This I Believe — Change is Possible Now.

Anu Passi-Rauste, (Finland '14), George de Lama (president of Eisenhower Fellowships), Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (executive director of UN Women), and me! Photo credit: Elias Williams

When invited to talk about the importance of a multilingual America, I’m the last person that anyone expects to see walk up to the podium.  As a Black American with unaccented English, people are surprised to learn that I grew up in a language-minority community in the US.  My family is frequently stopped and asked what language we’re speaking and what country we’re from.  By now, my children (11 and 7) are accustomed to these questions and are starting to understand the nuance of our Louisiana history.

My grandparents’ generation spoke Creole French as their home language and learned English in schools.  English quickly became synonymous with education.  Even after university study, my grandmother still regularly slipped into Creole for her phone conversations, Friday night card games and Sunday morning coffee.  I felt like she was happier in Creole than in English.  As a child, I wanted to be in that language with her and decided that I would be bilingual and I would raise my children in our language as well.  I didn’t know that embracing my family’s language would put me on a path to championing diverse, integrated environments later in my life.

Soon after giving birth to my daughter, I began to realize that just raising my children to embrace a vision of integrated, multilingual America wasn’t enough to shift how the world would treat them.  How can bilingual, bicultural kids grow up and not feel like outsiders in our country? I became clearer that they would need stronger community models than the walls of our home and that our public schools have the biggest opportunity to promote an integrated future.  A few years after my daughter was born, I founded a network of intentionally-diverse, public, language immersion schools. When we opened the French, Spanish, and Chinese schools, I narrated a long-term future vision for how our integrated schools would eventually unite the region.  I knew that, as our kids from all backgrounds grew up together, they would have a more nuanced, inclusive view of the world into adulthood.  What I didn’t expect was that our work would make profound changes for the adults in our community at the same time.

One day, Ms. Elizabeth, a mom from a lower-income Black community, called me about a project.  Her video production class had an assignment on immigration.  She admitted that, before our schools had opened, she would have focused her project on how immigrants make life worse for working class Americans.  After one year of witnessing her daughter make friends across race, language, and neighborhood lines, she was inspired to film a positive perspective on the value of immigration.  During that one call, Ms. Elizabeth reminded me that, with the right opportunities, change is possible for us now.  We don’t need to wait for the next generation to get integrated communities right.

This is What I Truly Believe — Only when diverse people have opportunities to learn, live, and love together, will we fully embrace our multilingual, multicultural America.

This essay is excerpted from Building Bridges One Leader At a Time: Personal Essays by the Women and Men of Eisenhower Fellowships. I'm thankful for the EF community for encouraging us to think about our own deeply held beliefs.Rhonda Broussard, USA ’14Rhonda Broussard has a passion for education and has been a leader in diversity and international education initiatives. She helps schools transform their practices and align adult culture with key beliefs for teaching and learning. Prior to launching The Ochosi Group, she founded a network of language immersion, International Baccalaureate schools serving an intentionally diverse student population.  Rhonda explores her own wonderings about education reform at her blog One Good Question.

7 books, 2 talks, 1 TV show and Al Pacino – What One Good Question Folks are Reading.

Fall Reading Recs

During every One Good Question interview, we have awesome side conversations and anecdotes that don’t make the final edit.  I’ve noticed my reading list grow in direct relationship to our side bars.  As you start planning your personal fall syllabus, here are a few titles that might resonate: 

On design — Aylon Samouha: The End of Average: How we succeed in a world that values sameness, Todd Rose

Rose opens his Ted Talk and book with the following poignant anecdote : In the 40s as planes where getting faster and more complex, there was a spike in plane crashes.  They checked the planes and said the planes were fine, but the pilots were making errors.  They tried to solve for the pilot errors and began designing the cockpit for “the average pilot.”  They took some average pilot demographics and size to adjust, but there were still no improvements in performance.  They quickly learned that none of the 400 pilots sampled actually measured the average size of their calculations.  The cockpit wasn’t designed for any real person.  Eventually they tried to fit the system to the individual and invented adjustable seats, etc. things, that we take for granted now.  In the book, you learn that that’s the secret of all design: any system that is trying to fit the individual is actually doomed to fail.

On elite education — Peter Howe: Excellent Sheep, William Deresiewicz

Deresiewicz is a first generation immigrant whose father was a professor.  His basic premise is that elite education in the US is producing intellectual sheep who are terrified of failure.  These youth grow up with model CVs from birth, but have no resilience, creativity or desire to think outside of the box. Without giving it all away, he concludes that « If we are here to create a decent society, a just society, a wise and prosperous society, a society where children can learn for the love of learning and people can work for the love of work...We don't have to love our neighbors as ourselves, but we need to love our neighbors’ children as our own...We have tried aristocracy.  We have tried meritocracy.   Now it’s time to try democracy.

On local funding — Susanna Williams: Parks and Recreation, NBC

With national elections on the horizon, we focus on national policy and the influence of national lobby groups.  The general public has little understanding about how state and local funding decisions are made.  State government deals with the important daily stuff, but it’s not sexy, so there’s a lack of TV/entertainment exposure to those decisions.  If you want to learn about local funding issues, watch Parks & Rec. In most states, local legislature is limited to those whose jobs allow them to have flexible jobs for 6-months – ranchers and farmers in western states and self-funded individuals who are so wealthy that they don’t need to work.  That’s who’s making our local policy and funding decisions.

On creating coalitions — Dan Varner: Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone

My favorite movie inspirational scene is this great speech form Any Given Sunday.  Al Pacino’s in the locker room and giving his football team the encouragement to get back out and turn the game around.  « The inches we need are everywhere around us. On this team, we fight for that inch. » His point, and the way that it inspires me, is that when creating our coalition, we had to recognize that “the inches we needed” were already there --  in our schools, green space, food service, healthcare -- and it was up to us to harness that power. 

On diversity in ed tech — Mike DeGraff: Making Good: Equality and Diversity in Maker Education, Leah Buechley

In Leah’s talk, she highlights the imperative we have to define maker education separately from the mainstream Maker Magazine and Faires.  Those events tend to be homogenous groups that reflects the values and interests of it’s audience.  To me, this is exactly why we, in education, need to systematically develop opportunities around making for a more diverse population, which, early indications show, is working.

On questioning — Anu Passi-Rauste: A More Beautiful Question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas, Warren Berger

I was a visiting a small non-profit in Boston and the ED recommended this book to me.  It’s all about how to make a good question.  My one big takeaway is that I need to figure out my One Good Question before I start my next project. What is the most beautiful question that I want to raise ?

On accountability — Tony Monfiletto:  The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling, Jal Mehta

Mehta outlines how the investment in accountability at the back end of the education system is an effort to make up for the fact that we haven’t invested as aggressively in the front end.  We don’t put enough time, energy or strategy into good school design, preparation of teachers, or capital development. Because we don’t put enough resources into those areas, we try to make up for it in accountability structures.

On solving complex problems — Tom Vander Ark: The Ingenuity Gap: How can we solve the problems of the future?, Thomas Homer-Dixon

Dixon's work centers on the fact that we seem incapable of addressing our basic problems.  The problems that we’re facing in society grow in complexity.  Their interrelatedness with each other and our civic problem solving capacity is diminishing.  We’ve created enormously complex systems, but we have more and more black swan events that we can’t predict or solve.  If you’re trying to figure out how to address complex system needs, this book helps to order your thinking.

On AI — Tom Vander Ark: The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Ray Kurzweil

People have a linear memory and we assume that the future will be like the past, but the future is happening exponentially faster than we appreciate.  In The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil posits that computers will be smarter than people, and that, while we know it’s happening, we can’t fully understand the implications of that trajectory.

On bias — Rhonda Broussard: Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, Mahzarin Banaji & Anthony Greenwald

This is the psychology behind the Project Implicit research and it’s fascinating. Through clever analogies, card tricks, and pop culture references, the researchers teach us how our brains create bias, how that can convert to prejudice or discrimination, and how to make peace when our aspirational beliefs and implicit biases are at odds.     

One Good Question with Nicole de Beaufort: What if We Built Ed Funding on Abundance, Not Scarcity?

Nicole de Beaufort headshot

This post is part of a series of interviews with international educators, policy makers, and leaders titled “One Good Question.”  These interviews provide answers to my One Good Question and uncover new questions about education’s impact on the future.

“In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?”

I try to look at this question through multiple lenses, those of foundations, government, and direct services side, as well as that of the ultimate end user -- families.  Ultimately, I want to know how well people are informing stakeholders about problems and solutions. In Detroit, much of my work is in early childhood.   One of the questions I hear a lot from practitioners is Why are we always just at minimum?  Why is funding minimum? What would happen if we built formulas for the abundance, not the scarcity? We’re always working on minimums of state and federal funding and that has a negative effect on the system.When we mold to the minimum, we’re building for somebody else’s kids. It’s discrimination against poor people. When an early education professional with two master’s degrees makes $10-12 /hour, the system is broken.  When every month or quarter early childhood centers have to justify their existence and they have already stretched every dollar, the system is broken.  We have normalized these low investments and expect people to make miracles happen for the next generation without sufficient capacity.

What would change things?

• Universal Pre-K that’s not defined by your zip code. No matter who you are or where you live, you should get the same education.

• Pay equity. Early childhood educators are barely paid more than fast food workers.  We can’t deliver high-quality universal pre-K until we start respecting our educators.

• Remove institutional barriers to early childhood access. Models like half-day pre-K are false choices for low-income families.  In places like Detroit, where there’s not much transit or cars, there are structural barriers to such models.  It takes 90 minutes to drop your kids off, then if you’re a few minutes late, your child is turned away, and you have to take them home on the same 90-minute bus ride.  At some point parents decide that it’s not worth the trouble.

• Make parent involvement about partnership, not compliance. The lack of transit infrastructure is compounded by punitive compliance-driven practices at the school level. Successful universal pre-K will have parent engagement goals that are relevant and focused on developmental supports for their children.

“Earlier in our conversation you said that it takes at least 10 years for structural change to happen.  What do the next 10 years of this work look like in Michigan?”

In the beginning, focus on state and local partnerships.  Engage in common visioning and develop common understanding of the realities of local, state, and federal funding streams. This Citizen’s Research Council catalog is a good start.  Data creates space for decision-makers to identify our strengths, our capacity, and our inadequacies. For example, a recent IFF study shows the gap between the available quality seats in early childhood education and the kids in need.  The highest need goes in a band around the city and into the suburbs.  If we were all reviewing that information, we would see that this is not a Detroit problem, it’s a regional problem.Once there’s a shared understanding of where to go (vision) and why (purpose), tackle the question: How do you turn a regional issue into a workable issue? For example, with their Science and Cultural Facilities District, Denver created a tax  which enabled some regional thinking about the solutions.  A proposal like that could be helpful for building a regional conversation on early childhood.  At present, Dearborn and Detroit don’t think that they have the same problems.Finally, focus on impact metrics: How will we know that universal early childhood is working?  When we see parent demand for quality early childhood rise.  When quality early childhood programs don’t have empty seats.  When you have robust public conversation about quality of life for parents with young kids.  When the conversation is actively about learning, no longer bemoaning the fact that we don’t have good options.  Once the focus is more on the nuance of what/how our children are learning and less on how the institution is performing, we’ll know that we’ve achieved universal access of acceptable quality for all families.

Nicole’s One Good Question: The Flint water crisis is fueling many questions for me, and while we don’t hear about it every day, I wonder about its long term impacts on society.  How do we create cities and communities where we don’t have decisions made solely on economic terms? How do we address the divide between the Dollar Store community and the Amazon community?  People are our biggest educators.  How we live and how we organize our communities is a key part of our education too.“We have too many Americas where people are never seeing each other”.

Nicole de Beaufort is a social entrepreneur based in Detroit, Michigan.  She leads EarlyWorks, llc., a strategic communications and community engagement consultancy focused on building awareness and public support for children’s issues.She is also co-founder of Cadre Studio, a service design collaborative using human-centered design methods withphilanthropists to increase impact and effectiveness. De Beaufort co-founded the Detroit Women’s Leadership Network, a mentoringnetwork of more than 1800 women in the Detroit region that was formedpromote inclusive and diverse women’s leadership. Prior to this, deBeaufort served as vice president of Excellent Schools Detroit, an education coalition. She previously founded and led Fourth Sector Consulting, Inc., and served as communications director of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Find her at @NicoledeB and earlyworksllc.com