborate. “The proof point was the SKY partnership,” Witney says. “It’s opening doors to other charter-district alliances across the state.” Still, the true test is post-secondary success. To that end, all three SKY Partnership school networks have committed to tracking not just high school graduation rates but also college completion. They’re doing this by collecting and sharing their data with United For College Success (UFCS), a coalition of eight Texas-based charter school networks and three large independent school districts: Spring Branch, Houston, and Pharr-San Juan-Alamo. Yvonne Eype of UFCS says that 78 percent of all the students in the cohorts that have been tracked, beginning in 2012, are persisting in college. As the data grows, Eype says UFCS will analyze it and share recommendations with schools to help them make evidenced-based decisions on how to strengthen programs and support their alumni in college. OD
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FOR 15 YEARS, Alvin Abraham
(Houston ’02) worked night and day to prepare kids for college, first as a teacher, then as a principal, then as the executive director of the KIPP charter school network in Minnesota, where he helped create Minnesota’s KIPP Through College program. Now, Abraham is entirely focused on students making it through higher education. In August, he became the founding dean of Dougherty Family College, a two-year program at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Dougherty, which does not require applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, is designed for students who want to complete a four-year degree but are not prepared financially or academically. They receive intensive academic support and financial incentives like free laptops, textbooks, and meals. The average Dougherty student pays about $2,000 per year in tuition and fees. The goal is for each student, at the end of two years, to earn an associate’s degree and be eligible to continue at St. Thomas or transfer elsewhere as a junior.
Alvin Abraham (right) is the founding dean of Dougherty Family College in Minneapolis. The school’s aim is to set up underprepared students for success at rigorous colleges.
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WHERE I WENT WRONG IN THE COLLEGE QUEST
Alvin Abraham is one semester closer to cracking the code on college persistence. In his own words, here’s what he has learned. By LEAH FABEL (CHI-NWI ’01) Photograph by JENN ACKERMAN
01 Rethink Rewards
Dougherty is a program designed to support students who are academically unprepared. That’s why we’re here. But we’re not doing remedial coursework. So students need to be able to work 10 times harder than they’ve ever worked before, utilize all of our resources, make this their top priority, push through. Students need to have that intrinsic motivation. Helping them to tap into that, so far, has been the hardest part of this work. I think it comes down to rethinking how we motivate students in K-12. At every school where I’ve worked, I’ve planned a ton of really big extrinsic rewards for things like finishing homework all week, or perfect attendance, or behaving well. I would shift that so rewards are based on growth or effort instead of a checked box. I am a believer in some extrinsic rewards, especially for younger kids. But what’s the plan for backing off on those and helping kids understand that they’re doing something not because of a grade, or a sticker, or because it means they’ll be able to go to Zest Fest on Friday, but because it will better them, or their family, or their community, or their classroom, or the world? 02 Stop Pushing Harvard
As teachers, we named our classrooms Harvard when we knew there was an incredibly slim chance that most kids would be getting into Harvard. We created a false sense of reality around college instead of focusing on what it takes to get there—like doing really well
on the SAT or ACT—and what it takes to read and write analytically and do math at a high level. Teachers use so much data in their classrooms, but we need to use it to help students look at colleges, too. Create different narratives around great schools closer to home that our kids can access. That can lead to much more thoughtful conversations with students. 03 Don’t Sugar-coat Feedback
I know a student at Dougherty who’s doing really well in all of her classes except she’s getting a D in English. She told me, “I don’t like writing. I’ve never liked it.” I asked her how she got through her English classes in high school, and she told me she wrote whatever she wanted and she always got As and Bs. She never wrote a research paper. She never had a multi-page writing assignment. She never got real feedback. Here, she complains that her professor won’t take her papers because she’s off-topic or she’s not following the rubric. I said, “Good. I’m glad to hear that. That’s her job.”
The student is beginning to put the effort in now because she wants to make a good grade. She cares about that. She cared about it in high school, too.
build the skills for them to reach and attain their goals, then we can “let them fail.” But those have to be paired together.
04
Put Academics First,
05
Letting Kids Fail Takes Hard Work
Middle and Last
I’ve let love for my students cloud my judgment of what they needed from me as a teacher. And I’ve been at schools where we created systems, out of love, that never allowed them to fall on their face and then learn from that. At Dougherty, I see how that plays out in our students’ struggles with motivation. But we can’t just “let kids fail.” In a lot of schools, the teaching still sucks. It does. If a kid has gotten to ninth grade and he’s still reading at a third grade level, that’s an enormous systemic problem. If we say, “Sorry, you failed. Figure it out,” then we’re blaming those problems on the kid. Once we’re doing what we need to be doing in the classroom to make sure students are prepared, and when we work alongside them to
I used to believe that the best schools would figure out how to be everything to every kid. Now, I believe a school can be a unit of change for a student, but not the be-all end-all. Kids do well academically when schools focus on great teaching and a really tight understanding of what kids need to know pre-K through 12th grade, at every step. Schools still need robust programs supporting kids with mental health and medical issues. They still need extracurriculars and partnerships with families and community. But at the end of the day, schools can’t be everything. The best thing they can do to prepare kids for college is to be really great at teaching at every grade level, which on its own is really, really tough. OD
colleagues in the media space. But I thought it was a good amount of fun.
Ed Loh Loves Fresh Air and Fast Cars
MEDIA DIET
As a self-proclaimed science nerd, where online would you send students who are interested in science and engineering? The True Facts About... YouTube series is educational but also hilarious. (Caveat: Episodes have language and humor more suitable for high schoolers.) Also Engineering Explained about how cars work. And the Twitter and Instagram accounts of Neil deGrasse Tyson. I should steer them toward Motor Trend sites, too. We’re very family friendly, compared to some car sites. We don’t swear, and there’s no sex involved.
By LEAH FABEL (CHI-NWI ’01) Illustrations by ELAN HARRIS
AS A SCIENCE TEACHER at
Pasadena High School and an aspiring photographer, Ed Loh (L.A. ’98) would take photos at school sporting events, rush to develop the film (yes, film), and then post the photos inside his classroom the next morning. Students made a ritual of checking the shots, says Loh. “And I was able to say, ‘Hey, you’re at school today! Make sure you show up for third period.’” After teaching, a lifelong obsession with cars led Loh to magazines like Import Racer! and Road and Track, where he transitioned from photography to writing and editing. In 2011, Motor Trend named Loh editor-in-chief. He oversees a massive online presence and endless car reviews, and he commutes in an ever-changing fleet of test vehicles (a Jaguar SUV on the day he spoke to us). Loh’s media diet includes sites to get kids of all ages into science and engineering, plus a complicated relationship with social media. What’s a Motor Trend story you’re proud of? We did a documentary-style video on a Volvo crash test. Everyone thought it’d be so boring, but we built a whole story arc around it, built it to a climax, added classical music over artful scenes of a car hitting a barrier at 40 miles per hour. It’s super dorky information conveyed in a really beautiful
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way. And it has nearly 3 million views. Also, “The Science of Speed” story and video. Favorite non-car-related media? I’m a huge NPR dork. I love Shankar Vedantam’s Hidden Brain podcast. I love How I Built This by Guy Raz. My dream is to be interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air. My problem is that I haven’t done anything to qualify for that. It’s a motivating force. Best episodes? The How I Built This episode with the Burton Snowboards guy was great. The amount of emotion that dude displayed was really cool. Reading material that someone wouldn’t expect in your home? I’m crazy about food magazines and cookbooks. A recent favorite is Tacopedia. Your most infamous Twitter moment? In April 2016, we got an organic Twitter “moment” when we did a story on the Apple car. If you ask me, it was a well-crafted thought exercise on what the Apple car could look like. We teased it online and released our sketches. The headline said, “Hello. Are You the Apple Car?” Now, if there’s a question in the headline, you know the answer is no. It’s just a car we dreamed up! But it blew up online because people thought we had the exclusive. CNBC even assembled a panel of experts to discuss our drawings. We got absolutely pilloried by our
If you were raising a teenager, what rules would you set around social media? You are forbidden from using Snapchat. It’s a cesspool. Also, I’m going to be able to see everything. I’m hoping by the time I have a teenager, everyone will have moved on from social media.
Advance your career. Ben Lewis, Teach For America Philadelphia 2010
Amplify your impact.
What’s on your nightstand? The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways by Earl Swift. Highly recommend it. For teachers or policy makers or anyone trying to expand their thinking through social media, what’s your advice? Don’t follow the herd. I prefer Instagram, and I have a weirdly curated feed with food critics and fashion designers and an off-road driver in Venezuela. It’s fine to follow the people with 70 million other followers, but I want to be shown new ways of looking at things and stuff I’ve never seen before. OD
“You are forbidden from using Snapchat. It’s a cesspool.”
Apply today. Join our K-12 community in Denver, CO. striveprep.org/join-us
MORE OF US
If Philly is becoming a “mecca for black male educators,” it’s in part because of young men like these two. By PAULA ANN SOLIS Photographs by CHARLES MOSTOLLER
VINCENT COBB II, co-founder of The Fellowship of Black Male Educators for Social
Justice, recently made a bold claim. “Philadelphia,” he said, “is becoming the mecca for black male educators.” If that’s true, the Fellowship is at the center. With a goal of doubling to 1,000 the number of black male teachers in Philadelphia, organizers have attracted educators who have traveled from around the country to the group’s job fairs and conferences. Some are looking to replicate in their own cities the Fellowship’s success in helping members self-organize, connect, and sustain one another. Sterling Grimes (Greater Philadelphia ’10) was there for the first meeting on a rainy October afternoon, when a group of teachers and school leaders gathered to dispel the isolation many were feeling in their schools. Grimes and the other meeting organizers were expecting maybe 30 guys to show up. Five times that many came. With Cobb and Philadelphia principal Sharif El-Mekki taking the lead, the Fellowship was born. In the two years since, it has kept building. At the group’s first national convening in October, more than 800 educators came from around the country, 75 of whom were Teach For America corps members and alumni from 10 regions. And now the Fellowship is launching Protégé, an effort to recruit young black men still in high school to consider becoming teachers. Sterling Grimes and high school senior Tamir Harper, who met Grimes at a conference, have grown as tight as brothers while collaborating on Protégé. They share mannerisms. They mirror each other in their big ambitions. Listening to them speak, it’s not always clear who’s the younger brother in this duo.
STERLING GRIMES Grimes teaches high school English at Mastery Charter SchoolPickett Campus. He’s one of the 17 founding leaders of the Fellowship. He’s the program leader of Protégé, the Fellowship’s initiative to build the next generation of black male educators through mentoring students in high school chapters. How did you get started with the Fellowship? The Fellowship grew from conversations I was having with other black male teachers early on in my career when I wasn’t feeling supported as a black man teaching. It started with principal Sharif El-Mekki. After a few conversations over dinner with others who had the same concerns—and after realizing that we were we not alone, that we as black men had a specific value in our schools—we thought we should have these gatherings more regularly. I felt good around this group of
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Sterling Grimes (opposite page, right) and Tamir Harper (left) cover topics big and small in their talks: prom, college essays, and reshaping the American school system.
TAMIR HARPER Tamir is a senior at Science Leadership Academy. He’s co-founder of UrbEd Inc. (a for-students, by-students nonprofit focused on urban education issues); he’s a student ambassador to the Fellowship, helping to broker relationships with other high school students; and he’s interning for State Rep. Joanna E. McClinton (D-Philadelphia). What’s making you consider a career in education? I didn’t know I wanted to be a teacher until I engaged with these black men in the Fellowship who are principals, CEOs—just people who exude black excellence. Once I’d seen what was possible, I really wanted it for myself. My plan is to teach secondary English in the Philly school district. Then I’ll work on becoming a principal before moving up to superintendent, where I can influence policy.
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STERLING GRIMES men, and I thought, “Whatever this is, I want to be included because there is strength in numbers.” Was a student-focused program like Protégé something the Fellowship always had plans to create? I didn’t predict we’d have something like Protégé early on. But now looking at it, it makes perfect sense. Black male teachers are especially important for black students in offering support and guidance, because common sense says these kids need reflection points. So why not? And who better than us? What’s it been like trying to talk kids into considering education careers? First, there’s what I saw during the Why I Teach Tour. That was a precursor to Protégé where a group of black male teachers gave presentations on education careers at different schools in Philadelphia. I don’t know how many kids who saw the presentations actually considered education careers. But that’s not the only thing that matters. When I was on a subway recently, a kid I presented to during the tour saw me and recognized me as “that teacher from that presentation.” The network is out there for these kids to see, and that’s what’s important about Protégé. The other thing I’ve enjoyed, of course, is working with my brother Tamir Harper. He’s helped the Fellowship build a pipeline into schools, and we’ve worked closely together. We’re really similar in how we approach the world and people. People know when he and I show up somewhere that the brothers are going to sit together. We exist in this blended world of colleagues/teachers/friends/brothers that makes me really emotional. He’s such a dynamic person. I love that kid. That man, I should say. Thinking back on your own education, did black male teachers influence you? It wasn’t until someone in the Fellowship asked me about black male teachers from my past that I realized that in 12 years, I only had four. I had a vice principal, Mr. Laney, who took the time to pull me to the side and tell me small things like rules about professional dress that I’ve kept in mind to this day. I think about him every time I line my pants to my shirt.
“I felt good around this group of men, and I thought, ‘Whatever this is, I want to be included because there is strength in numbers.’ ” – STERLING GRIMES 28 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
The Black Male Educators for Social Justice Fellowship will host its third annual career fair at 11 a.m. EST on February 10 at the School District of Philadelphia’s North Broad Street headquarters. It will include resume feedback, mock interviews, and opportunities to meet with employees of more than 25 district, charter, and parochial schools. To learn more, visit www.1000x2025.org.
TAMIR HARPER For the past four years you’ve been at a magnet science school with medical school in mind. What does your family think about this shift? My parents were shocked. I said I wanted to be a doctor for four years, and then I said teacher. But then my parents said, “OK, that suits you. But you’re not going to want to be in the classroom long.” They know I want to make policy changes. They’re pretty excited for me. What about other students. Do you see them getting interested in teaching? Lots of kids from my neighborhood, we think we want to be police officers when we’re younger because we see black officers coming into our neighborhoods, so that’s something we connect with. Or we want to be lawyers and doctors so we can make enough money to leave impoverished communities. We’re not seeing enough black male educators in front of us. It’s not until I ask a friend to think about the last black male teacher they had that they say, “Wait, I haven’t had one until I came to this school.” There hasn’t been anything like Protégé before, talking to black and brown students, giving them an opportunity for representation. I’d say a good 10 to 15 students I know are thinking about it. You’re still in high school, but a teacher is one of your closest friends. How did that develop? I remember in middle school feeling like no one believed in my capabilities. No one realized this young black boy from southwest Philly had a passion for learning, and my education was compromised. Maybe if I’d had a mentor in the classroom sooner, someone who looked like me, I’d have realized my passion for education sooner. Today, that person is Sterling Grimes. We met at the first black male educators convening I attended. He’s like my big brother. He’s someone I go to for help figuring out my next steps in life. Whenever we both have the time, we grab food together and catch up. Grimes is someone I can go to for random advice when I run into odd situations, or for conversations about college. He’s pretty young, even though I like to call him old. You’ve got a lot going on. Aside from school, your nonprofit, your internship, and applying to college, you’re working hard to help Grimes get young men to think about teaching. Why? I have two amazing 5-year-old nephews. Picking them up from school reminds me of why I’m doing the work I’m doing. But most importantly, I know from my own experiences the impact of having a strong black male educator in your life, and I want to be that for someone else. OD
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THE EDUCATORS WHO’S WHO? MICHAEL BURGEVIN (Mississippi ’10) is the director of CS for RePublic Schools, a charter network of elementary, middle and high schools in Tennessee and Mississippi. GIORGIO GRIFFIN (Kansas City ’14) teaches Exploring Computer Science at Hogan Preparatory Academy High School in Kansas City, MO. She also teaches special education, Fundamentals of Mathematics, personal finance, and co-teaches English 12/pre-algebra. SAMIR PAUL (D.C. Region ’10) teaches CS in Montgomery County Public Schools, having previously taught Algebra 2 and AP Computer Science in D.C. Public Schools. He is also a candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates. TAYLOR WANT (Massachusetts ’13) is the director of operations at Upperline Code, an organization that runs immersive coding courses for high school students. She formerly taught computer science with Kode for Klossy and at KIPP Austin Collegiate High School in Texas.
TROUBLE-SHOOTING THE FUTURE
INNOVATION
How do you prepare students for jobs in technology that don’t yet exist? Alumni experts—teachers on one side, working tech pros on the other—have a few things they’d like each other to know. By MARY JO MADDA (HOUSTON ’09) Illustration by ELAN HARRIS
I’ve always considered myself a science, technology, and engineering educator first and foremost, even during my stint as an education journalist, when I frequently reported on the role of technology in classrooms. However, having been both inside and outside of school systems—from participant to observer, if you will—I’ve always wondered whether the concepts and lessons teachers bring to students indeed prepare those students for an ever-changing working world. And now, that question is top of mind as I’ve moved to Google and joined the Code Next team, an effort to provide free computer science (CS) education programs to students of color. For answers, I turned to a selection of Teach For America alums who teach CS and who work in CS as engineers, product managers, and user experience designers. I asked: What wisdom would you share with professionals on the other side? – MARY JO Think about the big tech companies. What could they do to give more kids opportunities to learn the skills they need to work for big tech organizations? Samir: Large tech companies can sponsor early interventions like the STEM Talent Pipeline project in Montgomery County that’s setting third graders on the right track to learn accelerated math early on. They can make sure that the benefits of the tech industry are spread widely throughout our society, not just concentrated in communities that already have access. This is not the kind of solution that bears fruit tomorrow, but it’s the only way to solve the structural inequity at the heart of our representation problems. Big tech orgs can also invest in high-quality apprenticeships for middle-skills jobs that require technical ability but not necessarily a four-year degree. The countries that do career and technical education best all have industrydriven apprenticeship programs, and we would do well to adopt similar models.
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Giorgio: I would encourage big tech companies to remember that even as technology becomes more affordable and internet access seems increasingly omnipresent, there remains a digital divide. Giving back to schools with students who don’t have access to technology and resources really goes a long way. A donation of time, funds, and equipment helps make dreams come true. How can tech companies do a better job of opening up the pipeline? Michael: Consider how a student would perceive your company. Can they sense inclusiveness and diversity? Will they see representation in your workforce and management? Strive to build a community that embraces excellence in all forms. Instead of asking, “How will I meet the demand of my workforce?” companies should ask, “How can I play a role in changing expectations around the broader workforce?” Giorgio: Tech companies could offer more high school internships or work study programs that partner with schools to help students earn degrees or certificates in a CS-related field of study. This would help tech companies create partnerships within their communities and open a pipeline for fresh young talent while diversifying the field. Taylor W.: Pipeline programs are important and necessary. Just as necessary, though, is the development of the actual work environments of companies. Particularly when we think about recruiting traditionally underrepresented groups, companies need to be spending time ensuring that their organization is actually a wonderful place for individuals belonging to these groups to work. If students are interning in an organization where everyone who shares their identity isn’t happy, they are unlikely to actually persist. To that end, serious, concerted initiatives to address employees’ subconscious biases and grow community among existing employees from underrepresented groups are just as important as the pipelines companies hope to open or grow.
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How are you preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist? Taylor W.: At Upperline, we ask students to work in pairs or groups every single day because we believe that it is the best way to grow the most crucial skills for tomorrow’s jobs. Technology is constantly changing, and we know that students will need to be able to navigate these changes. That’s why we prioritize communication, persistent problem solving, constantly seeking to learn and understand, and collaboration far above memorizing the content we teach. Giorgio: I teach students the value of acquiring technological skills by exposing my students to the world of high-quality, rigorous computer science instruction needed for success in college and beyond. I recommend the Exploring Computer Science course. I encourage my students to explore concepts and use collaboration and personal experiences to solve real-world problems. How should teachers and schools be supporting CS education in their classrooms? Samir: Allocate funding for professional development to train interested math/science teachers. Carve out budget space for full-time CS positions, hire people to fill them (pay competitively!), and then don’t force them to teach non-CS subjects to fill your schedule gaps. Work hard to create strong early math and science support. These are the foundations of great CS experiences. Coding is not about getting fancy computers. Technology is cheap. People are expensive. Michael: Identify a strong teacher or set of teachers and equip them with the skills and knowledge to teach computer science. Select a curriculum and training program that aligns to a national set of standards and assumes no prerequisite knowledge in the teacher. Build a community of support around your computer science teacher so he or she doesn’t feel like an island. Instead of searching for computer scientists to become educators, recruit strong teachers who are eager to learn the field.
THE COMPUTER SCIENTISTS
What’s the most surprising element about working in the technology world that you wish someone had told you about before you took a role in this space?
WHO’S WHO? DELANO BRISSETT (N.Y. ’05) is a product launch manager at Google, running programs to help get computer hardware into the hands of customers. He works cross-functionally with engineering, business, marketing, customer support, sales, and product people.
Taylor D.: Impostor syndrome! It is so comforting to know that everyone has moments when they feel inadequate and not good enough for the job they are in. I remember this every time that doubt starts to creep in. Delano: That there was a place for me in it. The purpose of tech is to serve society, and so the folks who are creating that technology can best create it if they’re representative of society.
TAYLOR DAUGHERTY (Chi– NWI ’12) is an iOS mobile app engineer at Walt Disney Studios, working on a digital locker service app called Movies Anywhere that allows users to sync and buy movies from accounts across major retailers and to watch them on any device. LEO MARTINEZ (Chi–NWI ’07) is a senior information systems technologist II for Raytheon Intelligence, Information and Services Division. Raytheon is one of the largest defense companies in the world. KATIE SHIRO (Indianapolis ’12) is a software engineer at Airbnb. She previously taught Algebra I and geometry at University Heights Preparatory Academy in Indianapolis, then taught Algebra 2 at DRW College Prep in Chicago.
Given what you know about computer science from the roles you work in now, what would you hope students are learning in schools re: CS and coding? Leo: Each of the systems and the tasks I perform daily in my job requires me to use different programming languages such as C++, Linux, Cisco, and of course Microsoft. I am continually learning more about the languages that are out now and also learning new languages as technology is rapidly evolving, and I think it is important for young students to get exposure to these computer languages as early as possible. Taylor D.: Debugging skills. Because coding is about learning new things every single day, students have to learn to be comfortable not immediately knowing how to approach something and be equipped with the tools to figure out where to go next. Adopting a mindset that errors are actually helpful, and not a sign of failure, was a huge breakthrough for me when I started learning to code. Embrace and celebrate the fact that every new error means you are one step closer to the answer.
Katie: Honestly, the most shocking thing to me about the CS space is the lack of women and minorities occupying these roles. As a high school student seeking out the college major that was right for me, I wasn’t really aware of what computer science was, and was never encouraged to pursue it. I think in the recent past, coding and CS majors were sought after by more affluent male college students who had access to video and computer games as children (a product of the marketing of these things). Programmers are shaping the world as we know it, as almost everyone’s daily life involves using websites and apps. If the people who have this much impact on society are not a representative sample of the people who inhabit our world, then these tools simply cannot be meeting the needs of everyone. How can educators and administrators prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist? Can you offer one concrete piece of advice? Leo: My advice is to teach students to practice good security habits now for their jobs tomorrow. Cybersecurity and computer forensics in technology will be a part of every job that doesn’t exist yet. From password complexity and protection to the effects of computer forensics, we need students to understand how cybersecurity affects their lives even if they don’t plan to work in a technology field. To add to the importance of security, we need to teach in technology that once any-
thing is typed into a computer or put on the web or “the cloud,” it is there permanently. Since practically every job in the future will use a form of computers or the internet, it is extremely important to dispel the lies of programs like Snapchat where your chats go away after a period of time. Everything you say online is recorded and can be used against you, so being a responsible computer user is something that needs to be foot stomped now for their jobs tomorrow. Taylor D.: Help students build solid communication skills. Getting your point across by speaking confidently and respectfully is half the battle in any job. Delano: The first, straightforward point is to help students solve problems they’ve never seen before. In a less esoteric way, how do you decompose a complex problem or issue into its simplest forms? Let students know that that’s how smart people understand problems—they work really hard to break down complex problems. The second piece is more social justice oriented. Back when I was in TFA, the language around the opportunity gap made it easy for kids to walk away with the sense of “I need to work super hard and the onus is on me to overcome historical weight and oppression, and if I don’t overcome these things in the school year, it’s my fault.” We need to make sure to give kids some sense of where we are and how we got here. Each of us plays a role in creating our society. We need to provide kids with a way to stretch themselves and let them know that however they grow, we’ll support them at the end of the day. OD
Mary Jo Madda is Creative Strategy Manager for several education and diversity initiatives at Google. She previously was a director at ed tech news organization EdSurge. She can be reached at @MJMadda on Twitter. Her comments and Brissett’s are their own and do not represent the point of view of Google.
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NO EASY FEAT
Aberdeen Rodriguez (left) joined a class-action lawsuit demanding a fairer teacher licensing process in Minnesota. She’s now an English teacher at Minneapolis’s Thomas Edison High School (below).
In Illinois and Minnesota, advocates for some major shifts in education policy are celebrating recent victories. The wins were a long time coming. By LEAH FABEL (CHI-NWI ’01) Photographs by JENN ACKERMAN
FEW POLICY ISSUES vex educators
more than too little funding and too few excellent teachers. But in Illinois and Minnesota, advocates and policymakers, including many Teach For America alumni, have notched hard-fought policy wins. In Illinois, a large coalition led the campaign to create and enact a new state-level school funding formula to replace one deemed to be the most inequitable in the nation by The Education Trust, a nonpartisan national think tank. According to the Trust’s data, Illinois’s nearly 20-year-old formula resulted in high-poverty school districts receiving 19 percent less in state and local dollars than low-poverty districts. Going forward, the balance will shift as the state factors in each district’s property tax revenue and specific needs. The legislation also says that starting this school year, per-pupil funding for charter schools must equal that of district schools. Under the previous law, charter schools were guaranteed only 75 percent of districts’ per-pupil spending. In Minnesota, more than seven years of advocacy and an eventual lawsuit led to recent legislation opening the door to more—and more diverse—teachers getting licensed to teach in the state. The law’s proponents say the change to licensing practices will help shrink teacher shortages that plague rural districts and schools that 34 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
serve high percentages of students from lowincome backgrounds. Each of the changes took years of advocacy, coalition-building, and an accumulation of small wins that rarely make headlines. The results could be game-changing for kids. Here’s a brief look at how they came to be. AFTER SEVEN YEARS teaching in Texas, Aberdeen Rodriguez (R.G.V. ’07) and her family were ready to move home to Minnesota. With years of strong reviews as a fulltime, fully licensed English and ESL teacher, she anticipated a smooth transition into a Minnesota classroom. But a series of attempts with the state’s board of teaching led eventually to an email letting her know she’d need additional coursework and a semester of unpaid student teaching experience.
“I was expecting to provide evidence, but when I was asked to student teach, that felt like an insult,” she says. Rodriguez considered giving up. While Kyrra Rankine (N.Y. ’99) was managing alumni affairs for Teach For America Twin Cities, she and her team worked with dozens of alums in Rodriguez’s situation. They learned quickly that transferring an out-of-state teaching license to Minnesota was difficult, timeconsuming, and often impossible unless teachers spent thousands of dollars on coursework at in-state schools. What originated decades ago as the state’s attempt to manage teacher quality by preferencing local, traditional training resulted in an overwhelmingly white teaching force, Rankine says. (Only 4 percent of Minnesota teachers are nonwhite, compared to 31 percent of the state’s students.) “It has never worked for our kids of col-
or,” Rankine says, noting that Minnesota schools have some of the highest racial achievement gaps in the nation. Over the course of five years, Rankine spent hundreds of hours advocating for individual teacher candidates with Minnesota’s Board of Teaching and Department of Education. In 2015, Rodriguez joined a class-action lawsuit against the Board of Teaching along with 10 other teachers, six of whom were Teach For America alumni. Daniel Sellers (E.N.C. ’06) supported the lawsuit while advocating for legislative change as director of two local education advocacy organizations, first MinnCAN (part of the 50CAN network) then EdAllies. In 2016, an independent state auditor slammed the state licensure system and recommended an overhaul. Then in May 2017, the state legislature passed a law revamping the system. The new approach, influenced by Sellers and his team at EdAllies, streamlines the process for out-of-state teachers while also making it simpler for non-traditional candidates, such as classroom aides, to become teachers. The new rules are scheduled to take effect in July. After joining the lawsuit, Rodriguez received her license. She’s now the English department chair at Thomas Edison High School in Minneapolis, where she also sits on the school’s instructional leadership team. Because of her struggle, she has become active with the Minnesota chapter of Educators for Excellence, an organization formed to give teachers a voice in policy decisions.
IN CHICAGO, Acasia Wilson Feinberg (Phoe-
nix ’02) hosted a “house meeting” in early 2014, gathering neighbors and friends to discuss what education issues felt most pressing to them. Wilson Feinberg was a member of Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), an organization supporting Teach For America alumni and corps members acting to end educational inequity. From meetings like hers, a cohort emerged eager to challenge what they considered a state funding formula that favored wealthy districts while starving high-poverty districts. The group coalesced under the umbrella of Illinois for Educational Equity (ILEE). Members soon joined forces with Advance Illinois, which had been working since 2013 to promote a fairer funding formula. Members of both groups formed a growing coalition of people willing to engage legislators and campaign door to door for the cause. In 2015, Wilson Feinberg became the executive director of the Chicago chapter of Educators for Excellence. Its members joined the coalition as well. In the meantime, interest groups including the Illinois Network of Charter Schools had spent years fighting for charter per-pupil spending to equal that of traditional public schools. In 2015, Andrew Broy (E.N.C. ’95), the network’s president since 2010, saw an opportunity to work with the Advance Illinois coalition to ensure that charter funding equity was included in the final legislative package. The broad-based groups combined the voices of thousands of teachers, school leaders, parents, and activists, all primed to engage with state lawmakers. Over the course of more than a year of campaigning in person and on social media, the bipartisan support proved enough to convince legislators. In August, they passed a bill changing the school funding formula and equalizing per-pupil charter funding. Questions remain about how Illinois will pay for the funding changes, estimated to cost at least $3.5 billion over the next decade. And it will take some time before teachers feel the impact in their classrooms, particularly in Chicago, where much of the early money is expected to go toward saving teacher pensions. Still, Wilson Feinberg gives the legislation a B+ and says this school year is the first in many when Chicago teachers don’t fear layoffs. “Our funding structure in Illinois was the most regressive in the country,” she says. “Finally, that has changed.” OD
RESOURCES All Teach For America corps members and alumni are eligible to become members of Leadership For Educational Equity (LEE), a non-partisan, non-profit leadership development organization working to support Teach For America corps members and alumni who are taking action to end educational inequity. Through one-on-one coaching, fellowships, workshops, and resources, LEE works to develop and inspire leaders individually and collectively, across all disciplines, to engage civically within their communities and across the nation. If you’re interested in joining LEE and exploring ways to serve in your community, visit educationalequity. org/oneday.
Interested in taking advantage of Minnesota’s new licensure laws? Look into Teach For America Twin Cities’ “Choose the Twin Cities” weekend, March 2-3, connecting prospective out-ofstate teachers with potential employers for the 2018-19 school year. The weekend also includes sessions with leaders from across the educational spectrum as well as opportunities to network with local alumni and community members. Register at events.bizzabo. com/206563/home, or contact Mary.Koslig@ teachforamerica.org.
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Often bouncing from home to home, school to school, many foster children are ill-served by traditional educational structures. The experiences of two women—one who succeeded against long odds, one who runs a school committed to changing those odds—reveal the burdens placed on foster children and suggest new ways to help.
By Ting Yu (N.Y. ’03) At Mott Haven Academy, second graders switch up the way they greet each other and their teacher, Vyasa Tewari (N.Y. ’08), at each day’s morning meeting. On this Monday, group hugs.
36 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
Photographs by Saskia Kahn
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Teaching Against Trauma
In recent years, Facebook has reconnected me with many of my former students. (“Is that really you, Ms. Yu?!” comes the friend request from the ether.) But I’ve often wondered about those who don’t resurface. One of my favorites, Alpha, was bright, unfailingly kind, and mischievous, though he had a sadness about him that made him seem older than his 12 years. Like many corps members, I had several kids who, like Alpha, were in foster care. He made progress in my class, but at times I felt a gulf that I just couldn’t bridge. As I began reporting this story about children in foster care, I decided to look him up. The search result broke my heart. Alpha was arrested in 2013—the year emblazoned on my classroom banner, the year he was supposed to graduate from college. There are 428,000 children currently in the U.S. foster care system. If present trends continue, only one in five will attend college, and between 2 and 9 percent of them will graduate. One 2016 study estimates that nearly half of foster youth are incarcerated within two years of aging out of the child welfare system. Kids like Alpha are the most vulnerable of an already marginalized population. Advocates say better data is the first step toward greater awareness and more effective policies. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law by President Obama in 2015, is the first federal legislation to recognize foster children as a sub-group within schools. It requires state education systems to partner with child welfare agencies to ensure that students remain in a stable school setting when it’s in the child’s best interest. Beginning this year, state report cards will track performance data and high school graduation rates for students in foster care. Here, meet two women who are fierce advocates for progress. Luz Villar, a former foster youth, tells the story of her quest to graduate from college, and what it took to overcome the financial ruin and homelessness that capped her tumultuous childhood. Jessica Nauiokas, a principal, shares what she has learned from a decade of cultivating a school to meet the academic and emotional needs of students in foster care.
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Mott Haven Academy in the South Bronx, New York, serves students in the poorest urban congressional district in the United States. Two-thirds of Mott Haven’s 400 seats are reserved for students who are living in foster care or receiving prevention services. Twenty-seven percent of students are homeless. Despite these challenges, Mott Haven students outperformed their Bronx counterparts by an average of 30 percentage points on the 2016 state math assessment, and outperformed students citywide in both math and reading assessments. One Day asked co-founder and principal Jessica Nauiokas (D.C. Region ’97) what she has learned over the past decade of educating some of the most vulnerable students in the country. One Day: Mott Haven Academy serves a unique population. How was
ers were continuing that cycle of chaos for the child by moving them in and out of classrooms, misunderstanding their educational needs. We thought, what if we could design a school together that really understands the needs of kids in care? We also offer wraparound services for some of our students—a mental health clinic, dental clinic, and medical clinic. Given the makeup of your student body, do you think differently about your role as educators? We’ve given a lot of thought to how to make our environment trauma sensitive. I want to say, though, that while it’s true most of our kids are either in foster care or receiving prevention services, the remaining third of our students are from general South Bronx community families. To be honest, these families often struggle with many of the same challenges as our families in the prevention category.
the idea of your school conceived? Nauiokas: The New York Foundling
[a nonprofit that serves foster youth and families in crisis] saw what was happening to children in foster care. Kids were being bounced from address to address, and each time they moved, they were enrolled in a new school. Before you knew it, well-intentioned teachers and school lead-
What should educators understand about students who are involved with the child welfare system? That kids who have been victims of abuse
and neglect have been wronged by the adults around them. They deserve an educational space where the adults don’t make mistakes with them
Jessica Nauiokas believes in family-style lunches shared by students and teachers. The routine builds a sense of community and familiarizes kids with rituals they can share with “whatever family unit they happen to spend time with.” She and third grader Alex Clemente are enjoying mac and cheese, broccoli with garlic, maple butternut squash, salad, and oranges.
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On the Bookshelf
What Happens When a Child in Foster Care is enrolled in Haven Academy?
Mott Haven students can explore and normalize their experiences by sharing books like these and others they can find in their classrooms.
In leading a school designed to give foster youth the best possible chance at success, principal Jessica Nauiokas has found these actions to be essential. 1. Upon arriving at Haven, the student immediately receives counseling related to past trauma and abuse. School staff members address aggression through mental health counseling and social-emotional learning time class discussions.
Finding the Right Spot: When Kids Can’t Live With Their Parents by Janice Levy
2. Teachers, trained in attachment theory, build trust with the child.
My Foster Family: A Story for Children Entering Foster Care by Jennifer Levine
3. The child joins a community of students who understand what it’s like to be in the foster system, and who don’t feel they have to hide the details or fabricate stories about their home lives.
Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights by Julie Nelson
4. Haven does outreach to the child welfare system to keep the student in the school even as she moves from home to home. The school’s social work team will continue to intervene with the child welfare system to recommend the best home placement for the student.
I Miss My Foster Parents by Stefon Herbert
5. The school supports the foster family through attendance coaching, family enrichment events and group counseling.
Fourth grader Shantal Stephens has her eyes on her teacher, Andrea Ruiz-López (N.Y. ’13), who is leading the class through a lesson on the commutative property of multiplication.
again. That means you need schools with strong culture, teachers who have experience, and resources to support their needs. It’s fundamentally unfair for kids who start out already having chaos in their home lives to end up in schools that are ill-equipped to meet their needs. Are there misperceptions about kids in foster care? Kids who have experienced trauma can exhibit habits and behaviors that closely mirror those who need special education services. So foster care kids get over- and misidentified as having special needs or learning disabilities. This leads to having the wrong goals for kids and an inaccurate sense of their abilities. At Haven, we often find it’s just that they’ve had disruption to their learning, so we do everything we can to stabilize their experience. Educators need to know that these deficits can be bridged with the right interventions. What kinds of challenges may be invisible to teachers working with kids
can present as behavior problems, being withdrawn or having a flat affect, and being disconnected from the school community. That insecurity takes a long time to overcome, but it can be reversed and kids really can have a learning stance and thrive in a general education environment as the child moves away from the point of trauma. Is it hard to address such deep emotional trauma in a school setting? We
spend probably half our energy on academics and remediation of students and the other half on our social-emotional environment. Our socialemotional curriculum is a big part of school culture. It’s not a separate class—it’s routines and language that are woven throughout their day. For example, during morning meeting the kids have a chance to talk about themselves and share personal feelings through a “mood meter.” Then it’s on our teachers to figure out how to bring all students in and lead class activities knowing the emotional state of the kids.
in foster care? Most students in this population struggle with some kind
of attachment disorder, and it impacts their resilience and their ability to build trusting relationships with peer groups and adults in the school. It 40 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
social workers or have social work experience because we find they work most effectively with families who are navigating child protective services. We tend to look for folks who have both general and special education dual certification. In terms of training, we try to find a balance between taking time to do academic work and setting expectations for how we want adults to interact with students. We do a lot with attachment theory and helping them understand kids who are in the child welfare system. We train our teachers in our social-emotional curriculum. For example, we practice positive discipline. Children who have experienced abuse or neglect don’t do well with demerits or taking away privileges. They need to be able to depend on things they earn and know they won’t get taken away.
receive? It begins with selection. We prioritize hiring folks who have been
How does the experience of a foster child at Mott Haven look different from that at a more traditional school? I had a student who went
into foster care when she was in kindergarten. The amount of abuse and neglect she sustained prior to going into foster care was pretty significant. She had been left home alone with no one but an older sibling to care for her, and I can’t even imagine the other types of things she endured. When she arrived at Haven Academy, she had the kinds of tantrums and outbursts that really stress teachers out—behaviors that disrupt the whole class, where you need help from outside the classroom to settle the child. After a year, we asked, is this the appropriate setting? Is it fair to the other kids? We decided to keep her with the same teacher who was willing to have her a second year and put a number of other supports in place. Fast forward through five years of remediation and skill building and she is on grade level performing as well as her peers, and with no special education services. She really has become a significant leader in our community. I think about her often because I know that if she had gone to any other school, her behaviors were intense and severe enough that it’s possible she would have been sent to a therapeutic program or a very specialized setting where they may have considered medicating her. We were able to provide an environment that was predictable and safe with consistent adults to really get her through that difficult time. Mott Haven Academy has some special resources given the critical mass of foster children at your school. Are there things you do that typical traditional schools can replicate? Absolutely. Any school can bring attachment theory into teacher training and do more to understand trauma and abuse. Most schools won’t have the volume of students we have in the system, but I guarantee you they have some subset of children who are living in shelters, or who may not be raised by biological caregivers, and may be dealing with traumatic events from the recent past. What could a teacher do tomorrow to reach out to students who may be in foster care? I’d say to any educator: Take the time to reflect on a
Is there a core principle that guides your work? Empathy. In everything
we do. How have you built a school culture where kids feel safe? We’re in-
That sounds pretty challenging. What kind of training do your teachers
for community building. We offer family-style meals where our students sit at round tables with adults. There are community food bowls in the middle of the table, and they practice passing food, determining portion size, and saying, “May I please have some more?” and “Thank you.” We want mealtime to be a predictable part of their world and a ritual they can carry with them. We look for texts that talk about real-life issues that our kids struggle with. So, stories that feature different family structures—maybe being raised by a single parent or by grandma. Stories that talk about divorce or what it might be like to live in a shelter or that have characters who visit someone who is incarcerated. You’ll see and hear teachers leading circles that give kids a chance to normalize those experiences. We bring together kids with similar experiences and make sure they understand we all have our own paths, and it’s what we do to overcome the obstacles that matters.
tentional about every decision. Our kids eat breakfast, lunch, and two snacks with us, so we want to make sure that these are opportunities
typical school day and the experience a student has in your classroom. At what point during your school routine does this child have voice? And when does this child have choice? A lot of foster kids have no control over what happens in their lives. If they can have one part of their day where they get to be a decision-maker, it starts to build up their agency and selfconfidence and resilience. ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 41
A desperate hope
Homeless and in college: how Luz Villar did it In the fall of 2016, Minds Matter Boston, a nonprofit that supports college access for students from families with low incomes, invited Luz Villar to share her story with a group of high school sophomores and juniors. With her warm smile, long dark hair, and slender frame, Luz, then 25, looked more like a teenager than an aide to a Boston City Council member. Luz was 9 the day child protective services removed her and her siblings from their mother’s home. She and her younger sister remained together, but her brothers were sent to live in different foster homes. She wouldn’t see them again for two and a half years. The girls moved every few weeks or months. Over the course of the next four years, they drifted through 15 foster homes and attended four different schools, passing through a revolving door of caseworkers. Luz did her best to keep her grades up, but the constant disruptions made it difficult. Socially and in her classes, Luz became guarded and kept to herself. “I wouldn’t raise my hand if I knew the answer,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to connect because I knew I’d just have to disconnect.” At the Minds Matter gathering, she told the students about how she tried to attend college while she was homeless, dropped out, and ultimately found a way back. “The room went completely quiet,” says Minds Matter Executive Director Rachel Kanter (Metro Atlanta ’12). “The kids were in tears. Luz helped them embrace their own stories, not as a point of pain or shame but as a source of empowerment.” One year later, Luz returned to speak to the students again on a Minds Matter panel. A 16-year-old junior named Fatima said she felt an immediate kinship with Luz because of their shared Puerto Rican roots. “My parents didn’t go to college, and I don’t know how we’re going to pay for it,” Fatima said. “I love that Luz overcame her obstacles and found her passion. She graduated from college—that really inspires me.” Luz’s story affected Kanter, too. She began to ponder why Minds Matter served no foster students. “We ask our students to come to MIT every Saturday from September to May,” she says. “If you’re switching homes and don’t have continuous support or transportation, how could you meet that requirement? There’s an inadvertent selection bias for students who have stability. It’s made me think about how difficult it is for kids like Luz to even participate in programs that level the playing field.” Luz knows she is an outlier. She shares her story as a way to speak up for foster youth who don’t have a voice—and to show them there can be light at the end of a dark tunnel. “There were so many times when I was on the verge of falling, but I was blessed to meet people along the way who held me up,” she says. “I want to be that person for them.”
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In the spring of 2012, Luz Villar found herself walking a tightrope with no safety net. She was a sophomore at Boston Architectural College, staring down the last of her scholarship money. There was no going home. Since she’d left her mom’s apartment in South Easton, Mass., two years earlier, at age 18, Luz had been a homeless college student, crashing on friends’ couches or in cheap motel rooms and subsisting on whatever she could microwave. Just two years earlier a good job and an apartment of her own seemed within Luz’s grasp. She had graduated from high school, something no one in her family had done, and been accepted by Boston Architectural College with what seemed like a decent financial aid package. To call it a dream felt inadequate. This was salvation. The money hadn’t come easily. Unable to qualify for loans, and with no family members to co-sign, Luz was forced to navigate reams of paperwork to file for aid as an independent. Even small costs—say, the $150 deposit to hold her spot at college—sent her scrambling. Her part-time job as a cashier at Best Buy barely covered groceries. By the end of her sophomore year, with scholarship funds running out, Luz just hoped to complete the semester. She stayed up all night finishing her final project, a model representing a transverse section of a building she had designed. “When I got on the bus, it was so packed the doors closed on my project, and it collapsed,” Luz recalls. “I sat down on the sidewalk and just cried.” Her advisor at the college suggested that she quit school and return when she had saved up the money. “Even I knew that wasn’t realistic,” says Luz. “I was working retail and making maybe $10,000 [per year] after taxes. It felt hopeless.” Coming to terms with dropping out of college was devastating. “We’re talking 14 years of sacrifice, one thing after another. I was so broken. No home, no parents, no degree,” she remembers thinking. “My little brother used to tell me, ‘I look up to you.’ And who am I? He’s not going to look up to me anymore.”
What are the odds?
For years after Luz Villar dropped out of college, “I was in survival mode,” she says, wary of new people and experiences. Today, thanks to mentors who supported her along the way, “I’m so much more open.” Luz (right, with Rachel Kanter) hopes to be that voice of hope for young people as a part of Minds Matter Boston.
That Luz made it to college at all is remarkable. The obstacles Luz faced— daunting financial pressure and homelessness—are common among students who have spent time in foster care. “I wish I could say her experience was unique, but it’s actually quite typical,” says Maura McInerney of the Education Law Center. “Forty percent of foster children end up homeless after aging out of foster care.” Chronic instability is the root of many problems. More than a third of 17- and 18-year-olds in foster care have experienced five or more school placements, and the constant upheaval can wreak havoc on learning. Studies show that children lose roughly four to six months of academic progress each time they change schools. Foster youth are twice as likely to be suspended from school and are expelled three times more often. Unsurprisingly, foster youth drop out at double the rate of their peers. “Those of us who are parents know what it’s like to advocate for our kids,” McInerney says. “Sadly, foster children don’t have that essential advocate.” Without consistent adult advocacy, school transfers often result in
missed credits, lost records, delays in enrollment, and a greater risk of a child being placed in an inappropriate school setting. Many foster students don’t receive needed interventions, while others are misdiagnosed with learning disabilities. For the few who get into college, the path can be intimidating. McInerney says many students don’t know they can file as independents and receive financial aid. Mundane hurdles such as lost school transcripts or birth certificates—typical snags for highly mobile foster kids—can jeopardize access to scholarships and other crucial supports. And like Luz, many former foster care students don’t have permanent residences during college, turning standard breaks between semesters into nerve-wracking predicaments.
Milestones of success After Luz dropped out of architecture school, she was despondent. Then a friend told her about Year Up, an intensive yearlong training program for low-income young adults that teaches workforce skills and matches students with corporate internships. It sounded too good to be true, but she applied and got in. Her turnaround has been nothing short of astonishing. After completing Year Up in 2013, Luz was hired as a full-time associate by State Street, the global financial services firm where she interned. While there, she also earned a year’s worth of college credits at Cambridge College through a Year Up partnership. After a year of working at State Street, Luz reached another milestone— she put down a security deposit on her first apartment. On Valentine’s Day 2014, she moved into a sunny three-bedroom with two roommates in Dorchester, 20 minutes south of Boston. She had been taking night classes toward her degree, and finally having a stable home changed everything. “You can see it in my transcript,” Luz says. “My grades went up instantly.” The next year she was promoted to management, but when she learned of a job opening with at-large Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, Luz jumped at the chance. In March 2016, she started her new job as the councilor’s scheduler and Latinx community liaison. Luz hopes to pursue public policy reform and wants to find a way to work directly with students in foster care. She has been mentoring a young woman as a Big Sister for six years. “My ‘little’ and I got paired up when she was 12—now she’s 18,” Luz says. “We’re inseparable. I thought, for her I can be that person I needed but never had.” And in June 2017, seven years after she first enrolled at architecture school, Luz graduated from Cambridge College with a degree in business marketing. These days, Luz savors being in control of her own story. “I never thought I would have this peace,” she says. “I know no one is going to come in my house and take me. This is my home. This is real.” In her bedroom, Luz keeps the drafting table from her days in architecture school. The desk is cluttered with art supplies and stacks of sketchbooks filled with drawings and elaborate graffiti tags. Every few months, she shows her newest paintings in local art galleries. On the wall hangs a striking canvas that features the silhouette of a young woman running, with streaks of black paint streaming out behind her. “Someone offered me $500 for it at a show, but this one’s my favorite,” Luz says. “It’s called ‘Letting Go.’ ” OD ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 43
Rise BY LEAH FABEL (CHI-NWI ’01) PHOTOGRAPHS BY KRISTEN LIEB
Chicago on the
CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL PRINCIPALS HAVE MORE AUTONOMY THAN MANY OF THEIR COLLEAGUES NATIONWIDE. BASED ON STUDENT RESULTS, THAT SEEMS TO BE A VERY GOOD THING.
Almost exactly 30 years ago, then-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett slammed Chicago’s public schools in casual comments to the press. “There can’t be very many cities that are worse,” he said. He hit a nerve. A year later, the Illinois Legislature dramatically restructured Chicago schools by granting control to Local School Councils, elected bodies charged with hiring and firing principals and approving their decisions. In practice, the move granted principals far greater autonomy than they had enjoyed previously. Then in 1990, a full decade before No Child Left Behind required school systems to collect and share troves of data, researchers at the University of Chicago formed a first-of-its-kind partnership with Chicago Public Schools and others, called the UChicago Consortium on School Research, to collect data, analyze it, and use it to drive improvements.
A mural of César Chávez (left) welcomes students at the Chicago elementary school bearing his name. Over the past seven years, principal Barton Dassinger and his team have led the south side neighborhood school to some of the best outcomes in the city.
or Rahm Emanuel celebrated 2017 graduation rates, Chicago City Wire published an analysis revealing enormous discrepancies between schools’ rates and the percentage of students who passed end-of-year PARCC exams, suggesting schools are graduating thousands of underprepared students. Still, the trend lines are undeniably up. Heather Anichini (Chi–NWI ’02) directs the Chicago Public Education Fund, a nonprofit devoted to improving Chicago’s public schools by ensuring that outstanding principals lead them. Compared to other districts, most CPS principals have outsized influence over their schools because they have control over a large portion of their budgets, curricula, bell schedules, and many hiring decisions. Right now, about 200 of 664 district schools are making substantial gains year over year, Anichini says, citing the district’s accountability data. About 50 are chronically failing, and those in the middle could go either way. “Our theory,” she says, “is that the differentiator will be leadership.” Anichini’s proposition is simple: Strong principals, given the flexibility to innovate, are more likely to stay in their jobs and improve Chicago’s schools. As schools improve, the whole system becomes healthier. To see how two principals used their autonomy to turn around traditional district schools, One Day visited them at work. Barton Dassinger (R.G.V. ’98) is the principal at César E. Chávez Multicultural Academy, a pre-K-8 neighborhood school on Chicago’s south side. Fareeda Shabazz (Chi–NWI ’03) leads Crane Medical Preparatory High School, a nonselective magnet school on the city’s west side.
FAREEDA SHABAZZ AND CRANE On a recent Thursday, Crane Principal Fareeda Shabazz and Sharon Gates traded ideas at a rapid-fire pace across a café table at Rush University Medical Center, overlooking the L tracks and Chicago’s skyline. Gates is Shabazz’s liaison at Rush, one of the top teaching hospitals in the country. She connects Crane students with a steady stream of volunteer mentors, internship opportunities, and adjunct instructors. Could they design a course on Today, the headlines tell a different story about Chicago healthcare IT? Or put students together with Rush staff members at the schools. They are the fastest-improving schools in the nation, Cook County jail to do a service learning project on mental health? according to a recent study by Stanford University researchIn 2011, district officials slated Crane for closure. The school’s Greek ers who crunched the numbers on millions of standardized Revival façade looked much the same as when it was built in 1903, but tests nationwide. Graduation rates have been on the rise for inside, results had crumbled. Fewer than half the nearly 20 years, up from a dismal 52 students graduated. Juniors posted an average ACT percent in 1998 to 75 percent in 2017 score of 14, compared to a national average of 21.1. (the national average is 83 percent). But supporters rallied to the school’s defense and The UChicago Consortium redistrict leaders decided to restart Crane in 2013 as a ported that “between 2006 and Principal Fareeda medical sciences magnet. A task force hired Shabazz 2015, attendance rates, average ACT Shabazz (left) and as principal and gave her a year to build the program composite scores, the number of stuRush University and hire teachers. dents taking AP coursework, and the Medical Center’s Today, Shabazz is in her fifth year at Crane, where percentage of students scoring a 3 or Sharon Gates prepare for the annual students take mandatory classes in biomedical scihigher on an AP exam all increased.” networking event ences and electives including community health The headlines are the result of inbetween Crane Medical and genetics. As early as freshmen year, Crane stuvestments and hard work on many Prep’s ninth graders dents can earn college credits (two freshmen took fronts. But they come with caveats. and students and staff and passed college exams last year). By their junior Despite their growth, Chicago stuat Rush. and senior years, they can earn certifications at dents still perform, on average, about nearby Malcolm X College as phlebotomists and a half grade behind their peers nationrespiratory aides. ally. And not long after Chicago May46 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
Shabazz has hired teachers like Phillip Yang (Chi–NWI ’16), who has a master’s degree in neuroscience from Stanford University. Yang is part of a district pilot group teaching a new biology curriculum, through which students investigate concepts like photosynthesis and cellular respiration by collecting real-life data sets. Science teacher Elizabeth Heckinger designed prosthetic limbs before becoming an educator. She teaches modeling to juniors and seniors using the classroom’s 3-D printer. Crane sits in the western shadow of Chicago’s skyline, where it anchors a disappearing neighborhood. Beginning in the 1990s, wrecking balls felled nearby housing projects that were once home to thousands of students, making way for gentrification. Crane’s 2,200-student capacity is far greater than the neighborhood demands, so now it draws students from anywhere in the city. The majority, however, arrive each morning from the city’s south and west sides. Nearly all are students of color, and 89 percent come from low-income backgrounds. Under Shabazz, academic outcomes have steadily improved. In 201617, more than 88 percent of students who started as freshmen graduated as seniors, and the average ACT score rose more than four points to 18.4. More than 40 percent of the school’s graduates had earned credits toward college or career certification. But improving the education students receive isn’t enough to offset the district’s enrollment challenges—not if a school’s reputation doesn’t advance at the same pace. Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has declined precipitously in recent years, in part the result of changing immigration patterns and an exodus of families impacted by crime and gun violence. In 2013, the district closed 50 elementary schools in a politi-
IN 2015, ONLY 6 PERCENT OF MEDICAL SCHOOL GRADUATES IDENTIFIED AS AFRICAN AMERICAN. ABOUT 5 PERCENT IDENTIFIED AS LATINO.
Students struggle to see themselves in a medical career when they don’t know anyone in a medical career, says Principal Shabazz. Through networking events (above) and internships at Rush, that begins to change.
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cally explosive attempt to right-size the system. Since then, 32,000 more Half of Chávez students have left the district, accordstudents are English ing to an analysis by WBEZ, Chicalanguage learners, go’s public radio affiliate. Today, more so Barton Dassinger than 300 of the city’s 650 schools are (wearing the under-enrolled, according to the same trademark principal analysis. At more than 100 schools, at lanyard) requires least half of the desks sit unfilled. all of his teachers to have a bilingual Eighth graders can apply to any endorsement as part high school in the city. Schools reof their teaching ceive about $5,300 per enrolled stucertification. dent to support the cost of education. As a result, empty desks translate to smaller budgets. The most desirable schools have waiting lists and offer a wide array of electives and extracurricular programs, while the least desirable enroll students at a small fraction of the school’s capacity and can barely staff core courses. Like dozens of high school principals, Shabazz has struggled to recruit students in such a competitive environment. “Options aren’t a bad thing,” she says, but adds that when there are so many more seats than students, principals face a steep marketing challenge. Of the 2,200 eighth graders who applied to Crane, only 77 enrolled as freshmen this year— about half the size of each of the older grades. Shabazz says she and her team relaxed recruitment efforts last year and learned their lesson. Still, because funding follows students, the decline led to a budget shortfall of about $325,000. Because she had autonomy, Shabazz could choose how to mitigate damages. She didn’t refill the positions of three teachers who moved out of state. She cut one art teacher and one staff member. What mattered most to her was that she didn’t have to fight the district to stick with her vision of preparing students to enter some of the nation’s fastest-growing career fields. “That’s what would push me out of this job,” she says. When Shabazz was a student at Howard University, she had planned to pursue pre-medicine until she earned a C in organic chemistry and changed her major. “I thought
48 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
you needed to get all As to be a doctor,” she says. “I didn’t have a network of support to pursue premed.” Crane students are already building those networks, she says. She dreams of walking into a hospital like Rush and seeing a student employed there. “I can’t wait to say, ‘This is one of my babies.’”
Barton Dassinger (left) commends a class of third graders on their command of highlevel math skills. On standardized tests, Chávez students have some of the top math scores in the city.
BARTON DASSINGER AND CHÁVEZ César E. Chávez Multicultural Academy spreads out across three buildings tucked into the neighborhood called Back of the Yards, named for its proximity to the stockyards that once housed the city’s meatpacking industry. Parents corral their elementary-aged students into an angular, 1990s-era school building within a half mile of where most of them live. Preschoolers overflow into another building further west. Middle school students shuffle through the narrow doorways of a red brick schoolhouse a half block and a parking lot away from the elementary school, leased from the city’s Catholic archdiocese. Last fall, Barton Dassinger, Chávez’s principal since 2010, got to wondering what made some of his middle schoolers thrive while others began to fade away. Over beer with a friend, he developed an experiment. Each student would be asked to list his or her three best friends. If the student attended school on the day before winter break and the first day back, he or she would be entered into a drawing for lunch with the friends and Dassinger at a local taqueria. For the kids, it was a shot at free tacos. For Dassinger, analyzing the “friends” lists provided the data to begin to decode the inscrutable middle school social network. “The correlations were pretty remarkable,” he says. Students who were named most often by other students as friends had the highest GPAs, the best attendance, and the top standardized test scores. The opposite outcomes held true for students whom no one listed as friends. Dassinger presented the results at a CPS principals conference. His team now uses the “friends” data to inform how they shape the school experience, from forming tutoring groups to assigning lockers. In the seven years since Dassinger became principal, Chávez has become a hub for the community, offering classes and programs after school until 7:30 p.m. and on Saturdays. It has also become one of the top-performing schools in the city. On the standardized Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) exams in 2017, Chávez students outperformed 92 percent of participating schools nationwide in math and 76 percent of schools in reading. Nearly half the 966 students are English language learners, and 99 percent qualify for free or reduced-price meals. In 2010, one Chávez eighth grader earned a spot at one of the city’s five selective enrollment high schools. In 2017, 25 students did, including 10 who matriculated to Walter Payton College Prep, often cited as the best public high school in Illinois. Only two middle schools in Chicago sent more students to Payton, and unlike Chávez, both had selective enrollment policies. Chávez’s turnaround is, in part, testament to the power of a well-used spreadsheet. Dassinger tracks everything, the more granular the better. If a staff member wanted to know the attendance patterns over time of all English language learners who scored at the 50th percentile on standardized math exams, he’d have it in seconds. If it mattered whether the
cafeteria served pizza on a given day, he’d find that too. And because the district grants principals decision-making power in budgeting, curricula, and scheduling, he can use the school-level data he collects to shape his school into what students need. One example: In 2010, Chávez joined a CPS pilot program to extend the school day by one hour. Dassinger saw from the data that students got a big boost from the extra time with their teachers, but the district discontinued the pilot, citing overall meager results. The following year, Dassinger spent about $300,000 to have a district-approved after-school organization run a similar program, but this time, the gains failed to materialize. “That was one of my mistakes with autonomy, but it also allowed us to make lemonade out of lemons,” he says. Instead of working with an outside partner, he shuffled his budget to pay teachers their union-contracted salary for one additional hour each day. So at a cost of $200,000, students get an extra hour of instruction, and Dassinger uses higher teacher pay—about $6,000 more per year—as a recruitment tool. (The money comes in part from his overall decision only to hire teachers who directly oversee a classroom—meaning no instructional coaches, for example.) For every Chávez student, Dassinger has a row on a spreadsheet tracking GPA, attendance, standardized test results, and special education and ELL status for all their years at the school. He uses the data in myriad ways, including as a guide when each seventh grader has his or her high school planning meeting. (Although students apply to high school as eighth graders, decisions are based on seventh grade scores.) Students, parents, and teachers are able to see exactly what their student has done and needs to do to get into the high school of their choice.
Using grant money from the nonprofit Next Generation Learning Challenges fund, Dassinger hired a full-time developer to turn this process into an app for students and parents citywide (Chávez students are using a beta version). Students will plug in academic data and test scores from their report cards. Then, just like a mortgage calculator produces a range of home prices based on financial data, the app will produce high school options, helping students set academic goals leading up to eighth grade. Dassinger’s meticulous planning hasn’t always saved him trouble. When the district ran out of money last winter, for the second year in a row, it reclaimed funds that schools had saved to cover programs for the remainder of the year. Dassinger had saved more than most principals, to cover Chávez’s extra hour of school. (Around that time, the Chicago Sun-Times published an article showing that schools that serve students of color and from low-income backgrounds were disproportionately impacted by the district’s financial crisis.) Dassinger petitioned Next Generation Learning Challenges to use about $100,000 in unspent grant money to continue the extended day. Still, he’s grateful for his freedoms. “No one tells us what textbooks to use, or what teachers to hire, or how to schedule the school day,” he says. “We’re allowed to be creative here in a way that doesn’t happen in most districts.” OD ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 49
By S U S A N B R E N N A
R ECOV ER ING from HISTORICAL
Photographs by T A L I A H E R M A N
Leading the effort to create an ethnic studies course that reveals how students’ forebears built the Valley into an agricultural powerhouse—only to live under restrictive laws and covenants that largely prevented them from benefitting—is Lange Luntao (California Capital Valley ’14). He is an alum who fits perfectly with the personality type that Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, termed a Connector: someone with an extraordinary knack for making friends and flipping acquaintances into fellow change-makers.
IT’S LIKELY
that almost half the American-grown fruits and vegetables you ate last week— the grapes you snacked on, the walnuts in your salad—came from one place: California’s Central Valley, 20,000 square miles that stretch from north of Sacramento, down through the area around Fresno, all the way south to Bakersfield. About 80 miles east of San Francisco, the inland port city of Stockton, with 300,000 residents, sits surrounded by arguably the richest soil in the U.S. Yet it’s a place of extreme need. Some 85 percent of students in Stockton’s school district fall into categories of high risk related to income, language needs, or unstable homes. Only a quarter leave high school with sufficient credits to be admitted to a four-year California public university. “This valley has grown up serving everybody else, feeding the rest of California and the country,” says Nik Howard (Greater Philadelphia ’03), the executive director of Teach For America’s California Capital Valley region. “But the people who produced those resources have been neglected.” Howard adds, “What’s happening in the Valley right now is that people are done with that.” This applies in particular to the “boomerangs.” That’s what locals call a group of highly educated, history-minded millennials who defied a lifetime of warnings from their parents and everyone else, and who returned after college to Stockton to make their stand in the place that raised them. Members of this group have gained a foothold on the school board and captured the city’s highest office: 27-year-old former Stockton teacher Michael Tubbs is the youngest mayor of any sizable city in the U.S. They’ve embraced a culture of experimentation that springs from impatience with hand-me-down policies and innovations first tested in places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and also from having nowhere to go but up. As an example, Tubbs has committed to making Stockton the proving ground for the first public-private initiative to provide poor families with a universal basic income (the term used by the initiative’s Silicon Valley backers to describe a guaranteed monthly payment). One of the boomerangs, chemistry teacher Brandon Piasecki (Mississippi ’11), even helped open Stockton’s first craft brew pub on a corner in a downtown that used to die at 5:00 p.m. “I want my students to come back to Stockton after college and have someplace fun to go,” says Piasecki, who teaches at Stockton Collegiate International School. Over the past five years, the boomerangs have launched all sorts of initiatives to stop the brain drain out of the Valley. Those include forming a coalition to teach a class they call not U.S. history but “us History” to the students who fill Stockton high schools, many the grandchildren of migrants and immigrants who worked the Valley’s farms and canneries. The principal of Edison High School, a large comprehensive school in the city’s most impoverished section, South Stockton, agreed to host this after-school class that any Stockton student can attend. “It’s important for our students to see their heritage and culture in the curriculum,” Principal Brian Biedermann says, “because that’s what hooks them in.” 52 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
HISTORY LOST AND FOUND
Stockton sits amid rich farmland. Many of the immigrant farmworkers who hand-harvested asparagus and other crops decades ago died here with no families to claim their possessions. Twentyseven of their left-behind trunks were recovered from a building in Little Manila, and some of their contents are on display at the headquarters of Little Manila Rising (pictured above, on the preceding page and on page 55).
Luntao, who is 27, grew up in Stockton, the son of a teacher born in the Philippines (his father) and another teacher born in Nebraska (his mother). Wiry as a wand, cheery and intense, he was juggling what I counted as seven paid and unpaid jobs during the two days I watched him dash around town like a man at war with time. I met him first at a meeting of the curriculum committee (which he chairs) of the Stockton Unified School District Board of Trustees. He’d invited some high school students to come testify on the topic of what makes their classes engaging (or not). When Domino’s failed to deliver the students their pizza, he raced off in his car and returned with the pizza himself, grabbing one slice for dinner before rushing to a night yoga class. His seven jobs? Luntao is raising money for, and serves on the board of, Little Manila Rising, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping the Valley’s Filipino American history alive and working with other local communities to teach what the organization’s founder calls “history on the margins.” (Another project is raising money to curate and preserve 20 decades-old trunks filled with the possessions of migrant workers who lived and died here with no family to claim them.) He’s a leader of the Stockton Schools Initiative, a parent-focused education advocacy organization that grew out of another cross-sector nonprofit (called the Reinvent South Stockton Coalition) that he helped launch while doing his teacher training at summer institute in Los Angeles in 2014. He teaches an early college class in economics and does college counseling at his placement school, Aspire Langston Hughes Academy (that’s five jobs, for those counting). And in January, he becomes the founding director of the Stockton Scholarship program, a college scholarship and support initiative modeled on Promise initiatives in Oakland and other cities, backed by a $20 million anonymous gift. But of all his projects, it could be job seven that has the longest tail: working to immerse Stockton students in American “history 2.0,” as some of his us History colleagues describe this ethnic studies class, to prevent another generation from experiencing what they call “historical amnesia.”
RECOVERING FROM HISTORICAL AMNESIA Lange Luntao knew while growing up that his father moved here to get a college education while supporting himself by picking crops. But as a student in local schools, Luntao learned virtually nothing about his city’s history or his own. He didn’t know, for example, that Stockton for decades had the largest community of Filipinos living outside the Philippines, mostly single men who came in the 1920s and ’30s to plant and harvest asparagus and other crops—separated from their families and banned from owning property. ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 53
“ We’re still a community with a lot of challenges, but we’re also a community where different people have a heritage as deep as our community is wide, and knowing that gives people agency.”
Nor did he know that, to build a freeway planned in 1964, Stockton plowed under the thriving Little Manila neighborhood that these immigrants had built, along with parts of Stockton’s Chinatown (once the third-largest on the West Coast) and its Japantown (once part of the fourth-largest Japanese community in the U.S.), along with Mexican immigrant neighborhoods like El Barrio del Chivo (Goat Valley). Not only did he not know the forces that shaped his hometown; Luntao couldn’t place himself in American history until he got to Harvard University on scholarship and took his first course in ethnic studies. That’s where he was, in his senior year in 2012, when Stockton was hit with an infamous double whammy. First, for the second time in three years, Forbes declared Stockton number one on its list of America’s Most Miserable Cities. The magazine citied runaway unemployment, rampant violent crime, and a plague of home foreclosures. Then, following years of financial mismanagement and cratering tax revenues, the city of Stockton declared bankruptcy, becoming the largest American city ever to do so (until Detroit came later). Bankruptcy devastated public services and budgets, and it still affects Stockton’s school system. Luntao says, “We’ve had to educate 40,000 students with resources for 10,000.” At the same time that all this was happening, Luntao was assigned in an urban studies class to research his hometown. He says, “I learned a little about our history of urban sprawl, and how we had been one of the big, bustling metropolises of California during the gold rush, a place where people came from all over the world to set down roots.” He discovered that activists in 2000 had organized to try to save what remained of Little Manila, as the city bulldozed the neighborhood’s remnants to build a downtown “gateway” development consisting of a Spanish mission-style McDonald’s and a gas station. While doing his research, he also got his first inkling that people like Dillon Delvo (a founder and the leader of Little Manila) were still at it, organizing after-school programs to empower students by teaching them more than Filipino American history, but also that the Valley’s “greatest asset” is its diversity. “It was the first time I knew there was anything to be proud of in Stockton,” Luntao says. While digesting that revelation, he happened to see a Facebook post from an old high school acquaintance, Michael Tubbs, who was graduating from Stanford University with plans to run for City Council. With six months to kill between graduation and heading to Malaysia on a Fulbright fellowship, Luntao came home from Harvard to help Tubbs campaign. And when his fellowship in Malaysia was over, Luntao returned to Stockton as one of the first dozen Teach For America corps members to be placed here. 54 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
Stopping the brain drain is vital for the boomerangs including Luntao, pictured opposite with his student Bethany Alana McBurney (left), and Elaine Barut (right), a staff member with Little Manila, who came home to Stockton with a degree in public health.
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That summer of 2014, before the school year began, he rounded up fellow corps members and students he had met while substitute teaching. They fanned out across South Stockton to knock on doors and canvas residents to learn about their priorities. Topping the list were safer neighborhoods, more jobs, and better schools. That survey helped set the agenda for Stockton’s young boomerang activists. Two years later, on the same night that Donald Trump was elected president, Tubbs became mayor and Luntao was elected the youngest member of Stockton’s school board—the first out gay man to win office in the San Joaquin Valley. Soon after, many of the students Luntao had come to know converged on a meeting of the district’s board of trustees as they were considering whether to teach, in Stockton’s high schools, courses in ethnic studies: a cross-curricular discipline that focuses on the knowledge and experiences of people of color, and the interplay of race, gender, ethnicity, culture, and power. Jaelyn Sanidad, a senior at Edison High School, was one of the students who testified in favor of the ethnic studies initiative, which trustees voted unanimously to adopt. “We have such a deep and rich history, and there’s something wrong here in the history books when you’ve never been taught any of it. We are the ones who have to make the change,” Sanidad says. In us History, she says, “I’ve really learned a lot, like about how racial discrimination contributed to the lack of education in certain areas of Stockton, but I also know I still have a lot more to learn.” Her goal next year is to follow in the footsteps of some of her teachers and “study ethnic history at San Francisco State U., which is where it really began” to take shape as a discipline.
Dillon Delvo (below) remembers meeting Lange Luntao at a Filipino American student showcase featuring dance and other arts. “This young guy comes up to me, he’s got tears in his eyes, and he says, ‘I would like to help in any way I can.’ “
AMERICAN HISTORY 2.0? The Stockton vote followed a bigger milestone in California. In 2016, after three earlier legislative attempts had failed, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill to create a program of ethnic studies for all California high schools by 2019 (significant, given California educates an eighth of all students in America). This came after scholars at Stanford University School of Education published research showing that students who attended ethnic studies classes in San Francisco high schools improved their overall grades and attendance and earned more course credits than students who did not. But even before the state legislature and the Stockton school board had voted to adopt ethnic studies, many of the activists in Stockton who knew each other from other efforts had come together to launch the after-school course that became us History. With Luntao as their organizer and 44-yearold Dillon Delvo as their wise elder activist and mentor, the group included teachers, graduate students, college professors, and community leaders. “At the time we didn’t know how to do it, we didn’t know how to get approval from anyone, so we just built it,” Luntao says. “That’s emblematic of how we do things here.” But they also felt some urgency to work through how to prepare teachers to teach ethnic studies when few have even taken a course in college and no textbook exists that examines local history from multiple inclusive perspectives. “Ethnic studies is about humanizing oneself and each other and everybody around you,” says Aldrich Sabac, one of us History’s founding teachers. “There are a lot of nuances that can get misunderstood and misinterpreted, and as ethnic studies becomes more mainstream, teaching quality is a concern.” By building out this after-school course, the organizers hoped to create a scope and sequence that other teachers could adapt in their schools. They 56 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
The organizers and educators of the ethnic studies course, us History, open to all Stockton students, are (l to r) Dillon Delvo, executive director of Little Manila Rising; Anna Nti-Asare Tubbs, who is doing doctoral studies in sociology at the University of Cambridge and who has taught black feminist theory; CaseyAnn Carbonell and Hannah Divino, community educators who have taught about intersectional identities; Lange Luntao; community educator Elaine Barut, who teaches on public and mental health and a unit called College 101; journalist and graphic designer Nikki Chan, who has taught “artivision”; Cataleah Tzintzun and her mother Dr. Nancy Huante, the director of family organizing for the Stockton Schools Initiative and a lecturer at Sacramento State University, who teaches Chicana/o organizing and hip hop and social justice; and Aldrich Sabac, who teaches English at Edison High School and us History topics including Racial Formations and the Establishment of Whiteness. Not pictured are Brian Batugo, Edison High School student activities coordinator and co-sponsor of us History, who’s taught on LGBTQ visibility and invisibility; and Franklin High School teacher Philip Merlo, who’s taught the history of Stockton to us History students.
also gave a thought to creating a model for how other districts could draw on the wisdom of their communities. Now in its second year, us History meets each week in the classrooms of two teachers at Edison High School, Aldrich Sabac and Brian Batugo. Both are Edison graduates who came home to Stockton, Sabac after he was mentored in ethnic studies by his San Francisco State University professor Jeff Duncan Andrade (Bay Area ’93). Luntao recruited several others to join the teaching team, among them Nancy Huante, a scholar of Chicano studies who has led lessons on the history of Chicano student organizers in the Central Valley. Luntao’s friend Anna Nti Asare Tubbs (who is getting her Ph.D. in socioloy at the University of Cambridge, and who recently married Mayor Tubbs) has taught students about black feminist theory. The 70-year-old grandmothers who remembered El Barrio del Chivo described to students the Goat Valley neighborhood that was erased by a freeway. “They may not have teaching credentials,” Luntao says, “but they sure know how to tell a story.” I visited us History on a day when Phillip Merlo, a historian and teacher at Franklin High School, took students through an hour-long lecture and slideshow on the glory that was once Stockton. He began by noting that indigenous people lived more densely in the Central Valley than anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere, most likely because of its abundant food. He flashed pictures of the post-gold rush boom years when Stockton was a hub of inventors and entertainers. He showed how, as Stockton grew in the early 20th century, city leaders drew lines around Main Street and barred people of color from buying property to the north. I saw the students watch in stunned silence as Merlo showed photographs of the grand buildings that once housed more than 40 hotels, theaters, and a high school that won an award for the finest educational building constructed in America that year. These students have never seen any of those structures, or the streetcar system that was America’s second largest. Some 90 percent of the buildings in downtown Stockton were leveled in the past 50 years, as developers cleared away ethnic communities classified as “blighted.” It was interesting to watch Merlo try to accomplish two competing goals: to teach students about their own communities’ oppression while at the same time giving them reasons to feel pride. That second part of the equation is one that Luntao and his fellow teachers consider essential not only for slowing the brain drain but also for preparing students to lead inclusively and with conviction amid the changes that are advancing on the Valley. Automation is disrupting agriculture as much as any other field. The farm jobs that many students’ parents still work are going away. The cost of living and working in the Bay Area is pushing people and business development east into the Valley. Tesla, Amazon, and FedEx have all built facilities here. Change is coming. But who will benefit? “We’ve made some inroads, but it’s been tough,” Luntao says. “We’re still a community with a lot of challenges, but we’re also a community where different people have a heritage as deep as our community is wide, and knowing that gives people agency.” Bethany Alana McBurney, a junior who travels every Wednesday to us History class in South Stockton from her own high school, Aspire Langston Hughes, (picking up her cousin Tafari Lee from Stockton Collegiate on the way) feels that agency. “The whole Central Valley is such a melting pot of people who have worked so hard, and it’s so beautiful and I never knew about that,” she says. “If my teachers can go to college and come back and teach, I can do it too. Yeah, I really want to come back.” OD ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 57
“
Noble culture relies on high expectations and love. We balance these throughout everything we do.
CLASS NOTES
”
– Laura Byrnes, Memphis ’11, Honors Algebra II Teacher
Alex Krupp (D.C. Region ’10) dove right in to an around-the-world honeymoon with her husband, Cole. The couple married in September 2015, then took off to Japan, Myanmar, New Zealand, and elsewhere. Here, Alex appears to sneak some time mid-exploration to meditate on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The newlyweds chronicled their adventures in a blog: www.weirdishwildspace.com. They’re resettled back in New York City, where Alex works for Spotify.
1990
Brent Lyles (E.N.C.) I am still in Austin, Texas, still running education programs. In my case, I’m teaching kids (and adults) to care for one of the most important life bloods of our community, the Texas Colorado River. 1991
Join 300 Teach For America alumni currently working at Noble. You can be a catalyst for education reform in Chicago.
BE NOBLE.
www.noblenetwork.org/careers
58 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
Kimberly Anderson (L.A.) In May 2016, the project I direct published reports that analyzed and provided recommendations for improving the efforts of 15 states to support implementation of higher K-12 ELA and math standards (www.sreb.org/ benchmarking). Jill Joplin (Houston) I am excited
to lead a fundraising effort to ensure our public library system can acquire mobile hotspot devices to connect families without internet in our community.
contains the type of diversity that is endearing and a challenge. It represents the type of school public education needs to preserve and enhance.
Nicholas Leonardos (Houston) After seven years as principal at the Maria Baldwin School in Cambridge, Mass., I’m excited to be moving to Lowell Community Charter Public School as its executive director. I’m looking forward to this role in a vibrant, 825-student K-8, after 19 years as a school principal.
Dawna Tully (L.A.) I’m in a doctoral program for the degree of organizational change and leadership at USC, Los Angeles, with the intent to support issues of equity and access for at-risk students.
Joseph Rigg (L.A.) I remain in the classroom 25 years after my TFA experience in Inglewood, Calif. My school, Upper Darby High School just outside of Philadelphia,
1992
Natalie Blasingame (Houston) Still thrilled and challenged by the imperative of accomplishing “One Day” in my corps city of Houston and thrilled to see two alums on our Houston ISD school board to
accelerate the work. We can and will accomplish educational equity in Houston. Stacy Douglas (Houston) I live and work in Zambia as the education specialist for two grantaided (think Zambian charter) government schools through the PEAS, Promoting Equity in African Schools. I’m fortunate to help increase the population of girls receiving a high-quality education. Johanna Even (L.A.) My latest book, co-authored by Mawi Asgedom, shares how socialemotional learning fuels academic success for English learners. Empowering English Learners For (continued on p.62)
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Todo Cambió: Love in the Lone Star State
Brenda: When it all started happening, I couldn’t see or hear clearly. My heart swelled. It’s one of the best moments of my life. What’s the most memorable trip you two have taken together?
By PAULA ANN SOLIS MATCH.CORPS
ABOUT MIGUEL AND BRENDA
Do you two have a favorite holiday to spend together?
Miguel Ortega (Dallas–Fort Worth ’11) and Brenda Ortega (Dallas–Fort Worth ’14)
Brenda: Since the beginning, we’ve been big on anniversaries, whether it was our three-months-dating anniversary or our oneyear-married anniversary. I never expected an anniversary to become my favorite holiday, but it is.
Married: September 24, 2016, in El Paso, Texas Home: Dallas, Texas Careers: Miguel is in his first year as assistant principal at Onesimo Hernandez Elementary School in Dallas. Brenda teaches second grade at Momentous Institute, a Dallas school serving students through social emotional awareness.
How did the proposal take place? How’d you meet?
Miguel: One of my friends had a party with a lot of corps members, and I saw her from far away. Someone introduced us, and I remember that butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling. Brenda: It’s important to preface that I had heard of this “Miguel Ortega” before showing up at my placement school [where Miguel had taught]. I was dying to meet him, but I had no idea he’d be this attractive Latino. The first thing I said was “Wait. You’re Miguel? The TFA legend Miguel?” What was the first date like?
Miguel: We took a bike ride along the Trinity River. I wanted an original idea for our first date, something that would let us talk and explore the area since she was new in town. 60 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
How’d you feel those first months?
Miguel: We were like high school kids. We talked on the phone until 2 o’clock in the morning, even when we had to go to work the next day. I would drive to work and play over and over again the song we first danced to, Todo Cambió (Everything Changed) by Camila. Brenda: After he called and asked me out for the first time—yes, called, not texted—I called my mom. I knew he was the guy I could spend the rest of my life with. For the first time I made a connection with a man who also shared my cultural background. Because I wasn’t a traditional corps member and had prior experience [in education], I had more time to spend with Miguel. I had this extra time to fall in love.
Miguel: I waited to ask until right before Thanksgiving break, so we could celebrate with our families. I chose the bridge by the Trinity River and asked a photographer friend to tell Brenda she needed a participant for a photo shoot. I would be waiting under the bridge with a mariachi band and would sing the song Si Nos Dejan (If They Let Us) by Luis Miguel. When I stepped out, the band didn’t sing with me. All of a sudden, I couldn’t remember the words. When she saw me, she started helping me sing. Then I proposed to her, and we danced while the band played.
Brenda: We went to Mexico to introduce each other to our families. My family lives in northern Mexico and his is in central Mexico. We introduced grandparents to each other, cousins, aunts, and uncles. That was really special to me because I was able to share my whole self with Miguel. We were both born in Mexico, and it’s not easy to share those two sides of who you are. Miguel: An impromptu trip to D.C. when we were still dating, to visit my friends. It was an unfamiliar city, and she was down to explore with me. We rode a tandem bike together for the first time—that was a challenge—while checking out the monuments. Riding bikes together is our thing. Wherever we are, outside the Colosseum in Rome or on a new beach, it’s how we explore. How does your corps experience continue to influence the life you two are building together?
Brenda: Teaching kids is what keeps us moving forward. It helps to know I have someone who continues to guide and support that. Miguel: Because of our backgrounds as Latinos in this country and the different things we went through teaching, we connected in a way I’ve never connected with anybody else before. We have a shared story about why we want to teach. Brenda: We see a lot of ourselves in the kids at our schools. It’s why we go to work every day. It really is a part of our marriage. Any advice for other couples starting off in the corps?
Brenda: It’s worth the time; you’ll be on cloud nine all year. Our relationship forced me to balance work and a social life. Without him, I might have burned out. Do you have a love story to share? At OneDayMagazine.org, we’ ll share Q&A’s with couples who met through TFA. We invite you to tell us your Match.Corps story. Send a note to
[email protected]. OD
JOIN OUR TEAM
become successful independent adults. 1994
Philippe Ernewein (G.N.O.– LAD) Both of my daughters are currently attending charter schools in Denver where alums are teaching and leading. My wife and I have both been invited to present and keynote at educational conferences in Belgium, at Thomas More College and the International School of Brussels. 1995
Sarah Haan (L.A.) I’m a law professor who writes about business law and money in politics. After five years at the University of Idaho, I joined the faculty at Washington and Lee Law School in Lexington, Va. After four years teaching in rural schools, Amy Felton-Toth (Hawai’i ’13) celebrated her first year with Bluum, an education nonprofit working with TFA’s Idaho office to keep alumni connected and informed about opportunities to engage as stakeholders. Idaho alums gathered for the region’s first alumni holiday party. Shown here (L-R, standing): Levi Mogg (E.N.C. ’11), Felton-Toth, Harry Hukkinen (Hawai‘i ’13), Ashley Young-Mogg (E.N.C. ’11), Sal Alamilla, Matthew Kuzio (N.Y. ’07), Brad Petersen (Houston ’13), Tony Ashton (G.N.O. ’01), Patrick Connor (D.C. Region ’07) and Elise Connor. (L-R, seated): Jessica Kaufman (Idaho ’15), Becca Alamilla (Idaho ’15), Shannon McDowell (Idaho ’15), Lauren Tassos (N.Y. ’04), Maddie Pacold (Phoenix ’09), Lindsey Holman (Connecticut ’12), Amanda Cox (E.N.C. ’07), Douglas Brady (Idaho ’15), and snow-woman Marisa Byrnes (E.N.C. ’12).
Classroom Success was published by Mawi Learning. Simon Glaser (G.N.O.–LAD) As my wife is on staff at Mayo Clinic, my family and I have returned to Rochester, Minn. I am pleased to again be working at John Adams Middle School, home of the Jaguars. Matthew Kingsbury (Houston) The congregation I serve was founded in 1883. By Reformation Day 2017, I will be its longestserving pastor. VaJezatha Payne (Houston) I’m thinking about the urgency of civil commitment and involvement to combat the rapid increase of damage done in schools due to ignoring the critical relevance of emotional intelligence. Jennifer Stock (R.G.V.) I celebrated four years as director
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of the Helen Kate Furness Free Library. The library’s first 5K fundraiser was organized by a fellow alum, Liz Corson (GNO-LAD ‘92). 1993
Dahlia Aguilar (D.C. Region) I’m the founding principal of Mundo Verde Bilingual Public Charter school in Washington, D.C., where educators provide dual-immersion instruction in English and Spanish. Christie Campbell (Baltimore) I am still enjoying my marketing position at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. As a mother of a seventh grader, I often refer back to my TFA experience at Dickey Hill Elementary Middle in Baltimore, whether working with our school site committee, corresponding with teachers, or mentoring my daughter.
Koushik Pal (L.A.) My work has focused primarily on politics and civil and voting rights. I was part of the team that sued the state of Ohio for voting rights violations and worked on President Obama’s prisoner commutation efforts and representing detainees under the Muslim ban. Since the 2016 election, I have turned my focus to hate crimes in Virginia. As the chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights, Virginia Advisory Board, I have been leading a study of the spike in hate crimes across the Commonwealth since the election, including the tragic events in Charlottesville. Gina Stevens (L.A.) After taking many years off from any type of formal profession, I started a nonprofit called Fostering Youth Independence. Our mission is to equip foster youth to complete post-secondary education and
Matthew Waynee (R.G.V.) In May 2016, I was honored to receive the National Magnet Teacher of the Year Award from Magnet Schools of America. My high school film students have embraced many real-world opportunities in my classroom, where they learned 21st-century skills that will help them begin careers in the film and media industry. 1996
Ben Gunsberg (New Jersey) I am an assistant professor of English at Utah State University, where I teach courses in English education and creative writing. I live with my wife, Andrea Melnick (New Jersey ’99), and our two kids in Logan, Utah. Diana (Black) Kennedy (Mississippi) I’m a board-certified educational therapist with a private practice in Marin, Calif. I present across the country and write a blog about education at www. MindSparkLearning.com. Anna Peterson (S. Louisiana) In November 2016, I became the director of STEP-UP, the city of Minneapolis youth employment program for young adults ages 14 to 21. Since 2004, STEP-UP has created nearly 24,000 meaningful internships for youth, helping
young people to gain 21stcentury skills, build professional connections, explore career interests, and begin their paths to educational and career success. Cynthia Skinner (D.C. Region) I am heading a cross-sector “collective impact” early care and education effort in Alexandria, Va., focused on low-income families in the community. 1997
Jignasa Desai (Phoenix) I am teaching reading and mass communication at Glendale Community College and serve as the assessment coordinator and the diversity coordinator. I am working toward ensuring that all of my students are engaged and provided opportunities to stay the course and complete a degree. Timothy Liggett (L.A.) I became the principal of Whittier High School, a comprehensive public high school located about 15 miles east of Los Angeles. It was opened in 1900. Joe Ocando (N.Y.) I surpassed 1 million minutes watched at Free Chem Tutor (freechemtutor.com). Maritza Sanchez (N.Y.) In my 20th year teaching, I was part of a staff that helped to found a public International Baccalaureate school. I taught abroad in Venezuela for one year, and I’m the proud mom of an amazing 15-year-old son. 1998
Melissa Enns (Baltimore) I’ve been working as a school social worker at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School. I’m looking forward to my third year as a Girls on the Run coach there, as well. Peter Enns (Baltimore) and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary this year after meeting in Moody Towers in Houston. Gagan Khera (Phoenix) I joined the psychology department at Curry College in Milton, Mass., as an associate professor after my husband and I welcomed our daughter in June 2016. I still keep
in touch with my Tarasco students in Phoenix. They are in their mid-20s! Allison Ohle (N.Y.) I live in sunny San Diego with my husband and two amazing kids. I was leading KIPP San Diego through a transition and creating the conditions for growth so that more families in “America’s Finest City” have excellent options for school. Laura Stahl (G.N.O.–LAD) I completed my first year of working at the PERTS (Project for Education Research That Scales) Lab at Stanford University, and I serve on two boards, School-to-School International and Ripple Effect 22. 1999
Elizabeth Campos (L.A.) After 17 years at my placement school as a biology teacher, I changed to a different school in my district. I teach at a juvenile day reporting center for students on probation. My students are grades 9-12, and I work with them in all subject areas. In collaboration with probation officers, we provide consistent, caring adults in an academic environment to help our students get academically back on track and to be socially able to go to traditional high schools. Working with these students who are consistently left out of the school system has made me feel like I am closer to what made me join TFA in the first place. Judith Cruz (D.C. Region) I founded a parent organization at my children’s neighborhood Title I school. I am founding the parent organization at my son’s middle school. Parents are change agents! Adele Fabrikant (N.Y.) Our family recently grew to five. We welcomed Max in December 2016.
When Vinay Mullick (ChiNWI ’04) met Charles Brown, Mullick was a first-year math teacher and Brown was a sophomore at Chicago’s Paul Robeson High School. Mullick, a sports nut, became the academic advisor to the school’s football team, where Brown was a standout player. When it came time for Brown to apply to college (by then he was Robeson’s valedictorian and one of the state’s top football recruits), Mullick helped Brown sort through his many offers. Brown chose Northwestern University, conveniently allowing Mullick to hop on Chicago’s L train and attend his games. Today, the two are together again, this time as colleagues. In September 2016, after nine years as the athletic director for a Chicago charter school network, Mullick took a job with UpMetrics, a startup that measures the effectiveness of cocurricular programs. When Brown told Mullick he was hoping to move home to Chicago after a stint in Los Angeles, Mullick saw an opportunity. In April, he hired Brown. Today, the two work together, often pitching clients on the company by sharing their story. “It’s been really cool” to work with his former student, Mullick says. “And to see him grow and prosper now as a professional.”
through the Dallas Museum of Art’s Go van Gogh program. I lead experiences that encourage students to look closely at works of art, ask and answer questions, make personal connections, and then create their own individual artistic expressions. Michael Stollman (D.C. Region) I’m still with Urban Montessori Charter School, developing changemakers, taking Montessori public, and innovating in Oakland, Calif. 2000
Jim Hwang (L.A.) I teach English language at a university in South Korea. Mark Meier (G.N.O.–LAD) I now have a delightful daughter.
Kyrlyn Chatten (Houston) I’m in my 17th year of education at YES Prep, still in Houston with James Sheridan and our two small ones, August and Magnolia.
Sarah Perez (Houston) Twice a week, I teach in DISD schools
Amy Dickerson (D.C. Region) My husband, Ben Dickerson (Chi–
NWI ’12), and I welcomed our second set of twins in August 2014. Our identical twin daughters are 6 years old, and our fraternal twin boys are 2 years old. Anna Mae Grams-Pullappally (Chi–NWI) During the 20152016 school year I completed a Chicago Leadership Collaborative principal residency and passed principal eligibility in Chicago Public Schools. I am working in the talent office as an instructional effectiveness specialist, evaluating and coaching diverse learner teachers across the district. Shenkiat Lim (Mississippi) After five and a half great years on staff at TFA, I’m now on staff at City Year, leading their people strategy work. I’m excited to continue to contribute to “One Day” and to stay connected with my TFA peeps.
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Jenny Lau (L.A.) I’m teaching at the university level in Dalian, China. Michael Salmonowicz (Chi–NWI) I was named chief operating officer of KIPP Chicago Schools, which serves 2,000 students in six schools on the west and south sides of Chicago. This is my eighth year with KIPP. Katherine Stanley (Phoenix) I published my first book in December 2016. Love in Translation: Letters to My Costa Rican Daughter is a collection of essays about language, bicultural parenting, and the ups and downs of living abroad. The book begins in Phoenix at the end of my TFA service, when my exposure to the Spanish language through my work with my students and their families inspired me to spend time in Latin America, and involved significant work with education here in Costa Rica in different capacities. Alessandro Terenzoni (New Jersey) In October 2016, I left the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to become deputy director of the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs, where I focus, among other things, on issues relating to juvenile justice. Amy [Li] Tamura (Bay Area ’08) and her husband celebrated the birth of their second child, Mia.
Jenny O’Brian (Mississippi) My husband, Ryan Koh, and I welcomed our second daughter, Hannah Josephine, in January 2017. I am back to work at Venice Family Clinic, a community health center where I have been director of foundation relations since 2012. Sheri Pierce (Chi–NWI) My husband and I welcomed Drake, our third child, in June 2016. Ari Sussman (L.A.) A program I established, the Student Voice Collaborative (www.
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studentvoicecollaborative.com), which engages young people in improving themselves, their schools, and their school systems, is thriving in year number seven. 2001
Ariel Dolowich (Bay Area) As principal of Ochoa Middle School in Hayward, Calif., we continue to develop site systems that meet our students’ needs and foster a culture of student voice. My wife and I are proud parents of Luca and his twin sisters, Brooklyn and Maya.
2002
Jessica Boro (L.A.) My experience in education has come full circle. I never envisioned as a corps member that I would later become a school leader and now an active founding board member. While my perspective shifted with each experience, my commitment to urban education deepened—all from the seeds planted during my corps experience. I’m grateful. Angela Crum (New Mexico) I’m working as the principal of The Valley School of Southern Oregon, a Montessori-inspired STEAM public charter school in Medford. Audrey Hooks (Houston) In the summer of 2016, my husband and I relocated to our hometown of Harlingen, Texas, with our two young children. We valued the
many friends we made through the wonderful TFA-Austin Alumni Association over the last decade and hope to meet new friends among the alumni here in the R.G.V. Maureen Lally (Phoenix) My husband and I own and operate a ski resort in western Maine called Mt. Abram Ski Area and are currently raising four children under 7. Christopher Lewis (D.C. Region) Sara Rowe Lewis (D.C. Region) and I are back living in the D.C. area with our two kids, Kieran and Eliza. I returned to DCPS, working in the central office. Emily Schaffer (L.A.) I’m the executive director of Year Up Bay Area, connecting 400 underrepresented young adults to professional jobs and postsecondary education each year. Alexander Smith (Houston) I’ve been leading early childhood education for Bridge International Academies (where I work with a number of fellow alumni) for the past few years. In 2017, we successfully opened in our fifth country and now serve children in over 500 schools. Emily Taylor Beighley (Bay Area) I’m the humane education coordinator at Valley Humane Society in Pleasanton, Calif. I develop and implement curriculum for grades Pre-K to 12 that integrates mindfulness, civil rights, non-human animal advocacy, and environmental stewardship. Natalia Walter Adamson (Baltimore) My husband, Dash, and I welcomed our son Oscar Magnus Adamson. I am adjusting to the life of a mother and principal. 2003
Emily Bobel Kilduff (N.Y.) I opened a school, New School SF, which is a progressive and intentionally diverse public charter school in the Mission District of San Francisco. Kim Case (N.Y.) I continue to serve as vice president of CN Communications and executive
director of the Research & Development Council of New Jersey. Vanessa Garza (L.A.) I co-founded the first all-girls charter middle school in Los Angeles. In August 2016, Girls Athletic Leadership School Los Angeles (GALS LA) opened its doors to 90 sixth graders. Elizabeth Handy (Baltimore) I recently published my second book, Our Black History Projects, which introduces the importance of celebrating Black History Month. Nathalie Henderson (St. Louis) I gave birth to a daughter, Noelle Malia Henderson, in June 2016 and transitioned from my role as instructional leadership director in OKCPS to area superintendent in Fulton County Schools (Atlanta) in August 2016.
JOIN THE FASTEST-IMPROVING PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT IN THE NATION Teach For America corps members and alumni have played critical roles in our journey to become the first public school district to close the achievement gap.
Benjamin Jarvis (Metro Atlanta) I passed the two-year mark studying ethnic segregation as a postdoc in Sweden. First child arrived, settling into Swedish life. Benjamin Kornell (Bay Area) Juliana and I welcomed Sebastian Joseph Kornell to our family. We are still adjusting from doubleteam to man-to-man defense but enjoying every moment we can with TFA friends in the Bay. Heather Newton (New Jersey) I married Nikhil Kawlra (Greater Philadelphia ’07), and we have a daughter. Seb Prohn (S. Louisiana) Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities traditionally are denied college opportunities. I run a program at Virginia Commonwealth University that facilitates college inclusion for students with significant support needs. Inclusive higher education programs now exist at over 260 colleges and universities across the country. It’s a movement that fits directly within TFA’s mission. Jennifer Roberts (Chi–NWI) In October 2016, I celebrated one year of business as founder/CEO of Versed Education Group. Versed
JESSIKA ALVARADO D.C. REGION ‘12
WE HAVE THE AUDACITY TO LEARN FROM OUR SUCCESSESS AND FAILURES, TO TRY NEW THINGS, AND TO LEAD THE NATION AS A PROOF POINT OF PK-12 SUCCESS.
WHAT ROLE WILL YOU PLAY? EVERY STUDENT. EVERY SCHOOL. EVERY DAY. START YOUR APPLICATION TODAY
JOINDCPUBLICSCHOOLS.COM
ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 65
Growing Learners. Growing Leaders.
Fufilling your Dreams of Becoming a Physician Begins at GW!
2004
Sarah Alvarez (N.Y.) I thought I’d complete my corps experience and then move on to law school. Here we are, year 13 in public education. I LOVE my job as principal of Chugiak Elementary School. We serve a low-income community and also have a Spanish immersion program. Grizzly bears are safe up here!
The one-year Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medicine Certificate program at GW offers a unique opportunity to build a strong foundation towards a rewarding career path. GW provides future physicians with: • Foundational coursework required by U.S. medical schools • Standardized test preparation • Access to real-world experiences for medical school applications This program is designed to support career changing students who need to complete the pre-requisite courses to apply to medical school. Interested in Additional Information? Email us at
[email protected]
helps schools, school districts, and education-facing organizations have courageous conversations about race and equity. Check us out at versededucationgroup.com.
Hiawatha Academies is a growing network of high-performing charter schools located in the heart of Minneapolis, MN.
Join our team. Apply today to roles open for the 2018-2019 school year. Our Equity Vision: To honor the humanity of all people, we actively disrupt systemic inequity in pursuit of an equitable world.
hiawathaacademies.org
Nicole Brassell (Greater Philadelphia) I started a new role at Mercer in compensation consulting. I joined the Give 502 organization, which funds an annual grant to a local nonprofit organization. Ava Chen (N.Y.) I am working with ChildCry, a ministry that uses 100 percent of donations to feed hungry kids around the world, and my own child arrived in October 2016. Roberto de Leon (N.Y.) I made a huge career shift from teaching in New York charter schools to rural, traditional public school teaching in California’s Central Valley. It’s been an adjustment, to say the least, but I love my work.
join our crew PROJECT-BASED•DEEPER LEARNING ARTS INTEGRATION•WHOLE-CHILD DIVERSE•HIGH-PERFORMING We’re searching for teachers and leaders to join our crew inWashington, DC. Learn more at learnwithtworivers.org. Apply at tworiverspcs.org/careers. T WO RIVERS PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOL
Stephanie Krauss (Phoenix) I joined Corporation for a Skilled Workforce as campaign director for Connecting Credentials, an initiative of more than 100 national organizations committed to making sure the U.S. credentialing marketplace affords all learners the chance to seek a credential that meets their needs and gets them ahead in life. Jeffrey McAlpine (Las Vegas) I have become a cage-busting teacher. I helped an administrative team design a unique school filled with embedded development throughout the school day for all teachers. Vinay Mullick (Chi–NWI) After 12+ years working in Chicago
Teach For America, in partnership with Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), FedEx, the United Negro College Fund, and the National Women’s Law Center, hosted “Let Her Learn: A Celebration of Black Girls and Women,” during the 2017 Congressional Black Caucus’s Annual Legislative Conference. The event honored six women working to close the gap in access and opportunity between black girls and their peers. Honorees are (L-R): Assistant Superintendent of the Philadelphia School District’s Opportunity Network, Christina Grant (N.Y. ’03); Senior Research Associate for the K-12 Advocacy team of UNCF, Dr. Meredith Anderson; Chief Talent and Equity Officer of the E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, Tai Dixon (Houston ’02); TFA Senior Managing Director of Black Community Alliances, Duanecia Evans; TFA Vice President of National Community Alliances, Brittany Packnett (D.C. Region ’07); and the Executive Director of the Young Womens Leadership Network, Jemina Bernard.
Public Schools, I took a regional executive director position with a social impact technology firm, UpMetrics. We do a lot of work with after-school providers and athletic programs to help them track key metrics. Carla Redelings (New Jersey) Leslie Garner Franklin (St. Louis) I married Sam Franklin (Bay Area ‘02), and in January 2017, we welcomed our son Ezekiel Ignatius Franklin. Leila Jerusalem (New Jersey) After nine years in New York, I moved back home to Los Angeles. My husband (we were newlyweds at institute) and I now have four children and remain active in education reform.
Meghan Kelly (Baltimore) I have triplet boys and live in Lake Tahoe. I’m the district manager of the Nevada Tahoe Conservation District. Marissa Rowley (Charlotte) My husband, Travis Rowley, my daughter, Layla Charlotte, and I welcomed Emmanuelle Rose to our family in March 2016. Jonathan Synold (Las Vegas) I started the Public Education Foundation’s Executive Leadership Program while being the principal at Advanced Technologies Academy, a magnet high school. Philip Valmores (Houston) I am a pediatrician in Mechanicsville, Va. My wife, Patty, and I have three children: Maddie, Charlie, and Ty.
2005
Ashleigh Collins (Las Vegas) I completed my Ph.D. in early childhood education at NYU (winter 2016), published two articles related to my research on kindergarten temperament and achievement (fall 2016/winter 2017), finished my fifth year of teaching early elementary school (2015-2016), staffed my eighth consecutive institute (summer 2016), and began serving as the director of content at Relay GSENew York. Erin Dukeshire (Miami–Dade) I moved to Portland, Maine, and began working as a coach with Great Schools Partnership. In my role, I support schools and districts throughout New England and enjoy
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connecting with alums in districts where I coach. Leniece Flowers (N.Y.) Delano Brissett (N.Y.) and I had twin girls (August and Ellison Brissett) in December 2016. Tami Hagglund (E.N.C.) My husband and I welcomed a daughter, Tatiana Rose, in March 2016, joining big siblings Roger and Juliet. Melissa Heatly (New Jersey) I took a faculty position at the University of Rochester Medical Center where my work focuses on interdisciplinary and innovative ways to advance children’s social and emotional health in schools and communities. Kathryn Mcgibbon (Mississippi) I have started a private psychotherapy practice in Orange and Farmington, Conn.
Richard Ramirez (N.Y.) I produced a series for Showtime called The Circus, covering the 2016 election. Simone Senior (Houston) I served as a managing director of program with Leading Educators while completing my M.B.A. at Tulane. Carrie Spitz (Chi–NWI) In my tenth year at Noble, now in the role of school director, what was really exciting is that we had more alumni in college or careers than we had students in our building. Seeing the impact of our work and finding better ways to engage and support our alumni has been invigorating.
and protection policy with the governor’s office and I direct the Thesis program, a two-year research experience for juniors and seniors, at the Episcopal School. Rochelle Van Dijk (R.G.V.) Adam Van Dijk (R.G.V.) and I relocated to the Twin Cities and welcomed our third child in the fall of 2016. Chloe Wiley (S. Louisiana) We founded Baton Rouge Bridge Academy in 2015 and had great success in our first two years, thanks to amazing families, teachers, and scholars. Come work with us. We need you. 2006
Katherine Sutcliffe (S. Louisiana) Charles Sutcliffe (S. Louisiana) and I welcomed our second daughter, Juliet Denham Sutcliffe, on Thanksgiving Day 2016. We live in Baton Rouge, La., where Charles works on coastal restoration
Chike Aguh (N.Y.) I am CEO of EveryoneOn, a national nonprofit dedicated to connecting the 64 million unconnected Americans (many of whom are children) to the internet at home.
Erica Harrison Arnold (Metro Atlanta) I began my sixth year of legal practice in Atlanta since graduating from the joint-degree law and policy program at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I continue to represent students, families, and school leadership through my pro bono relationships with the Truancy Intervention Project, KIPP Atlanta Collegiate High School, and the Atlanta Legal Aid Wills Project. In October 2017, Hampton University recognized me as part of its Forty Under 40 Alumni Recognition Society Class of 2017. Dana Davisson (Greater Philadelphia) I’m thrilled to have joined Relay GSE, Delaware as assistant professor of practice in July 2016, working on the Delaware Summer Intensive. Ashley Dylenski (N.Y.) After eight years teaching middle school
Are you ready to change the conversation around urban education? There is a critical shortage of effective leadership in today’s urban schools— and Accelerate Institute has two exceptional opportunities for urban school leaders to elevate their leadership game: The Ryan Fellowship is a rigorous three-year program for aspiring principals looking for the strategic skills needed to become transformational leaders. The Accelerator is built for existing principals and their leadership teams who are looking to move their school from good to great.
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68 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018 accelerateinstitute.org
Contact Erin Books, Senior Director of Talent and Partnership to begin your journey toward being a transformational leader: (312) 216-1719 or
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in the Bronx, I was accepted to Cardozo Law School. I interned with an organization that represents unaccompanied minors from Central America in immigration court.
FORBES 30 UNDER 30
Savanna Flakes (D.C. Region) I gave a TEDx Talk, “Inclusion and Fast Food: Designing a Meaningful Learning Experience.”
Seven Teach For America alumni made the 2018 list in the categories of education, social entrepreneurs, media, and law.
Ryan Frailich (Mississippi) I started a financial planning company to support teachers and other educators in taking control of their finances.
Fatema Basrai (San Antonio ‘12) is executive director of Leadership SAISD, an organization which offers free 9-month-long leadership training programs to anyone interested in working to create impactful change in the San Antonio educational landscape.
Dustin Hixenbaugh (R.G.V.) I completed a Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin and am excited to work with aspiring educators as a professor of English/English education at Bethany College (West Virginia). Monique Markoff (Bay Area) I’m getting my Ph.D. in education at Stanford University and would love to form partnerships with school leaders interested in research. Ashley Odham (N.Y.) Dustin Odham (St. Louis ’04) and I welcomed our second child, Noah Henry Odham, in May 2016. Noah joined big brother Luke. Laura Ritzler (L.A.) My husband, Michael, and I welcomed our second daughter, Gema Reyne, in January 2017. Eric Seling (St. Louis) I moved back to New Orleans to take the role of chief operating officer at Orleans Parish School Board. Rachael Sewards (Memphis) I am the reading teacher at Cochiti Middle School on the Cochiti reservation in New Mexico. I also am the gifted education teacher for my school, working with gifted kids from kindergarten through middle school. Megan Stoltz (N.Y.) I am a literacy coach at a public elementary school in San Francisco, and I have a business making and selling jewelry on the side. It’s a perfect mix of advocating for social justice while having a creative outlet.
Xiaohoa Michelle Ching (Bay Area ‘ 13) is the founder of Literator, which marries technology with educational expertise to help teachers gather, understand, and act on data about students’ reading skills. Literator has been used by more than 1,100 schools in 48 states and won first place at Startup Weekend EDU San Francisco in 2015. Reyna Montoya (Phoenix ‘14) is the founder of Aliento, which creates community healing through art and leadership building. Aliento invests in the well-being of undocumented children impacted by detention, deportation, and immigrant policy. Through education and leadership development training, Aliento offers a safe space where youth can become change agents in their communities. Montoya sits on the Teach For America National DACA Advisory Board. Liz Chen (E.N.C. ‘10) is cofounder of MyHealthEd. Chen and fellow corps member Vichi Jagannathan teamed up with fellow U.N.C. student Cristina Leos to launch the nonprofit MyHealthEd and its flagship product, Real Talk. The mobile app, designed for middle schoolers, uses real stories by real teens to address tough topics like sex, puberty, gender, relationships, bullying, and more. Clint Smith (D.C. Region ‘11) is a poet, author, a regular on Pod Save the People and a contributor to The New Yorker who uses personal stories to focus on issues of race, education, and the mass incarceration of black youth. His two TED talks have been viewed over 9 million times. Smith’s first collection of poems, Counting Descent, won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Tsion Gurmu (Miami-Dade ‘10) has focused on international human rights, immigration law, and civil rights in her career. As a legal fellow with African Services Committee, Gurmu provides legal representation for LGBT African immigrants, specifically serving those fleeing antihomosexuality legislation and those also affected by HIV/AIDS. Hernandez Stroud (Greater Philadlphia ‘10), just two years out of law school, serves as a visiting assistant professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. The school received national attention in 2014 for its decision to remove Confederate flags from campus. Stroud served as the president of the Black Law Students Association at the time of the controversy. Next year, he will serve as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
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Sarah Thomas Biglin (N.Y.) I am living and working as a public defender in Nassau County, N.Y. 2007
Joshua Adland (N.Y.) I work as a marketing manager at Baxter, a medical device company, and am active in iMentor, a college-prep program for low-income youth.
For the dancers, the math superstars, the struggling spellers. For the lovers of learning, the truth seekers, the game changers.
Sanjana Ballal-Link (G.N.O.–LAD) I got married to Ethan Link in March 2016. Lance Chapman (L.A.) I was able to extend my dermatology residency to my 2007 TFA classroom at Gompers Middle School and started a “Sun Safety Day” where we taught students about the impact of protecting their skin from the sun. Johnson & Johnson generously provided sunscreens for the kids. It was an education event that I am hoping to incorporate into the California middle school science curriculum.
I teach for you.
THE SCHOOL LEADERSHIP PROGRAM AT PENN M.S.Ed. in School Leadership + Principal Certification
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Penn’s School Leadership Program prepares you not just to become a school leader but to help shape the future of K–12 education.
Travis Dailey (N.Y.) After finally admitting to myself that I didn’t want to be a lawyer, I’m back in education at Cascade Middle School in the Highline School District, where I’m a re-engagement specialist running and developing the school’s restorative in-school suspension program. Jessica Franzone (Charlotte) I celebrated the birth of my second son, Crosby Michael Franzone, in November 2016.
The program is: • Designed for working professionals, completed in one year, mostly on weekends. • Led by experienced school leaders, including the esteemed Penn faculty and two dedicated mentors per student. • As relevant as it is rigorous, combining theory with practical applications in school settings. • Varied, with tracks culminating in an M.S.Ed. in School Leadership and/or meeting Pennsylvania state principal certification requirements.
ADMISSIONS IS ROLLING. START YOUR APPLICATION NOW. For more information, go to: www2.gse.upenn.edu/slp or contact the program at 215-746-2718 or
[email protected] (Priscilla Dawson, Co-Director) www2.gse.upenn.edu/slp
Allison Craney (Baltimore) I was promoted to consultant at a biotech strategy consulting firm in Boston and won a client impact award for a team-based project. I volunteer and coach with Girls on the Run in Boston.
…for building a better tomorrow! • Learner-centered classrooms. • Character education. • International-minded curriculum.
Join our team and discover how you can make a difference.
Learn more, apply here. mcauliffemanual.dpsk12.org/faculty/careers/
James Gribble (Charlotte) I am researching the impact computer coding has on the communication skills of elementary school children with autism. Krystal Hardy (S. Louisiana) I founded my educational consulting firm in November 2016. Jaclyn Karnowski (Phoenix) I
completed a coding boot camp; taught adults how to code at the same boot camp; and loved the wild, adventurous way we approached teaching and learning. Now, I work to build and publish online courses with Udemy. We are focused on creating access to learn what you want, wherever you are in the world. R.D. Leyva (Greater Philadelphia) I work for Latinos For Education. We connect Latinos in the education sector to professional development opportunities, highimpact roles in education, and other Latino education leaders across the country. Julia Melle (Mississippi) After a two-year higher education law fellowship, I joined Temple University as assistant university counsel in the summer of 2016. Jarred Pfeiffer (Charlotte) I received tenure at Cuesta College. I am proud to say that I am a tenured professor of ceramics. Renata Sanchez (Bay Area) I continue to work as an instructional coach for San Jose Unified, my placement district. I’m a state council representative at the California Teachers Association and am on the executive board of the San Jose Teachers Association. Melissa Strickland (South Dakota) Since 2012, I’ve worked for the Lakota Language Project (LLP) at Red Cloud Indian School in South Dakota. I’ve been very fortunate to walk with an amazing group of educators, community members, and language enthusiasts. Andrew Vega (L.A.) The school I lead in Boston was awarded a $100,000 prize by a local education nonprofit for demonstrating rapid growth in student achievement using methods that are both innovative and sustainable. I am proud we were able to do this work in a traditional public school district. We’re using the funds to increase student access to technology and create a sensory/ break space for students. Emily Whisenhunt (Connecticut) My husband, Tom, and I had a baby
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
In the Fall 2016 issue, Mark A. Cruz (South Dakota ’10) described his ambition to become the first enrolled tribal member to serve as chief of staff to a member of Congress. He didn’t quite make it; he became the second to hold that position when he took the job for Rep. Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican. In August, Rep. Rokita announced he’s running for Senate. Cruz notes, “To people’s knowledge, there hasn’t been an enrolled Senate chief of staff yet.”
boy, Nicholas Arthur Whisenhunt, in September 2016.
health-policy research for the Colorado Health Institute.
2008
Neil Dandavati (Bay Area) My experience with TFA woke me up to the health challenges facing the community I served. I finished studying health and education policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard and am a health care policy consultant with a firm called Acumen LLC, located near San Francisco.
Sandy Abraham (Chi–NWI) We wrapped up a $10 million U.S. DOE grant to support teacher and school leader effectiveness and retention. We found some really promising impacts. Lauren Apolito (Jacksonville) I teach fifth grade alongside another Jacksonville alum at Martin Luther King Elementary, and we make a great team. Angela Bass (Mississippi) My daughter began public school in Mississippi. I’ve added parent advocate to my list of roles, and it is the most challenging one of all. Corrine Brantner (St. Louis) I work for Zearn, a nonprofit with a vision of numeracy for all. I get to support schools and districts using Zearn to help all students learn and love math. Alexandra Caldwell (G.N.O.–LAD) After two years at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and malaria, based in Geneva, Switzerland, I got hitched and moved to Denver. I now ski, trail run, and conduct
Aaron Dunn (Houston) I finished my Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in May 2016 and worked for a year in the office of Sen. Gary Peters as a science and technology policy fellow through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Alyssa Elmore (Metro Atlanta) I completed my Ph.D. in educational policy and leadership with a specialization in cultural foundations of education from The Ohio State University in December 2015. My research focuses on the educational and social experiences of African American girls in high school. Benjamin Feinberg (L.A.) I started an education blog, www. schooldatanerd.com.
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JOIN OUR TEAM
Thomas Gordon (Kansas City) I purchased my first home with my wife and am running a new department at work.
Rushi Sheth (Colorado) I joined the College Board as executive director of the new AP Capstone diploma program.
Graham Johnson (N.Y.) I was awarded the Presidential Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for my work teaching music at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School.
Kara Smith (N.Y.) My partner and I started an escape room business, Sprightly Escapes, with a focus on team-building with educators and students: www. sprightlyescapes.com.
Craig Jones (L.A.) When I taught, I was humbled and honored to serve 160 students every year. However, last year 1.6 million students used the software I’ve been building at Formative (goformative.com).
Amy (Li) Tamura (Bay Area) My husband and I celebrated the birth of our second child, a girl named Mia.
Joey LaRoche (G.N.O.–LAD) I lead KIPP Renaissance High School, the first Recovery School District school since Hurricane Katrina to receive an A rating. I was named 2017 Louisiana High School Principal of the Year. Kasey Loeffel (N.Y.) I’ve moved back to Maine with my husband, Anthony, and son, Oliver. Cailin McDuff (N.Y.) I launched my life- and business-success coaching practice and am working with entrepreneurs and leaders to help them get out of their own way and into the lives and businesses that they want: www. cailinmcduff.com.
ANA MENEZES (NEW YORK '02) CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER
Lindsay Minton (Houston) I married my soulmate, Mercy Harper, in 2016. She supported me through the TFA application process, institute, and nine years of serving the children of Houston. Kamala Niffenegger (Phoenix) My family welcomed our second child, Adelyn Reese, in November 2016. Courtney Pelley (Bay Area) I’m the chief of staff of the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center in Massachusetts. Chris Schumerth (Jacksonville) I finished my M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of South Carolina and work as an academic advisor in the School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.
Andrew Wilson (Phoenix) Working in policy, government, and politics, I am pursuing a career in sustainable development program management and policy. I work in affordable housing access for low-income families in the NYC area. We also do outreach to schools surrounding at-risk families, health care, and affordable housing. Adam Wright (Phoenix) I joined Western Washington University as an assistant professor of economics in September 2016. 2009
Benjamin Alisuag (N.Y.) I designed and launched the first online M.B.A. for small business owners. We pair online learning resources with virtual coaching to help Americans take their businesses to the next level. Katherine Ammann (E.N.C.) My music studio has grown to serve more than 200 students per week, and many students are now playing or singing for local churches and organizations. Luke Baldwin (South Dakota) I graduated from veterinary school, pursuing my residency in poultry medicine. Heather Burleson (Houston) My husband, Daniel, and I welcomed a baby boy, Wyatt, in August 2016. Cari Cruz (Kansas City) I welcomed my first baby in April 2016.
KEEP YOUR DAY JOB As a corps member, Ann Davis (N.Y. ’14) traveled the world during her summers off. She had survived brain cancer in 2013 and valued her freedom to explore and live without regrets. She developed an idea: What if professionals didn’t need summers off in order to live someplace new? What if they could travel and contribute to the greater good, all while keeping their day jobs? In 2016, Davis moved to Peru with plans to turn her idea into reality. In January, Davis opened Venture with Impact, linking professionals with a pro bono project or a nonprofit partner in a country where he or she will volunteer for eight months. Davis and her team also connect volunteers with apartments and office spaces so they can continue to work— remotely—at their jobs in the states. Venture with Impact has sent more than 40 people, about a third of whom are Teach For America alumni, to Peru and Colombia. Davis is working to connect volunteers with projects in Thailand and Portugal as well. Projects vary based on experiences and interests. A civil rights lawyer hosted workshops on international rights, for example. An IT specialist helped design a nonprofit’s website. Davis says seeing volunteers’ personal growth is the most gratifying aspect of the work. “So much change can happen when you’re working abroad, making a difference.” (Above) Three of the first professionals to try an impact venture.
Anthony DeRosa (Connecticut) I manage two teams providing customer service to Google’s advertisers. Sari (Gardner) Fein (N.Y.) My husband, Casey, and I welcomed a baby girl, Mira Elizabeth, in June. We live in Newton, Mass., where I am a Ph.D. student in Bible and ancient Near East and a lecturer in the English department at Brandeis University. Jennifer Glodowski (R.G.V.) I am an active member of my school leadership team and have helped in the investigation and implementation of a new 50-50 dual-language bilingual program (Spanish-English).
Thomas Hakim (Indianapolis) I accepted the role of assistant principal at Cold Spring School, the Environmental Studies Magnet School of Indianapolis Public Schools, in September 2016. John-Damien Huntley (L.A.) I’m supporting first-year corps members both as an alumnus and as a professor at LMU.
Ready to answer the call? Launch a new Catholic school. Teach at a charter school of virtue. Pave the path to college and heaven.
Seton Education Partners is committed to expanding opportunities for disadvantaged children in America to receive an academically excellent and vibrantly Catholic education. We’re looking for mission-driven leaders like you who want to start or grow schools that help underserved children develop knowledge, virtue, and faith. OPPORTUNITIES IN NYC, PHILADELPHIA, MILWAUKEE, CINCINNATI, CLEVELAND, AND MORE.
Aria Jefferson (Houston) I got married to my best friend and fellow corps member, Lyric Flood (Houston). Miriam Keil (Mississippi) After four and a half years selecting children’s books at First Book in D.C., I moved to California and work in publishing.
www.SetonPartners.org
Emani Richmond Nashville ‘16
Anuj Khatiwada (Houston) I’m still trying to find a watering hole that is as inviting as West Alabama Ice House. Shichao Liang (Massachusetts) I started working as founding computer science teacher at Brooke Charter Schools. It’s amazing to see what ninth graders can do with their code. Eric Michaelsen (G.N.O.–LAD) I’m practicing Japanese acupuncture in a private practice in Albuquerque, N.M. I have a community slidingscale clinic and am interested in partnering with community groups in the area to bring trauma relief to underserved populations. Marion Oliver (Nashville) My husband, Zack Oliver (Nashville), and I welcomed our son Hayes in June 2016. Tamara Panowicz (Kansas City) The Luzerne County Advocacy Center, where I am the first family and child advocate, received accreditation status through the National Children’s Alliance, which helped us be approved for three grants that allowed our center to fund four full-time positions. We saw 532 children in 2016, all due to allegations of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or extreme neglect. These children come in for forensic interviews, and we provide advocacy and medical services at no cost to families. Kelsi Peacock (St. Louis) At Peacock Family Chiropractic, we are excited to serve in a local high school by providing complimentary adjustments to athletic teams. We also have been guest speakers in the health and career classrooms and elementary schools to help students understand the principle of the spine’s alignment being key to health and to encourage them to consider pursuing chiropractic as a future career.
Contact us to find out more!
rsed.org/joinus Bay Area • Milwaukee • Nashville • Washington, DC
@RocketshipEd
ad litem education staff attorney at Children’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., after completing an Equal Justice Works fellowship in Chicago that was focused on securing appropriate educational services for elementary-age children with mental health needs. Mackenzie Sanchez (Dallas–Fort Worth) My husband and I welcomed our baby girl Andrea Marcelle Sanchez on our fourth wedding anniversary in October 2016. Christine Seyfert (Bay Area) I started a mobile middle school called NOMAD in San Francisco, on a school bus we are converting into a classroom on wheels and with a makerspace as our home base. We spend as much time out learning in our community as we possibly can rather than inside a traditional classroom. Johanna Valente (Phoenix) I graduated from Columbia University as a family nurse practitioner. I work in New York City at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center with high-risk LGBTQ adolescents. Elizabeth Weiss (Greater Philadelphia) I’m teaching at an alternative high school in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. It is part of the Big Picture network that prioritizes social-emotional learning, internship opportunities, and 21stcentury skills. For the first time in my eight years as an educator I LOVE teaching! Hui Zhang (Chi–NWI) I graduated from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and became an orthopedic surgery resident at Geisinger Health System. 2010
Ashley Rector (Mississippi) Brett Rector (Mississippi) and I moved to Dallas and welcomed our son James Andrew (Jack) in October 2016.
Omar Aziz (Miami–Dade) I am on the board of the Afghan-American Conference and founded a group called The Samovar Network, which addresses issues impacting our diaspora community.
Lee Robbins (D.C. Region) I accepted a position as a guardian
Robin Beck (Metro Atlanta) My business partner Carmelle Kendall
and I launched Neighborly, a greeting card company created with the goal of making every day a little brighter. Cards can be found at neighborlypaper.com. Katherine Clemens (Phoenix) In my role as assistant director for youth entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, I’m responsible for designing and implementing programs for educators and students related to learning through design thinking, entrepreneurship, and applied projects. In partnership with the Verizon Foundation, I led the development of the Verizon Innovative Learning design thinking program, a national teachertraining program that operates in five states, services more than 70 teachers, and impacts thousands of students. Stephanie Crosier (Detroit) Two alums took on a school turnaround as principal and assistant principal and now the school (our school) is a level-one high school. The school was up for closure and is not only staying open but also is now a quality school for kids. Katy DeBruin Plencner (Phoenix) I am working for the State Charter School Commission office in Hawai‘i to support 21 Title I schools on five islands in their schoolimprovement efforts. Thomas Edwards (Mississippi) I started my residency in otolaryngology-head and neck Surgery (ENT) at Emory. I look forward to advocating for the education system as I complete my surgical training. Jacqueline Erickson Russell (Kansas City) In Kansas City, we had the privilege of launching the KC Teacher Residency, Kansas City PLUS (a new principal pipeline with TNTP), and KC Leadership Cohort (with Relay GSE) to give all educators career paths and make sure that ALL kids here receive a strong education. Robert Glotfelty (Baltimore) My robotics team was awarded “top overall robotics program” in Baltimore City for two years in a row.
Antoinette [Cuaderes] and Paul Strain (both Bay Area ’11) welcomed their twin boys, Andreas Gus (left) and Francisco Jack (right), in September 2017.
Derrick Houck (Greater Philadelphia) Olney Charter High School in Philadelphia successfully unionized. Several teachers from the 2010 and 2011 TFA corps were heavily involved in these efforts. Jonathan Johnson (G.N.O.–LAD) The school I founded, Rooted School, launched in August. Our team spent the previous three years incubating this model that we believe could have game-changing potential for our community. Jerome Joseph (Houston) I got
married in April 2016 to my college girlfriend. Katie Keafer (Houston) I became a principal at Longfellow Elementary School in HISD. Valieria Koss (G.N.O.–LAD) I relocated to Florida, where I joined the team at the Dan Marino Foundation in Fort Lauderdale as a technology instructor preparing adults with disabilities for their Microsoft certification exam. Jenny Maenpaa (Massachusetts) I founded an executive coaching
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Judy Bransford (Greater Tulsa) I’m an administrative dean in Orlando, Fla., and love everything about the diverse community I serve. Lisa Brodie (Mississippi) I began working full time with PowerMyLearning, a nonprofit organization that strives to foster educational technology and technology access for all students and families.
One day is closer than ever. 209 schools. Nearly 90,000 students. More than 10,000 alumni.
Ricardo Campos Sanchez Jr. (L.A.) The WASC accreditation process feels like being a first-year corps member ALL OVER AGAIN!
Carla Rivera-Cruz (D.C. Region ’12) celebrated the launch of her education company, CRC Education Services, and published a journal for teachers called 9 Weeks of Gratitude for the Reflective Teacher. She also leads a new social entrepreneurship class at a Phoenix high school and started a podcast, EDpiphany. Rivera-Cruz can be reached at
[email protected] for more information about her entrepreneurial work.
firm for women called Forward in Heels Executive Coaching. We empower badass women who want to excel at what they do, stand tall, and own their value so they can light up the world.
Josephine Santiago (St. Louis) I am working remotely in Peru while participating in a program called Venture with Impact. It’s a live, work, and volunteer business started by another alum.
Stephen Thomas (Dallas–Fort Worth) I’m teaching dual-credit business and technology classes at the first P-TECH high school in Texas (Dallas ISD, Seagoville High School).
Aaron Massey (S. Louisiana) I am fulfilling my life’s dream of opening a school in the community I was raised in. With the help of TFA St. Louis, I found the right organization at the right time.
Emily Schoch (South Dakota) I started my pediatric residency at Geisinger Medical Center, where I continue to work with children and parents during times of critical illness and during routine wellchild visits. My team is working to increase access to quality medical care for children in our rural community.
David Whitfield (Colorado) I’m a school counselor at a large public high school, and on the side, I’m a bow technician and archery instructor.
Meghan McDoniel (St. Louis) I am working on research studies that look at child, parent, and community factors that influence school readiness in children. Michael Noshay (Greater Tulsa) I’m working to provide technology infrastructure for streamlined navigation of community social and clinical resources. Rachel Quinn (Indianapolis) Hanno Becker (Indianapolis) and I got married in July 2016.
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Jonah Seligman (G.N.O.–LAD) After spending a year teaching in Malaysia, I returned to New Orleans to attend Tulane University Law School. Emily Taylor (Memphis) In 2016, my husband and I welcomed our first child, Rowan. He spent seven months in the hospital, but every day has been a miracle with him.
2011
Samantha Abrams (Massachusetts) I am working as a restorative justice and PBIS coach for all of the middle and K-8 schools in San Francisco Unified School District, and loving it. Patrick Albano (Memphis) I completed a policy fellowship with TeachPlus. Jourdin Barber (Baltimore) I welcomed a son, Knight Jordan, in September 2016.
Brendan Chan (San Antonio) I became the executive director of Edu21C, the nonprofit foundation of education philanthropist Ted Dintersmith. Ted produced an education documentary called Most Likely to Succeed and cowrote a book of the same name with Tony Wagner. Anthony Covington (Las Vegas) I live in Seattle, where I manage on-campus tutoring and career services at Renton Technical College. My wife and I love being back in the northwest, but we do miss our TFA friends in Las Vegas. Sean D’Alfonso (Baltimore) I moved to New York and married my college sweetheart in September on Long Island. Fellow Baltimore corps members were part of the special day, including Brendan Smith, Jimmy Morrissey, Allie DeRosa, and Andrew Matschiner. I am teaching and directing the community service program at Iona Preparatory in New Rochelle, N.Y., and am enrolled in the Ed.D. program at Seton Hall University. Andrew D’Antonio (N.Y.) I started the Adaptive Music Partnership, a program through the Community Music School of Springfield, Mass., that partners with local public schools to provide music education for special education classrooms. Whitney Easton (Bay Area) I finished my master’s degree in clinical psychology, emphasizing work with the Latino community.
EMANI’ LEWIS KIPP Bay Area Schools alumna, Spelman College ‘15
join our team. KIPP.ORG/CAREERS
ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 77
I’m a high-school-based therapist, and I absolutely love it.
Work Hard. Go to College. Change the World!
Rebecca Feinglos (Dallas–Fort Worth) Sean Planchard (Dallas– Fort Worth) and I were married on July 4, 2015. We are incredibly thankful to TFA DFW for bringing us together. Aaron Frumin (Colorado) Come volunteer on a build with us in New Orleans at unCommon Construction, where students from different high schools join a diverse team to earn hourly pay and school credit for building a house in a semester: www. unCommonConstruction.org Elizabeth Gerace (Connecticut) As a middle school clinician with a teaching background, I’ve found comprehending and responding appropriately to trauma is integral for classroom success. No learning happens without relationships and understanding. Arturo Gonzalez (New Mexico) I entered the legal profession but still feel strongly engaged in the TFA mission. I devote most of my free time to helping with youth groups, nonprofits, and collegepreparation organizations in the hope that I can continue to make the positive impact I made while being a teacher. Ashley Haskins (South Dakota) I became an equipment operator at Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Station. I serve my community as a firefighter/EMT for my volunteer fire department, as a library board trustee and treasurer, and as the high school mock trial coach. Felicia Nicole Hebert-Ford (Phoenix) I won the United Way of Central Ohio’s Pitch to Ditch Poverty grant. I am the founder and president of a nonprofit organization called Student Success Stores serving students in Columbus, Ohio. We opened resource pantries in three Columbus city middle schools, where students can shop for free for food, clothing items, school supplies, and hygiene items. Lora Hutelmyer (South Carolina)
78 ONE DAY | W INTER 2018
David Li (Massachusetts ’09) married Justina Chen in St. Helena, California. Friends and family came from all over the world to celebrate, including a classy TFA contingent, pictured here (L-R): Jeffrey Chen (Hawai‘i ’09), Amy [Li] Tamura (Bay Area ’08), Evin Nembhard (Massachusetts ’09), Andrew Ly (Massachusetts ’09), Justina Chen, David Li (Massachusetts ’09), Brittany [Jordan] Mauney (Massachusetts ’09), Hali Castleman (Massachusetts ’10), Lindsey Mayer (Massachusetts ’09), and Alan Ai (Hawai‘i ’08).
I have been working to get kids outside and engaged in the outdoors through kayaking, biking, hiking, climbing, and more! Yin Lin (N.Y.) I’m the co-founder of SheWorx, the global collective for ambitious female entrepreneurs and change-makers. We are building a stronger start-up ecosystem for 20,000 female entrepreneurs around the world by creating spaces for valuable mentorships, relationships, mindsets, and skill sets to develop through curated events. Sara Lynch (Nashville) The Supreme Court ruled that a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole for youth constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. As a law student, I’ve had the honor of working with two individuals to advocate for resentencing pursuant to this ruling.
Edward “Mike” Montgomery (L.A.) I’m practicing real estate and zoning law in Chicago. Randy Narvaez (Greater Philadelphia) I am an assistant principal of instruction at Mastery Charter Schools of Camden, N.J. It feels good to continue to serve the community I served as a corps member. Randy Pease (Indianapolis) I entered my third season with Indiana Repertory Theatre and my first as education director and senior staff member. In this role, I oversaw arts programming that serves more than 40,000 Hoosier students from pre-K through college. Eric Pickersgill (Charlotte) Angie Pickersgill (Charlotte) and I welcomed our first child, Corbin Tate, in December 2016 and are excited to add another supporter of educational equality to this incredible team.
Stephanie Rash (E.N.C.) I’m proud to be on the launch team for America’s first computer science immersion solution for elementary and middle schools. We integrate programming into classroom instruction to give students a wellrounded understanding of how to utilize technology to create. Zoe Riebli (Charlotte) One way I stayed involved in the community was by leading four nonprofits in a strategic planning workshop. We used business strategies to help the nonprofits set vision-aligned goals and create corresponding action plans. Eric Sarb (Chi–NWI) Working at Gateway Middle School has shown me that students from all different socioeconomic backgrounds can come together and learn at high levels. GMS fosters the unique passions of teachers and allowed me to have break-dance and skateboard clubs.
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JOIN OUR TEAM
Anthony Schultz (Colorado) I’m studying international relations at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, where I’m pursuing a career in documentary photojournalism. Mariel Stein (Baltimore) I teach in New Jersey at Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County as a preschool teacher in both Judaic and general studies.
Nick Burgmeier (Kansas City) I’m working as a math instructional coach at the Kauffman School.
Grant Swanson (South Dakota) I graduated with a master’s degree in English through Middlebury College’s Breadloaf School of English.
Devon Cantwell (Alabama) I am working to expand access to computer science education in Mississippi. I am developing curriculum for Generation Code and am launching coding and robotics programs and computer science camps.
Danna Thomas (Baltimore) I’m the founder of Happy Teacher Revolution and continue my work as an advocate for the mental health and wellness of teachers as a way to help kids.
Margaret Cearley (Kansas City) By obtaining an M.P.H. degree, I hope to understand the intersection of health and education and to improve the lives of our youth across America.
2012
Joseph Ciesielski (Oklahoma City) School leadership—the journey to lead a school is one of struggle and pain. But in the end, it is to end the struggle and pain of others.
Zaid Abuhouran (Baltimore) I started a position at the U.S. Agency for International Development, serving in the Bureau for the Middle East as a desk officer for USAID’s mission in the West Bank and Gaza.
MONICA VASQUEZ (LOS ANGELES '94) CHIEF TALENT OFFICER
Margaret Brenner (Bay Area) I live in the Boston area, where I work for an education technology company as a director of partner support.
Kevin Argueta (Hawai‘i) I am a cohort participant in the Teacher Leader Academy in Hawai‘i, learning and growing among many talented educators. Meghan Barnett (Oklahoma City) I’m developing a bilingual mathematics program at an internationally staffed school on Okinawa, Japan, as a junior high mathematics teacher. Kelsey Bitney (Twin Cities) I started a classroom library from scratch and, through fundraising efforts, added over $4,000 worth of books to it, with special attention on diverse perspectives (authors and main characters). Krysten Bonacci (Phoenix) I switched from teaching ESL students in an upper-elementary school setting in Arizona to teaching Spanish at a high school level in Ohio. I love knowing that regardless of the age level, I am happy in this profession.
Nyzuria Conner (Dallas–Fort Worth) Still Quackin! #DFW Myles Crandall (Colorado) I was married to Jessica Grey in 2016 with many alumni in attendance. I teach at Salt Lake Center for Science Education. Robert Dean (Dallas–Fort Worth) I’m the senior associate of research and evaluation at Teach For All, where I support the global network of partner organizations to develop and implement systems to enhance evidence-based decision making. I graduated with a master’s of international development policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.
Adam Dreyfuss (Hawai‘i) I am interested in creating socialjustice media that helps to create discussion around the issues shaping our society today. After the corps I attended film school at USC and founded a political arts organization in New York City. Nicole Eckhardt (N.Y.) I teach in Bolivia at an international school. My experiences here have been very different than they were while teaching in the Bronx. Now I find myself in a bubble of wealth, in an overall very poor country. Michelle Feldman (Miami–Dade) I earned my master’s in clinical psychology, working toward my doctorate.
Where Progressive Education Begins. Take the Next Step for Your Career. Apply Now for our Leadership Programs.
Principals Institute (MSEd or EdM): This 16-month program prepares aspiring leaders for a range of leadership positions, including principal, assistant principals, and other administrative positions requiring an SBL. The program is designed to prepare leaders to work in a range of school settings from Pre-K to 12th grade, and has a strong focus on urban education and effective strategies for educating diverse learners. Coursework is grounded in progressive approaches and social justice to support aspiring leaders from NYC schools.
Leadership in Mathematics Education (MSEd): This program is designed for teachers, coaches, or administrators who want to become school leaders, with an intensive focus on mathematics. Candidates spend three consecutive Julys in residency at Bank Street, and the two intervening years engaged in guided field assignments at their school sites.
Leadership for Educational Change (MSEd or EdM): This flexible program enrolls students from across the spectrum of school settings – K-12, public and private, urban and suburban and qualifies graduates for a wide variety of leadership roles in New York City and beyond. The program emphasizes meaningful change in creating collaborative, learner-centered, democratic communities.
Weston Fillman (Baltimore) Since moving to San Francisco in March 2015, I’ve worked on diversity programs in staffing at Google and am passionate about the next generation of technologists. Brittany Gendron (South Carolina) I’m an instructional technology facilitator in North Carolina, working to ensure all students have access to incredible learning experiences transformed by technology. John Grab (Jacksonville) Teach For America Jacksonville continues to grow both in qualitative and quantitative capacity for change, and I count it a privilege to be a part of the movement here in the 904. Stacie Gregorius (Metro Atlanta) I started my master’s in educational leadership and look forward to expanding my impact within the Atlanta public school system.
Thomas DeLay (G.N.O.–LAD) I’m a member of the 2017 Fishman Prize Honor Roll.
Theresa Harper (San Antonio) I am truly on a continued journey within the movement; every day that I continue to work and serve our families reveals more potential opportunities to support them.
Walker Donaldson (Colorado) My wife and I were married over Labor Day weekend. Many (including five out of eight of my groomsmen) who celebrated with us are friends from the corps.
Faith Heaphy (Connecticut) I’m working in the crazy world of news. Not as exciting as being a teacher, but it has its moments. As a producer, I create a broadcast that airs for local viewers in Boston.
Connecting Education with
Social Justice since 1916
Questions? Contact Anthony Conelli, PhD Chair, Educational Leadership
[email protected] / 212-875-4710
Alex Maduena (L.A.) I’m working on ways to validate student experiences and backgrounds in the history classroom by reforming curriculum to reflect the population of our students. I sincerely believe that by understanding and valuing their histories students will be better prepared to secure their futures.
local policy. My hope is that my research will address systematic injustices in the American economy and empower the communities that TFA serves. Cassandra St. Vil (N.Y.) After my corps experience at KIPP, I joined the Peace Corps as an education volunteer in Rwanda. I taught education majors as a visiting lecturer in multicultural education at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar.
Yousuf Marvi (Las Vegas) I’m getting fifth graders hooked on robotics. Sara McGuire (Jacksonville) I’m teaching kindergarten in Yakima, Wash., married with a beautiful baby girl. Getting my administrator certification to open up an earlylearning center locally.
George Dong (Chi-NWI ’09), a technical recruiter at Google, helps to organize a “TFA Googlers in the Bay Area” bi-monthly gathering. Recent attendees included (back row, L-R): Charlene Clee (Bay Area ’11), Melanie Moranski (Houston ’13), Lena McAfee (Metro Atlanta ’07), George Dong, Gerald Jean-Baptiste (Miami-Dade ’12), Sarah Kelly (N.Y. ’14), June Choi (Bay Area ’14), and Neal Stewart (Miami-Dade ’12). In the first row (L-R): Amie Ninh (Chicago ’12), Anna Horrocks (Phoenix ’14), Jen Mease (DFW ’10), Angela Crocker, Ricardo Horna (Baltimore ’11), and Jessica Cola (Greater Nashville ’14).
Every day is different, new, insane. My aim is to always write and pick stories in a way that is fair and objective. Nicole Hensel (Colorado) I cofounded an organization, REENVISIONED, that is asking 10,000 people across the country to answer the questions that matter the most: What makes a good life? What is the purpose of school in creating that good life? Check us out at www.re-envisioned.org or @ reenvisioned. Kevin Hoffman (L.A.) I’m working on the blended learning team at Aspire Public Schools in Oakland, Calif., actively consulting with principals and stakeholders on how technology can be best leveraged to supplement excellent teaching practices. Daniel King (L.A.) I attended a three-month intensive software
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engineering boot camp and then took a position in software engineering at MedCircle, a technology company in Westwood, Los Angeles. Julie Lemanski (E.N.C.) I’m living in Durham, N.C., and working in a middle school as a literacy coach. Dmitri Leybman (Indianapolis) I’m excited to be providing data and analysis support to a portfolio of community schools within the New York City area. This important work is permitting me to engage my passion in rigorous data-driven analysis as well as offering strong engagement assistance to an outstanding collection of schools and their team leaders. Dory Knight-Ingram (Detroit) I published a story for University of Michigan News about a new archive launched amid widespread
efforts to preserve valuable government data. Lauren Koster (Connecticut) I am pursuing my J.D. at Boston College Law School with an emphasis on public interest work. Anna Kummerlowe (Colorado) At STRIVE Preparatory Schools in Denver, our family engagement team is dedicated to engaging and empowering our families to become leaders and changemakers within Denver Public Schools. We work with families to train them as neighborhood leaders and enact true social and educational change for their families. Linda Lopez (E.N.C.) I’m excited to be on a journey towards educational leadership through a partnership with Broward County Public Schools and FAU.
Esther Pew (G.N.O.–LAD) I’m going to graduate school and will have two master’s degrees by May 2018. I’ve been working on local political campaigns including raising the minimum wage, expanding health care coverage, and implementing universal family care in the state of Maine. Emily Reinhardt (Baltimore) I married Morgan Dorn (Baltimore) in November 2016. We are happy as can be in Rhode Island! Rupa Rihan (New Jersey) My husband and I welcomed a baby girl, Aanika, born on Christmas Eve 2016. Megan Roper (N.Y.) I am working on a completely student-choicebased approach to teaching art called Teaching for Artistic Behavior. Students get to choose from a wide variety of mediums, like drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, and fiber arts, and come up with their own original ideas for projects. Khloe Scurry (Dallas–Fort Worth) I worked on opening a school, CityLab High School, in Dallas with a focus on socioeconomic diversity and integration. David Simpson (Alabama) I started a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University. I a plan to research income inequality, economic mobility, and state and
IN MEMORIAM Preston Smith (Bay Area ’01), co-founder and CEO of Rocketship Public Schools, writes: On December 4, 2017, Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary Principal Jason Fromoltz (Bay Area ’08) unexpectedly passed away due to natural causes. Jason joined Rocketship in May 2008 as a Teach For America corps member. As a founding second grade STEM teacher at Rocketship’s first school, Mateo Sheedy, it was quickly evident that Jason was meant to be a teacher. Over the year, Jason built an awesome classroom community and realized strong results with his Rocketeers. In January 2009, Jason answered the call to leave the downtown Mateo Sheedy community and start something new on the eastside of San Jose at Rocketship Sí Se Puede. Over the next five years, Jason helped build a special school community at Si Se Puede as an academic dean and assistant principal. In 2014, Jason returned to Rocketship Mateo Sheedy as principal. Year after year, Rocketship Mateo Sheedy is one of the top schools in the area for disadvantaged students. The legacy Jason leaves behind extends far beyond the thousands of Rocketeers he has served over the past nine years. His tenacity and vibrant spirit also live on through the lineage of teachers and leaders he has helped develop and grow. Though he left us much too soon, the ripples of his impact go far beyond his short life and will continue for many years to come.
To share news of the death of an alum, please send a note to
[email protected]. If you are not a member of the family, please include family contact information. You may include information on memorial gifts.
Kaleb Underwood (Houston) I teach chemistry and AP Chemistry at Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart in Houston. John Weber (Nashville) I’m in law school learning how I can continue to make a difference in education. Plus, I’m writing for the Journal of Law and Education and teaching legal writing to 11th graders. Benjamin Wilinsky (Chi–NWI) I serve as an executive director at CCS, a nonprofit fundraising and development firm. 2013
Saul Alcineus Jr. (Jacksonville) As a math teacher teaching ESOL students who are mostly newly arrived immigrants, it is a great joy to see their growth and their adaptation after a few months. Lately, with the new immigration law and crackdown, many are scared to be deported, and they now stay home. It really breaks my heart to see my children losing their joy of learning because of fear of deportation. John Bailey (Baltimore) It’s been an interesting journey from the classroom to curriculum writing. I understand the many hoops to jump through, and it’s nice being a part of the brainstorm process. Temitope Balogun (D.C. Region) We were blessed with a baby boy, Naseer Oluwatobi Balogun, in December 2016. Big sister Hameeda loves taking care of him. Michael Benassini (Las Vegas) I’m freeing detained children from
U.S. custody while we still can! #UCDavisCivilRightsClinic Alexandra Bollaidlaw (Bay Area) I joined Summit Public Schools, where I had a chance to found a new school and take on leadership opportunities back in my placement region, Richmond! Outside of school, I lead a scaling and strategy consulting project with the East Bay College Fund so they can provide more scholarships and grants for Oakland students and support them in success through college. Katherine Bracher (Dallas–Fort Worth) I made the transition from teacher to school leader and love every day in my role. Finding new ways to expand my impact on the lives of kids in DFW keeps me motivated, and I love inspiring the teachers I support just as I did with the kids in my former classrooms. Jennifer Butwin (Connecticut) I am in law school and miss teaching every day. But I know that this is just one step I need to take in order to play my part in the larger picture. The phone calls and texts I get from my students keep me motivated. Chanel Cochran-Moore (Metro Atlanta) I took on a new role leading an educational technology company in Dallas. We teach students, teachers, and administrators how to effectively use technology in the classroom. Mike Danaher (Mississippi) I am in leadership for a program known as Helping Hands for Forgotten Feet, a free monthly clinic where medical students like myself provide medical care and education for the homeless of Syracuse, N.Y. I connected with a health insurance navigator to attend our clinics and ensure that all of our patients are signed up for free health insurance and have a primary care physician to build a continuity of care. Diamonique Felder (Milwaukee) I serve as the alumni coordinator at Milwaukee College Preparatory School. I am also an alumna of Milwaukee College Prep, so it feels great to see things come full circle.
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Allie Kallmann (Kansas City) I’m working on my M.A. in early childhood education policy at Teachers College, but I’m keeping my ties with my Kansas City corps home by doing research on early childhood systems there. #tfakc Staci Kelly (San Antonio) I have been pursuing a master of science in education through Johns Hopkins School of Education. This program, in partnership with TFA, has pushed me to become a better educator in order to have a lasting impact on students. Margeaux Lavoie (Hawai‘i) I am working in Shanghai, China, at a progressive start-up educational enterprise. We invested in creating VR platforms to bring our public speaking and communication curriculum to children outside of Shanghai using any smartphone device. Graham Johnson (N.Y. ’08) received the 2017 Presidential Citation award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his work teaching music at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School (WHEELS) in Manhattan. Johnson accepted his award on November 9, 2017, with his wife, Ellerie. Johnson has taught at WHEELS for eight years. He also plays piano with jazz groups in New York City.
all making so that “One Day” becomes a reality.
Kaleigh Finn (Dallas–Fort Worth) My students presented to 12 local business leaders to make the case for investing in our classroom. They got more than $4,000 donated to our room for 30 tablets and headphones to support our flipped classroom.
it my goal to positively impact the city that I cherish so dearly. Having my connections with TFA and education sectors has greatly benefitted my understanding of this city, which is something that set me apart from my fellow med school classmates.
April Flores (R.G.V.) This past summer, I participated with Leadership for Educational Equity in Dallas. This was the best experience! I was able to work directly with community prosecution in the Dallas City Attorney’s Office.
Allen Granelli (South Dakota) I have been working with a small team that was awarded a $3.6 million DOE grant to build and develop a new alternative school in our district. I transitioned into the role of “enrichment coordinator,” with major goals of increasing career and technical education as well as the development of an internship program for high school students on the reservation.
Kristen Hunt (E.N.C.) I’ve joined the mortgage industry. While the transition from teaching to mortgage banking may seem like a 180-degree shift, it’s truly highlighted just how many facets of the American experience have been impacted by social and racial marginalization. I have been able to utilize the insight and knowledge I gained as a corps member in ensuring that all groups have equal access to the American dream of home ownership.
Claudia Hinojosa (San Antonio) I’m working in a school where my co-worker, direct manager, and principal are alums. This makes working much more meaningful, because I can see the push we’re
Parker Jackson (Oklahoma City) I taught a unit called gender equality to my eighth graders. I was repeatedly blown away by how kind, loving, and accepting this next generation can be.
Krysta Frye (New Jersey) After teaching for three years in my placement school in Camden, N.J., I pursued a degree in medicine at Cooper University School of Medicine in Camden. Before the corps, I never would I have thought I’d stay in my placement region, but I have loved being in this city and every day make
Aaron Holman (Arkansas) I’m studying to become a litigation attorney.
William Lenz (Connecticut) In my fourth year at my placement school, I coached a before-school running program that has logged at least 3,000 miles a year. Claudia Martinez (Miami–Dade) In my fourth year of teaching I worked on the LEE Policy Advisor Fellowship in the office of a local school board member. TaLisa Maxwell (Memphis) I’m serving as the assistant principal, grade-level chair, and eighth grade English teacher at KIPP Memphis University Middle School. In this hybrid role, I also manage the special education teacher. Rachel McGrain (Baltimore) I started Green Street Academy’s first-ever instrumental music program. My hope is for this to be the start of a much larger initiative to bring back strong music education programs in all schools in Baltimore City. John David Merrill (Baltimore) Married my indu-boo (met at TFA induction) Grace O’Malley (Baltimore) in June 2016. Heidi Moeller (Connecticut) My third graders built a community culture by engaging in restorative
justice circles. My kiddos truly enjoyed having a safe space to discuss their feelings around topics that can be very difficult to understand and overcome. It made academic time more successful because they were not letting social problems get in the way as much.
Trevor Rockhill (South Carolina) I’m continuing my impact with an excellent group of people at the Trinity River Mission in West Dallas.
Brooke Myers (Greater Tulsa) I launched an organization called Together America, which offers college and career preparation through expanded learning opportunities in a variety of sectors.
David Samsel (G.N.O.–LAD) I attend LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans and am working toward a master’s in public health at the School of Public Health of LSU-NO.
Jasmine Newson (Charlotte) I have become involved as an alum with the Alumni Advisory Board and Exploring Leadership in St. Louis. Both allow me to feel connected to the movement even though I am no longer directly in the classroom.
Lindsey Rowntree (St. Louis) I’m teaching 10th grade English at Uncommon Charter High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
Danielle Sanfield (Miami–Dade) I am pursuing a post-baccalaureate in pre-health sciences to go on to become a physician assistant. Joseph Schmidt (Milwaukee) I moved to Botswana to continue working as a secondary science teacher.
Taylor Parks (Hawai‘i) I continue to work at my placement school in Waianae. After two years of teaching second grade math, I took the plunge and went back to sixth grade (my original placement). The switch from English to math was a welcome change. My husband and I recently moved from Makaha to Kapolei.
Kavitha Subramanian (N.Y.) I am a medical student at UCSD School of Medicine and hope to pursue a career in pediatrics or OB/GYN with a focus on urban health care.
Gabrielle Patton (San Antonio) I am the central Texas curriculum lead for Idea Public Schools’ sixth grade ELA team.
Emily Urminski (Nashville) My husband and I moved to the Twin Cities area from Nashville.
Meghan Perry (Arkansas) I began a new position with Bottom Line working with low-income/ first-generation freshmen and sophomores in college. Heather Price (Oklahoma City) I am in my fourth year of teaching. After my corps commitment in Oklahoma City, I moved to Helena, Ark., to be close to my girlfriend (an Arkansas native). We are so excited to put down roots in our community. Nicole Rios (Dallas–Fort Worth) Following my passion for health and the advancement of the health care field, I am earning a master’s degree in health care management.
Peyton Thigpen (Mississippi) I’m in medical school at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss.
Jacklyn Vaughan-Chaldy (Phoenix) I’m working in Tucson, Ariz., to help teens experiencing homelessness figure out what comes next after high school graduation. I also work with and manage five incredible AmeriCorps members who are making such an impact in Tucson. Jenae Ward (Alabama) I am at Vanderbilt University Law School. Charley Wedeen (Bay Area) I am working in sales at Salesforce. It’s my goal to strengthen the pipeline for teachers, people of color, LGBTQ, and other underrepresented groups within our sales organization.
WANTED:
Teachers who wake up feeling like it’s the first day of school
every day, who sweat the small stuff and
BRING THE BIG JOY, who know that good intentions are worthless without great results.
We’re looking for those who
BELIEVE that this struggle is one of life and death and that our democracy is fraught without EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY EDUCATION IN EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD FOR
every child.
We’re looking for teachers who know that an inclusive school is a stronger school, who know that it might take six days or six weeks or six months, but that one day soon, that student you
REFUSE to
give
up
on
will
the
when he stands at the assembly to be recognized for high achievement.
We’re looking for those teachers who believe in the
City that Lit the World AND THE SCHOLARS WHO WILL SET THE WORLD ON
fire.
Those who can do, teach. Those who teach with soul,
TEACH WITH US.
Learn. Lead. Serve. Succeed.
Anthony White (Las Vegas) I am hitting my stride in ways that CHARTER SCHOOL
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be
one who makes you cry
NEW BEDFORD ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 85
I could not imagine. My students continue to show me what is possible, and I love them for it. Jamie Rebecca Wittenberg (Miami–Dade) I am working as a curriculum engineer at Codecademy.com in New York City, which gives me the opportunity to create rich coding experiences that are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Andrew Yoon (Chi–NWI) Much of the technical stuff from teaching carries over to my work as a future physical therapist (planning, setting goals, making daily plans to reach those goals), but what transfers over most is the sense of empathy and caring for the people you are working to help each and every day. 2014
Sara Accettura (Northeast Ohio) I teach at a school where corps members from 2015 and 2016 are serving and 2012, 2013, and 2014 corps members are teaching or are in support roles. That was five generations of corps members in a region that was five years old.
Julia [Risk] Bowen (New Mexico ’08) married Michael Bowen in Chicago, Illinois, on July 1, 2017. Alumni and corps members who joined in the festivities include (L-R): Pat Viklund (Tulsa ’09), Brittany [Toll] Viklund (New Mexico ’09), Shannon Brunner (Chicago ’08), Christina Ginardi (Bay Area ’08), Jon Risk (Denver ’17), Kelsie [Frank] Parks (New Mexico ’08), Anne [Long] Sudmeier (New Mexico ’06), and Mike Sudmeier (New Mexico ’06). Julia and Mike celebrated their marriage by backpacking through Switzerland and Italy.
Rita Andrade (Connecticut) Teaching has shifted my political ideologies, rightfully challenged my ideas, sculpted my passions, and strengthened my hopes. Hakeem Banks (N.Y.) At my placement school here in Brooklyn, N.Y., I teach high school biology to a wonderful group of ninth graders. Sarina Bhandari (Bay Area) While teaching, I loved learning everything I could about my kids. Now I’m a researcher at Stanford’s pediatric mood and anxiety disorder clinic in pursuit of new perspectives on child psychology. Sam Blobaum (Baltimore) I joined Blue Engine Message and Media, a D.C. communications firm where I work with clients to, among other things, persuade D.C. policymakers to take an evidence-based approach to education policy. Khadijah Brown (Southwest Ohio) As an educator of students with exceptionalities, I continue to
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expose them to rigorous curriculum that will fundamentally transform their lives. I am committed to serving students and their families, while standing firmly planted in our journey towards “One Day.” Andrew Brown (G.N.O.–LAD) I started a job with Boston Consulting Group in Miami. Laura Butler (Mississippi) I teach 11th grade American history and 10th grade English at Lee Academy in Clarksdale, Miss. Ronnie Chavez (California Capital Valley) My school’s campus is nine rooms wide. We have just two grades, fewer than 130 scholars. Yet nothing feels small when inside those four walls. Jeremy Council (Phoenix) I’m a police officer for the Salt River Police
Department near Scottsdale, Ariz. Peter Cunningham (Detroit) I am teaching math at Mumford and coaching the only wrestling team in Detroit’s public school system. My math students averaged 2.4 years grade-level growth in a year, and Mumford had a wrestler qualify for the state tournament. Samantha De Palo (Phoenix) I teach Spanish at a small school designed for students with learning differences such as dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and giftedness. I was recently promoted to director of high school and program development, which has allowed me to develop a college and career readiness program. Timothy Demry (Bay Area) I
founded a real estate company based in Cleveland. It assists low-moderate income families in attaining home ownership. Brittany Edwardes (D.C. Region) I’ve loved returning home to teach in a place I never thought I’d want to return, and especially telling my students, every day, how being with them is the best decision I’ve ever made. Randi Freedman (N.Y.) Any breakthrough, no matter how big or small, is worthy of celebration. Half of my students jumped up two reading levels or more when I tested them recently. I work at a Title I public school in the Bronx, N.Y. Jonathon Glocknitzer (Bay Area) At my placement school, the third year has been the best one yet. I’m
ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 87
also participating in a great Rising Leaders Fellowship with TFA San Jose.
MAKE AN IMPACT.
Randal Graham (Phoenix) I’m living and teaching in my current community. I love seeing students around my neighborhood when I’m out with my dogs or riding my bike around town. Courtney Green (Las Vegas) TFA Las Vegas Valley is amazing and will support you the whole way through. 2014 is a great corps group. Sarah Harper (Las Vegas) I went into my third year serving at my original placement school. I was elected grade-level chair and took on the role of fundraising chair for our school musical. Lianna Havel (G.N.O.–LAD) Teaching English in a small Czech town right after finishing TFA has really made me so grateful for my experience in the G.N.O. corps. The passion with which our members fight for our students’ academic growth is an inspiration that has guided me through the Czech educational system. Thank you! Anthony Hernandez (Rhode Island) I started the business graduate program at Thomson Reuters in New York City. I started a scholarship at my local high school to provide assistance to those in need and provide a vision for their community.
University Preparatory Denver, Colorado
OPEN AN EXCELLENT SCHOOL IN 2020. Design, found, lead, and sustain a high-performing charter school through The Fellowship. buildingexcellentschools.org/the-fellowship
@BESBuzz
617.227.4545
Caroline Hiskey (San Antonio) I’m still in the Head Start world but taught an inclusion class with 20 wonderful students in San Antonio. Sarah Isaac (Phoenix) I worked with the Regional Excellence Fellowship-Phoenix as an alumni mentor. We collaborated with corps member and alumni fellows, community members, and students to implement action projects that target systemic issues that are impacting our students. Jacqueline Jackson (N.Y.) I’ve spent my third year teaching and growing as a leader at my placement school. I’ve been able to develop an engaging 11th/12th grade advisory curriculum that
helps students learn more about issues students of color face as they transition into post-secondary institutions or positions. Jasmine Johnson (St. Louis) My students are motivated and are putting in days of hard work in improving their Spanish language skills. At Gateway Middle School, students have demonstrated commitment and are excited to be able to take three different levels of Spanish. Savanah Jordan (Hawai‘i) I work at Destiny Middle School in Tacoma, Wash. I teach my favorite subject (creative writing) to sixth and seventh grade students. I miss the warm weather and aloha spirit of Hawai‘i, but I’m so happy to be close to friends, family, and gorgeous Mt. Rainier.
in spite of the obstacles our school has faced.
Times, NBC Washington, and the Associated Press.
Vanessa Logan (Detroit) I am working at Avondale High School in Auburn Hills, Mich., where I teach physics.
Tiara Mackins (Oklahoma City) As an SPEA graduate student, I am learning how to transform my experience as a teacher to that of a student once again. I find myself advocating for learning opportunities and critiquing teaching practices. The important lesson I am learning is the fight for educational equity is not limited to a particular role. Be an advocate in whatever space you occupy.
Benjamin Louis (Chi–NWI) In my third year I taught special education at my placement school, Hansberry College Prep, a Noble Network school on the South Side of Chicago. Helen Lyons (D.C. Region) I work as a freelance reporter while obtaining my master’s degree in journalism, with the goal of writing about issues that impact lowincome communities. My work has been featured in The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington
Jessica Manton (Hawai‘i) It took less than one year to decide I wanted to come back to the classroom where I started. Elliott McCarthy (Greater Philadelphia) I am teaching
an experimental design and engineering class. It is truly one of a kind, and something I never thought I’d be doing. Jose Miranda (Miami–Dade) After my time as a corps member I moved to Washington, D.C., to complete a Public Policy Fellowship with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. In this role I learned that I wanted to pursue policy as a venue to advocate for education. Mariah Moore (Memphis) I am taking post-baccalaureate classes, seeking to get my master’s in public health and physician assistant studies. Michael Mozina (Northeast Ohio) I joined a national network of communities using a collective
impact framework to eliminate disparities and accelerate academic outcomes for every student. My TFA experience touches my work every day as a reminder of why every child deserves access to an excellent education. Richard Nelson (Mississippi) I am currently teaching in an International Baccalaureate program at Shanghai Shixi High School. The flexibility of the pre-IB curriculum allows me to teach my students from various perspectives, which creates a desire for social justice and educational equity within them. Timothy O’Shea (E.N.C.) I am proud to still work in my placement school and fight for educational equity by providing access and
Matthew Katzman (Kansas City) I am still teaching special education in my placement school, and we are kicking butt. Emma Kosanda (Jacksonville) I’m working as a staffing manager who puts part-time students, high school grads, and low-income community members to work. I coach them for their new roles and help them build their resumes. I advocate for them at their work sites to ensure that both the client and the associate are benefiting from the working relationship.
Immerse yourself as a resident at an equity-focused, innovative High Tech High school in San Diego while learning to lead through apprenticeship. Put theory to practice while earning an M.Ed. in Educational Leadership through personalized projects and learning by doing. Transform teaching, learning and leadership in your own practice and reimagine what education can look like for all students.
Shanequa Lassiter (E.N.C.) In August 2016, I joined the board of an organization called EveryBlackGirl, Inc., that was created following an incident between a black girl and an officer in 2015. This organization serves the community of Columbia, S.C., by providing workshops around racial and gender inequity. Max Lesser (N.Y.) I continue to teach at my placement school, where I teach English language arts and support a martial arts club after school. In spite of issues with teacher retention in my school, my students engaged in a highly relevant, politically minded curriculum and recently had a nearly 85 percent pass rate on the ELA Regents. I am deeply proud of their achievements and resilience
Found a new school focused on equity and deeper learning through the New School Creation fellowship in one of the following cities:
Teach. Lead. Transform.
Atlanta
Boston
Denver
Houston
Los Angeles New Orleans Oakland
hthgse.edu
Camden Indianapolis
Memphis New York
Oklahoma City
San Antonio
Washington, D.C. ONEDAYM AGA ZINE.ORG 89
opportunity to all of my students, all while advocating for their futures. Ornella Parker (N.Y.) I graduated in June 2016 with a master of science in special education from City University of New York at Hunter College. Kevin Pelaez (San Diego) After teaching for two years, I was admitted into a statistics program and am working on a project to identify patterns and students who are at risk in certain college classes. I’m helping professors implement data-driven strategies in their classrooms and identify students who need extra support to help reduce the dropout rate. I am also working as an adjunct professor in math.
David Persley (Kansas City) As I learn more about my role as educator, I’m compelled to think more and more outside of the box for solutions to problems that have been plaguing our schools for decades. Education and innovation are more synonymous now than they have ever been, and they are both equally important pieces to solving the problem of educational equity. Elise Pulido (Dallas–Fort Worth) I work with adolescent girls who are pregnant or parenting with Project Reach. I teach social studies and English grades six to eight. My job is more than just teaching. Because of my students’ situations and the extra challenges they are going through, we develop
close and trusting relationships. I was able to notice one of my seventh graders was having signs of preeclampsia and advocate for her to get checked out. It turns out that she had preeclampsia and had to get an emergency C-section. She delivered a healthy baby boy, and she is now doing great.
Allyson Robinson (Baltimore) I had twins with my husband, Quincy Robinson, who is also a Baltimore alum (One Cause, One Core, Be More)! Being a stay-athome mom is fun, and what makes it even more enjoyable is getting calls and texts from my old students to keep me up to date with what’s going on in their lives.
Ariel Ramstad (Las Vegas) I am teaching at a Montessori school. I love the Montessori philosophy and I would love to open a school modeled after it. All students should have access to the excellent education a Montessori school can provide.
Christina Rowan (New Jersey) I am the founding artistic/ program director for Accent Pontiac, an El Sistema-inspired music program that uses music as the vehicle for social change in Michigan. We launched our pilot program in January 2017, serving approximately 80 students in the Pontiac Public Schools.
Ellen Reeves (Memphis) I welcomed my first daughter in November 2016.
Danielle Rutter (Charlotte) I’ve joined an empowering group of fellows in the Leroy Pop Miller Fellowship. Jazmine Salach (Kansas City) I’m working to establish a special education department at my new school. Elizabeth Schwartz (Oklahoma City) I am interning with an education law firm in Oakland, Calif., and hope to work for parent and student advocacy groups after graduating from the University of Oregon School of Law in 2019. Emily Shores (Chi–NWI) The organization I work with in Ghana is called LRTT, and it seeks to provide high-quality training for teachers who have limited resources. David Steakley (Bay Area) I was elected as a delegate to the California Democratic Party State Central Committee (January 2017) for Assembly District 1.
Looking for a higher calling? We educate the whole childWe personalize instruction
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We support and reward tt t We're hiring top talent to grow our network. Come lead with us. Spring 2017 Meet & Greet Open Houses: 2/13
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"Brilla College Prep is what happens when kids’ educational prospects are not determined by their zip codes." - N Y P OS T
photo by Gerson Martinez
Kansas City alumni and corps members attended the recent Shark Tank: Teacher Edition, which awarded more than $20,000 to fund classroom projects to teacher contestants. Looking sharp here (L-R): TFA-KC Executive Director Chris Rosson, Julee Jonez, Arjun Ravindran (Kansas City ’13), Chase McAnulty, Neeli Bendapudi, Morgan McPartland (Kansas City ’16), Rachel Foster (Kansas City ’15), Angela Cervantes, Juan Carlos Lara (Kansas City ’13), Jessica Tolan (Kansas City ’16), and Amanda McRae (Kansas City ’10).
Shawna Taets (Oklahoma City) My ninth grade students studied the concept of velocity through learning about tornadoes because we have so many of them in Oklahoma. Joshua Thomas (Houston) I joined TFA staff in August 2016, and I love managing recruitment at HBCUs. Jasmine Traun (E.N.C.) I have been in a program with the Northeast Leadership Academy (NELA) at North Carolina State University. The program is a full-scholarship, two-year master’s program that awards graduates with a master’s in school administration and a principal’s license. NELA is funded by grants from several national organizations. I strive to use the leadership skills and knowledge gained to continue to drive education forward in E.N.C. Chelsea Wagner (Hawai‘i) I moved to San Diego, where I work
for Achieve3000. Though I work in a for-profit company, we often hear that we have a “mission with a margin” where we passionately believe in helping all students grow to their fullest potential, and I see that in action every day that I am in schools. Jenny Wang (E.N.C.) I survived my first semester of law school and had an internship lined up with North Carolina’s Indigent Defense Services over the summer. Kaylyn Wernitznig (D.C. Region) I served as a third-year teacher at my placement school as an eighth grade special education math teacher. I’ve looped up with my students and enjoyed the pleasure of teaching each and every one of them again. Seeing how much
they’ve grown since the sixth grade is incredible, and I cannot wait to watch them go onwards to a wide array of competitive high schools across the district. James Wilson (Dallas–Fort Worth) I work as an impact manager for City Year Dallas at H. Grady Spruce High School. Courtney Young (Charlotte) In my third year of teaching, I served as the student government association advisor and as the head coach for our phenomenal cheerleading team. I am working to launch a nonprofit that is targeted to assist firstgeneration college students with receiving the proper tools and knowledge to be successful in the collegiate atmosphere and beyond.
GO TO YOUR SOURCE FOR ALL THINGS ALUMNI Visit the Alumni home to learn about: + Awards and Fellowships + Job Search and Career Support + Events + How to Continue Your Impact
www.teachforamerica. org/alumni
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Visit our website to learn more blackstonevalleyprep.org
Regional Alumni Contacts Alabama Julia Gordon (Alabama ’12)
[email protected] Appalachia Crystal Kinser
[email protected] Arkansas Washington Navarrete (Arkansas ’14)
[email protected] Austin John Armbrust (Metro Atlanta ‘06) Board Chair, Austin Alumni Board
[email protected] Baltimore Tracie Lefevre
[email protected] Micaela Perez Ferrero
[email protected]
Greater New Orleans—Louisiana Delta Joy Okoro (G.N.O.-LAD ’08)
[email protected] Jeffrey Fingerman
[email protected] Greater Philadelphia Claiborne Taylor (Houston ’02)
[email protected] Greater Tulsa Rebekah Campbell (Oklahoma ’14)
[email protected] Ross Heyman. Alumni Board President
[email protected] Hawai'i Isaiah Peacott-Ricardos (Hawai’i ‘12)
[email protected]
Bay Area Jenn Camus
[email protected]
Houston Aisha Crumbine (Houston ’99)
[email protected]
Buffalo Katie Campos
[email protected]
Idaho Levi Mogg (Eastern North Carolina ’11)
[email protected]
California Capital Valley Erika Hermosillo (St. Louis ’11)
[email protected]
Indianapolis Ingrid Warner (Indianapolis ’11)
[email protected]
Charlotte Christa Flood, Board Chair, Charlotte Alumni Board
[email protected]
Jacksonville Michele Mitchell (Houston ’08)
[email protected]
Chicago-Northwest Indiana Kristi Torres
[email protected]
Kansas City Zach Rose-Heim (Houston ’10)
[email protected]
Colorado Gavin Goodall
[email protected] Natalie Koehler
[email protected]
Las Vegas Valley Ninya Beyer (Bay Area ’07)
[email protected]
New Mexico Matt Craig
[email protected] New York Danny Steffel (Chicago ‘10)
[email protected] Tyler Schelpat
[email protected] Jerrod Hill, Alumni Association Board Chair
[email protected] North Carolina Piedmont Triangle Katie Schermbeck
[email protected] Oklahoma City Kim Dyce
[email protected] Orlando Lauren Chianese
[email protected] Phoenix Angelica Vega
[email protected] Portland Sophie Hilton, Chair Community Connections Commmittee
[email protected] Rhode Island Kristine Frech
[email protected] Rio Grande Valley Christian Ruiz
[email protected] San Antonio Jennifer Rodriguez
[email protected] San Diego Betty Hua
[email protected]
Connecticut Nate Snow (Connecticut ’07)
[email protected]
Los Angeles Raul Hernandez (Baltimore ’03)
[email protected] Sam Harvey (Baltimore ’09)
[email protected]
D.C. Region Alisha Murdock (E.N.C. ’13)
[email protected]
Massachusetts CJ Crowder (Bay Area ’99)
[email protected]
South Dakota Jim Curran
[email protected]
Dallas-Fort Worth Lacey Pittman Tomanek (G.N.O.-LAD ’08)
[email protected]
Memphis Chris Coleman
[email protected]
South Louisiana Elizabeth Minton (S. Louisiana ’05)
[email protected]
Delaware Alonna Berry (Jacksonville ‘11)
[email protected]
Metro Atlanta Antoinette Rosenberg
[email protected]
Southwest Ohio Jaime Kent (D.C. Region ’08)
[email protected]
Detroit Ray Stoeser (Detroit ‘10)
[email protected] Charity Davidson
[email protected]
Miami-Dade Tiffany Brutus
[email protected]
St. Louis Dan Huebner
[email protected]
Milwaukee Mimi Perez
[email protected]
Twin Cities Mary Koslig (Twin Cities ’10)
[email protected]
Mississippi Krystal Cormack
[email protected]
Washington Natalie Hanni (D.C. Region ’09)
[email protected] Dominique Remy (Las Vegas Valley ’09), Alumni Board President
[email protected]
Eastern North Carolina Sara Price
[email protected] Greater Cleveland Scott Dieter (Greater Nashville ’11)
[email protected] Greater Nashville Brynn Plummer (Greater Nashville ’11)
[email protected]
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Megan Huggard
[email protected]
National & International
[email protected]
New Jersey Ron Augustin
[email protected]
South Carolina Elizabeth Rainey
[email protected]
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Photographs by Azeez Bakare
Saturdays Are for Life Balance
THE FLORIDA SUN BLAZED DOWN on the pier as they
worked their way through yoga poses. They could hear gentle waves breaking beneath them. Nearby, kids played in the sand, and families sat at picnic tables sharing favorite potluck dishes. A theme at alumni gatherings this year has been sustaining teachers’ mental and physical health. Here in Miami, alums gathered with corps members at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park to achieve a little life balance on a Saturday afternoon. The Miami–Dade chapter of The Collective, Teach For America’s association for alumni of color, organized kids’ games and crafts “so that people wouldn’t feel stressed out about finding child care and families could be part of the event,” said public defender Jesse Dong (Twin Cities ’09). Teach For America staff member Nwamaka Unaka organized a wellness event for Houston alums. “My biggest takeaway is that it takes more than focusing on developing our amazing corps members and alumni professionals as great educators,” she said. “Our teachers truly can only be sustainably as good to others as they are to themselves.” OD By SUSAN BRENNA
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