I teach 8th grade and I am 24. When I started in the classroom two years ago, I was not even a decade older than my students. Responses to new, young teachers can be mildly amusing, like when field trip docents ask where the teacher...
Elana’s mom drives past four different schools to get to ours. “It’s a lot of driving,” she says, “but Elana has a home here.” It has not been an easy journey. Elana’s home school is 9 miles away—an eternity of lethargic traffic signals for a...
I am cold. Someone is speaking in the front of the room. The PowerPoint presentation lights up the dimmed room like a nightlight in a darkened hallway. I wonder why hotel ballrooms are always so arctically cold. Focus, I tell myself. You will need this information...
“Come on, Chef Poole, you know I can’t afford to go to college.” Those are not the words a high school culinary instructor wants to hear from one of his most promising senior culinary students, but unfortunately this is my reality. Every year without fail, many...
What I learned in my graduate education program: if you want to be a teacher, watch a teacher. Let them watch you. A lot. Honestly, I can’t remember more than a few individual moments of lasting learning from my graduate education classes. Don’t get me wrong;...
I have had more than my share of memorable moments as a kindergarten teacher, but one sticks out in particular, when I helped open a small charter school several years ago. While it was wonderful to help realize the vision of the school’s founder, she...
In my classroom, a poster with a map of North America states “we are not alone.” Every day, I remind my students that they are, in fact, “not alone in the world,” meaning they are a part of a global community. I frequently encourage my...
Most Americans will agree that the youth unemployment rate—currently over 16% for 16-to-24-year-olds, not including underemployment—is unacceptably high. Yet, it’s much harder to find consensus on the reasons why more young people aren’t finding meaningful, sustainable work. Hope Street Group just released a paper I wrote...
In the United States, Jobs & Workforce efforts have historically been conducted in silos, with limited collaboration and innovation across sectors and stakeholder groups. Hope Street Group believes that the best way to foster high-quality solutions to Jobs & Workforce issues is to improve information-sharing...
This past week, I had the opportunity to see a thought-provoking documentary on a subject relevant to our mission here at Hope Street Group. The film, titled Fed Up, offered a critically acclaimed look at how excess sugar may be the underexposed downfall of the...