Brandon Brown
Senior VP for Education Innovation, The Mind Trust Indianapolis
Most schools and most classrooms look really similar to how they looked 100 to 150 years ago. And if you think about any other industry, I can't think of many industries that look the same as they did 100 years ago. Our economy has changed, our society has changed, and in many ways, our school systems haven't. So I do think that there is a role for innovation and we always need to be pushing the envelope for finding new school models and leveraging technology in the classroom, rethinking school facilities. So we're always going to be thinking about that.
On the flip side, I think we also have to be careful that we're not just about innovation for two reasons. One is there are practices that we know work so we also have to learn what are those practices and how do we replicate them to serve more students. So we don't want to get into a trap or continue and try to innovate. It seen as experimenting on our kids. So I think we have to balance the fact that we need innovation, we need to make sure that we have a 21st century school system, while also realizing that there are best practices that work. I have a lot of pictures behind my desk of the kids that I taught in St. Louis and, when I left the classroom, I friended a lot of them on Facebook just because I wanted to know what's going on. We're now at the point where a lot of my students have graduated from college, they're just knocking it out of the park. So, knowing that I had a very small role to play in that, I think is really motivating. But the flip side is, I have a lot of students that maybe haven't achieved the goals that they set for themselves and, for a lot of systemic reasons, have really struggled. A lot of those students are in those pictures, actually. One was shot and killed last year and it was something that I think about a lot.
So since our work, a lot of times, is very adult-facing and we're in offices, and we're in meetings and we are trying to create conditions to serve more kids effectively. It is really easy to lose sight around what it is that motivates us and why we're doing this work. So I do try to look at those pictures a couple times a day just to reground myself, and have faces and names and stories in my mind when we're having conversations with adults. Because I think if you're keeping that front and center, you're going to make wiser, more compassionate decisions. I probably don't do it enough, and probably need to continue to challenge myself to reground in my students from St. Louis and just continuing to keep that front and center.
