Week Zero. NYC.
The day we anticipated so much was close.
The countdown to Learning Gypsies becoming a reality had begun. It was our last week in NYC, and it proved to be much rougher than anticipated; with the loss of our sublet tenants. Which shows that no matter how much one plans, life has different stories for us.
So much happened it is hard to believe it was only 7 days. From saying “hasta luego” to our loyal doormen Carlos and Richard, our Hyper Island coworkers; to spending time with our best friends and our amazing babysitter Nancy who is our biggest support. While we looked, we tried everything to sublet our place, our 10 year old Alani graduated Elementary School, our preschooler Iker moved up to Kinder, and our Amaia sadly said goodbye to her 2nd grade friends. You can see many of these moments captured on our Instagram accounts (handles below.)
We packed, unpacked and repacked several times. Many of which allowed us to give to Goodwill and friends possessions we realized we didn’t really need. We feel very proud of our results, but are sure we will reduce more as we travel from city to city.
Thanks to our generous donors we were able to purchase our gear to document our journey. Alani has done a great job recording and building a video of the week with our GoPro Hero 4 and iMovie on iPad Pro. Check it out here… We are stoked with her newly discovered passion. She (with our support) hopes to make one video per week about our experience and learnings! As our good friend and soon-to-be gypsy Alejandro M says “GoPro + kids = Magic” 😍
Somehow, between packing, last days of school, crazy emotions, and visiting with friends, we found time to springboard our research by interviewing , iZone NYC , 4.0 Schools and Pencils of Purpose. These are some of our learnings and super useful info about the great work they are doing to improve education!
iZone
Francisco Hernandez, a participant at the 30 weeks program, introduced me to Preeti Birla, Director — Community, Outreach & Partnerships at NYC DOE iZone.
Setting up the meeting I learned that Preeti likes coffee and I figured that I could offer her good Spanish coffee from Boqueria in exchange of her incredible experience and knowledge.
This was the Learning Gypsies first official conversation about our project, and it showed. I was nervous and I wanted to make sure the questions were relevant and interesting; I think Preeti knew this, and still, gave us 90 minutes of her time and loads and loads of wisdom about the state of Education in NYC.
In many ways Preeti set up my expectations about interviews to come. She told us about conferences to attend and why. She talked about a few innovative schools, and encourage us to visit Reggio Emilia in Italy, a model of community involvement in education. She brought up the critical importance of Teacher training, a topic that has come up in every interview afterwards, as the key and most direct way to improve kids learning.
We talked abut the role school plays (prepare your child for the world) and the (unreasonably?) big expectations parents might have towards teachers and schools.
We saw for the first time the idea that the purpose of learning is “to become a productive member of society”, which led to a rich conversation about measurement (what’s being measure to make students, parents, teachers and schools accountable?) and about humanity (“measurement excludes people”).
Preeti shared a lot of concepts and ideas with us, but one question stood out: “How do we improve access to learning to promote social mobility?”
Since our research is based on the power of questions, I feel like this conversation set the tone for a full year of awesome learning.
My favorite quote from Preeti was: “English is an access tool”
4.0 Schools
Pretti Birla Introduced me to David, who introduced me to Matt Candler, Founder and CEO of 4.0 Schools.
Matt Candler and David Fu and I Skyped during a 15 minutes break I had during the Creative Morning Community Building Workshop.
Standing over the Union Street Bridge on Gowanus, Brooklyn, I could feel Matt’s passion about Education and the School of the Future.
We talked about Homeschooling, school disruption and meeting in New Orleans during our Texas stage in September. This was just an intro meeting; and I wanted to learn as much as I could about the 4.0 Schools methodology, so David and I met at Birch Coffee in Midtown Manhattan 7 days later.
David, who is the Manager of Community Development at 4.0 Schools, shared with me the evolution of their vision, from Principal as agents of change, to Tiny Schools, and the convergence between Tech and Education, Lean Startup and Learning Spaces.
4.0 Schools does lots of interesting things, but I’d say that their focus is on identifying, launching and supporting innovative ideas in Education.
I really enjoyed our conversation, which felt more like a collaboration between two people who were fascinated by the questions (elegant questions) more than by the answers.
What are the affordable levers to use to change things?
How can we increase and improve the respect society has for our teachers?
What’s the purpose of learning?
and what if we equipped students to explore their passions? What is the role of the school then?
My favorite quote from David was “Doing what your parents did, can only take you so far.”
I’m really looking forward to our visit to New Orleans with Matt and David to continue to learn more about their incredible work.
Pencils of Promise.
Preeti introduced us to Leslie Engle Young, Director of Impact at Pencils of Promise.
We met Leslie at the Pencils of Promise office located in the flower district in Midtown Manhattan. As soon as you walk into the office you are welcome by a 7 feet tall pencil made by Legos, which tells you a lot about the character of the place.
Pencils of Promise, founded by Adam Braun in October 2008, is non-profit organization that builds schools in the developing world (Ghana, Guatemala, Laos and Nicaragua). So I was was looking forward to learn about Leslie’s experience and her view about the role of schools in these communities.
In villages and small towns where medical access, clean water, food security are daily concerns, education takes on a different meaning. In many cases the kids attending school are the first ones to ever go to school, so they are the first ones to be able to read and write in their family. Imagine the expectations that creates in the community, but also the culture shock that creates between generations.
I asked about giving these remote villages internet access and Leslie was very clear, Teacher training is a far more important challenge than having internet access. And in many ways, the focus of Pencils of Promise is not to just open the school (something the manage to do in 3 to 9 months) but the support the offer to help the teacher’s job easier, like tools, methods, materials and training.
It was interesting to learn that the organization has built 360 schools worldwide. That’s a lot of schools, I thought. But PoP only builds schools in communities that needs and wants a school, because without the support of the community and the parents, the school won’t be successful.
Leslie opened my mind about the scope of our project; about the meaning and impact that having access to education can have across cultures. Leslie invited us to visit one of the schools, spending on where we are in the world, and I think that the experience could be so humbling and eye opening for me and the kids, that we will make a priority to schedule time for it.
I also walked away with a copy of “The Promise of a Pencil” by Pop founder, Adam Braun, which is one of the favorite gifts I could ever received.
My favorite quote from Leslie was: The purpose of learning for the kids in these communities is to have a choice, to have a better life outcome.
