College Experiences That Helped a Head of School at Community School for Creative Education Succeed

I went to a school on the East Coast called Connecticut College and originally started as a mathematics major. I knew I wanted to be a teacher.

From the fall of my freshman year, I immediately started working in schools as a volunteer. I was taking education courses and was able to do student teaching starting my freshman year. I really hit the ground running, thinking about being a high-quality, well-prepared educator. This way, when I entered the field of education after graduation, I could truly be the exemplary teacher I felt I had the privilege and honor of having throughout my K-12 experience.

Once I had the opportunity to take some sociology classes, I realized there was a cross-sectionality between the work we do in education and issues of race, relations, and poverty. I started to dive deeper into understanding the complex interactions between human beings, race, and poverty. The more I read and took courses in that area, the more I realized that if I wanted to be a successful educator, I needed to marry these two ideas.

It wasn't just about being an expert in mathematics or being prepared to teach math. It was about how to go into underrepresented communities that have complex social dynamics. Politics is probably the number one factor we see in our communities right now, especially with police relations or homelessness plaguing our communities.

How do we understand that complex reality and then build rich educational experiences? Whether it's in a math class or an English class, we want kids to feel validated, safe, and inspired. They should be able to take the knowledge they are getting day-to-day and use it to further enhance their own lives and ultimately their communities.

By the time I graduated, I was fortunate to have my degree in mathematics and race relations. For me, this meant I wasn't just a person interested in teaching mathematics. I was someone who wanted to go into communities with race relation dynamics and marry those two to build a more whole child approach to teaching and learning.

So far, I've been privileged and honored to be an educator and a leader in the communities I studied as an undergraduate. This allowed me to take those tools and apply them in my work and conversations, hopefully advancing our communities to be stronger, safer, and better for our students and for future generations.