Work hard. Be nice.

Below are great stories and pics from our school leader and co-founder of KIPP Gaston, Tammi Sutton.  Gaston is 1.5 hours northeast of Raleigh, NC and off of I-95 just south of the VA border. Gaston has a population of 800 – it’s not as rural as it gets as the town does have one stoplight:)   KIPP Gaston was one of the first schools we helped start in 2001 when we started replicating KIPP.  It’s located in a peanut field, and as we can read below, the peanut field is also growing hope and transformative change.
Plow on,
Mike
From Tammi……

Two weeks ago I was able to attend Morehouse College’s graduation with the Jackson family (Tyra Jackson -mom, Kayla Jackson – Pride of 2015, Maya Jackson – Pride of 2018 and Randi Jackson - Pride of 2020), and Myles’ grandparents) and see Myles Nicholson earn his college degree.  Remove the pouring rain, our drenched clothing and the thunder and rain that punctuated President Obama’s Commencement Speech, and the Morehouse graduation was still unlike any other.  The beautiful way in which a rich history and legacy of tradition is interwoven with a charge for social change makes a Morehouse’ graduation one that I wish everyone could witness.  Seeing 500 African American men earn their college degrees in a city that had such a powerful role in the Civil Rights Movement is indescribable.  I felt so honored to sit between Myles’ grandmother and mother and feel their immense pride and joy as Myles Nicholson graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Computer Science. Understanding that almost 25 years ago Ms. Jackson was forced to leave Spelman after a successful freshman year of college because of financial constrains and knowing the tremendous sacrifices and life choices she has made so that her children would be able to earn their college degrees is such a testament to the power of a high-quality education.  Being able to witness a mother’s dream deferred became her son’s reality is what all of this work is about.  Myles, now a Morehouse Man, will continue his education as he pursues his PhD at Ohio State (after spending the summer working on our campus) and continuing to follow his passions and continue his mother’s strong legacy of strength, commitment and purpose.

Before Morehouse, I was able to travel to UPENN.  Sitting in the Franklin Field with Vice President Biden and Denzel Washington (his son was graduating), I was most amazed by Brooke, Chevon Boone’s 8 month old niece.  Brooke is the daughter of her older sister Stancheka, a student in my first class at Gaston Middle School 16 years ago.  Chevon has four siblings – all of whom I have now worked with – either at Gaston Middle School or on our campus.  Holding Brooke during Chevon’s graduation, it was so crystal clear the generational, transformational change that a high-quality education is causing in the Boone family (and so many of our families).  The first three Boones have now graduated from college: NC A&T, Morehouse College and now Chevon with a degree from UPENN.  Ebony and Shannon, her younger sisters, will soon follow.  For all five kids who struggled growing up in a single wide trailer in rural NC, their lives and the lives of their children, starting with Brooke will be so different.   Spending the day with Chevon, I was reminded so many times of how she just embodies our mission – she has succeeded at one of top universities in our country, she has continuously strengthened  our peanut field, the UPENN campus, the larger Philly community, and as a 2013 Teach for America Corp member, she will spread  her gifts to her own middle school students this fall.  Walking around UPENN with Chevon, I was struck over and over by the ways she has left a mark on her campus – whether it be with the dozens of younger students who found her to say thanks for being such a powerful mentor or the fact that she knew the cafeteria workers and security guards by name and stopped to thank them and hug them for adding such value to her four years. Two of the guards asked me to take a photo of them with Chevon and with tears in their eyes made it very clear that she was the only student in the 24 floor high rise that greeted them by name, asked about their day and found time to tutor anyone interested in improving their own education.  Chevon is amazing, but, I was most proud of the ways she has remained grounded, humble and grateful.

Graduating with Chevon was Katrese, another member of our founding class.  Katrese is so many ways has modeled growth, and while there are many stories that illustrate this, I’ll choose a seemingly “small” one.  One quick bit of context:  during her junior year in high school, Katrese and I had the opportunity to travel to India to visit schools and provide professional development to educators.  For both of us it was our first time in a developing country, and we had some struggles acclimating to a new environment.  While there were many challenges, Katrese’s biggest was trying new food, and I am not exaggerating when I say that she was sustained for almost 10 days with only ice-cream sundaes, which she could locate in almost every place we visited. J   Now, fast forward to 2013.  After her graduation, I took her out to lunch and asked her to pick the spot.  What did Katrese want?  Yep, Indian.   She quickly explained that the best Indian Restaurant was closed on Mondays so we would have to go her second favorite place.  J  Then later that night at the airport what did she choose?   Japanese. J  All of this from a kid who would only eat chicken fingers – even as a college freshman. J  While Katrese wouldn’t try my Sushi (YET), in so many ways, these “small” events represented so much about how college can change everything.  In fact, this once reluctant traveler spent her spring semester enrolled in African language classes so that she could spend time with one of her college friends in Ghana after college.

I could keep going because seeing the growth of our students over time is amazing in so many ways.  As a first generation college graduate I know how transformational the degree is, not just because of the diploma and not just because we can have the career of our choice, but because it changes everything about our world.  Having the opportunity to work with KIPP for the last 12 years and seeing the lives of our alum transform is beautiful.

My 3^rd and 4^th grade teacher, Ms. Schweickert, was one of my favorite teachers. She taught me how to take risks, be ok with learning difficult new concepts, and how school could be fun and not just demanding.

And as an adult, I continue to learn from many teachers and mentors. During my early days as a rookie teacher in Houston 21 years ago, I was blessed to meet Harriett Ball. Harriett had the gift of reaching both the hearts and minds of everyone in her classroom, instilling in all her students to believe in possibilities.

KIPP Houston Public Schools is looking for great teachers, like Harriett, who will be long-remembered by our students; teachers who believe individually that one person can make a difference in a child’s life and, collectively, great things can happen.

As an educator, I know first-hand that a great teacher matters more than class size, more than the curriculum, more than money, and more than circumstance. A great and caring teacher changed my life, and I saw great teachers change lives of the KIPPsters 20 years ago.

Since then, KIPP teachers have touched the lives of thousands of students across the U.S. In Houston, we’ve grown to 21 schools, embarking on a major expansion to create a powerful prekindergarten-through-college continuum of support and services for our children. We’re building new schools, adding more grade levels to existing schools, and have more students hungry to learn and become a part of our team and family. And we’re having fun along the way! Our newest school, KIPP Courage College Prep, opened its doors in 2012. KIPP Northeast High School is set to open in fall 2013, and we are positioned to open a new elementary and middle school in 2014 to put a dent in our 8,000-student waitlist.

We’re continually looking for talented, committed, and passionate teachers and leaders who are ready to teach, lead, and inspire students. We are looking for educators who believe that all children, no matter their background, can and will complete college, contribute to the global workforce, help make the world a better place, and become self-sufficient and happy. As Mahatma Gandhi observed, as a teacher at KIPP, you can “be the change you wish to see in the world.”

I know it takes only one Harriett to make a difference in a child’s life! If you’re that great teacher or want to become that great teacher, I encourage you to join KIPP Houston Public Schools’ Team and Family by applying for a position with us. Visit www.teachatkipp.org

Teach, lead, and inspire at KIPP Houston Public Schools.

I’m taking a vacation from this blog to guest blog for Rick Hess, who wears jeans and sandals to conferences.  Very cool:)

Here’s a link to the first entry:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2013/02/how_cage-busting_is_paying_off_for_kipp.html

Last week I was in South Africa with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, helping build a better tomorrow.  They asked me to write a guest blog for Dell Foundation, which I’m including here as well.  And related to this blog entry is the release of our 2013 Global Fellowship application to help  educators from outside the US study school leadership at the KIPP School Leadership Program:

http://www.jotformpro.com/kslp/GlobalFellowsApplication

Inspiration and tragedy. Those are the two words I wrestled with over the Atlantic Ocean this past weekend as I flew home to the US from South Africa. Taking the negative first—so we can end on the positive —my visit to South Africa was tragic as I learned about the current reality: just one percent of black children get all the way through the South African education pipeline and graduate from a university.

And I didn’t just learn about it; I saw it. I saw teachers’ work rooms in schools in townships where the teachers were beaten-yet-present at best, and asleep at worst. What was the most tragic was that the beaten feelings, or lack of belief and action among teachers, was not matched by what I saw among students: I met children HUNGRY to learn, HUNGRY to do well on the matric to be able to study in universities, and HUNGRY to provide their families and themselves with a better life in the future.

And that’s where the inspiration began. The children. Wow! The children have fire in their bellies and songs in their hearts. Children have proven to us over the past 19 years of KIPP just how resilient they are, and this US lesson has the potential to play out the same way in South Africa.

At a crossroads: The South African dream of equal opportunity
There is a dream that is alive and well in South Africa. From the rural village boy who walked to the nearest town that had internet to learn about universities and is now studying at University of Cape Town (UCT) to the kids from Khayelitsha who dream of becoming astronauts, accountants, doctors, and lawyers to the UCT girl from Alexandra Township who goes hungry because she sends her meal subsidy home to help her family eat, I could see it.

It is this dream of equal opportunity for happy futures for ALL South African children that apartheid-era reformers told me was the source of their conviction and belief during those trying years; and it is this dream that is now at a crossroads. If only the adults can find ways to help children achieve their aspirations, then the sky is the limit for South Africa!

Schools as a hub for impact
Schools are the natural focal point for such direct action with children – particularly the public education system, which is supposed to exist to benefit children. It’s hard to find people who argue with that point. But if we truly look at the laws, rules, regulations, and policies that are in place in South Africa, it is too easy to wonder if the system is truly set up to benefit the children, or if it has turned into a jobs program for adults.

This is not to say caring, skilled adults aren’t critically important in the school system; children do not reach their educational potential without helpful adults. The larger question, however, is whether the system itself sets up learners, teachers and principals for success—or whether it makes failure the norm and success the exception.

The challenge for government
The challenges in South Africa post-apartheid are vast, so it is unreasonable to imagine a government-mandated, top-down approach to education where only one magical way for the provinces to deliver education to every community is THE answer for ALL children.
But government—by definition a top-down structure—is ultimately responsible and accountable for the South African education system. Which brings us to a riddle: How can a top-down entity provide the flexibility and quality to allow for different (and better) solutions in different schools for different children, all focused on one extraordinary outcome—helping learners achieve the dream?

There is no single correct answer to this riddle, but there is definitely one wrong answer: Doing the same thing and expecting different results. That, as is so often said, is the definition of insanity.

A way forward for South African education leaders: Freedom to change + accountability for quality
One different approach that has shown promise in other education systems is for government to give freedom to extraordinary educators and other qualified operators to implement their own ideas about what their learners need to improve outcomes and reach new levels of excellence. The South African department of education could allow nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to compete for the privilege and honor of operating their own government schools, but release the teachers and principals to do what they know needs to be done. After all, it is the country’s great teachers and principals who are closest to the challenges and therefore in the best position to think of solutions. And if the government allows these bottom-up solutions to flourish, then government will be in a position to harvest the innovative and successful ideas to help replicate them throughout government schools nationwide.

The key to managing this transition would be ensuring that all schools were held to high standards of quality. The government would have to set and maintain such accountability standards; schools who meet them would earn the freedom to innovate to meet their learners’ needs. Does this model have a precedent? Yes, there are several around the globe. The one closest to my heart is public chartering in the US. The experience of US charters, particularly those that have scaled and provided quality across multiple schools in multiple states, has valuable lessons to share with South Africa’s education leaders as they seek to improve the quality of education for all of the nation’s kids.

Last Thursday night, I listened to Professor Jonathan Jansen on a panel about models for quality education in South Africa. He closed the session with a belief that we share at KIPP: promises to children are sacred. All of us, whether in South Africa, the US or any other country, have made an implicit promise to our children to help them have better lives than we who came before. In the case of schools, and all who care about or work in them, this promise should be explicit. Children are our greatest resource. Children are our greatest hope. Children are our dream. It’s time to wake up and help our dream become reality.

If you have interest in more happenings in South Africa, you can learn more at Dell Foundation’s blog:

By Mike Feinberg, Sehba Ali, and Jason Bernal from the Houston Chronicle on December 14, 2012.

It has been a challenging couple of years for public education in Texas. The cuts to the state’s PreK-12 education system have eliminated key sources of support for getting students college- and career-ready.

But money alone does not ensure that public schools will deliver results. While public education spending has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, student achievement has remained relatively flat. To really make change possible, funding must be combined with innovative approaches, visionary leadership and policy support.

As the leaders of KIPP and YES Prep public charter schools, we have dedicated our careers to improving educational outcomes for children from low-income backgrounds. Our schools have a six-year college completion rate that is more than four times the rate for low-income students nationwide, and even exceeds the national average for all Americans. Achieving these results requires a commitment to doing whatever it takes – not just from educators, but from elected officials as well.

As the Legislature takes a fresh look at how we educate children in Texas, we have four recommendations:

Restore education funding for all public schools. In this challenging economic climate, we have to choose wisely where we spend our public dollars. Public education has to be at the top of our priority list – our schools cannot produce results without resources. Yet for the past two years, district and charter schools alike have struggled to provide a high level of instruction on a very thin shoestring. Restoring our lost funding would go a long way towards getting Texas schools and students on track to excellence.

Hold low-performing schools accountable for their results. When low-performing schools are the status quo, our entire education system suffers. This is especially true for public charter schools, where “freedom in exchange for accountability” is the rallying cry. This month, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) announced a campaign to crack down on underperforming charter schools. Texas must also embrace accountability, by closing low-performing charter schools and helping struggling district schools restructure and innovate.

Level the financial playing field between districts and charter schools. When it comes to state funding, district schools have an advantage over charters. According to a new report by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, KIPP and YES Prep receive several hundred dollars less in public revenue per student than the Houston Independent School District. But even though KIPP and YES Prep get no facilities funding from the state, and have to raise about $600 per pupil from private sources, we are still spending less per pupil overall than the district while our schools grow to full enrollment. It is vital that the state correct these imbalances, making sure that all public schools are on the same financial footing.

Promote resource sharing among district and charter schools. In Texas, charter schools struggle with the cost of building, leasing or purchasing school facilities. Meanwhile, many districts are saddled with vacant or underused buildings. Recently, educators have found ways to bring the two together. For example, the SKY partnership between the Spring Branch Independent School District, KIPP and YES Prep allows the three organizations to share district buildings and school resources; KIPP and YES Prep students participate in Spring Branch’s extracurricular programs, and Spring Branch administrators and teachers attend our professional development conferences. The state Legislature is ideally positioned to promote this kind of collaboration all over the state, in areas where it is needed the most.

When the new legislative session begins, Texas’ elected officials will have to choose whether to invest in a better future for public school students across the state. We hope they will choose wisely.

Feinberg is co-founder of KIPP, Ali is superintendent of KIPP Houston and Bernal is president of YES Prep.

In early October, Penn and KIPP held a ceremony to celebrate an agreement (MOU) that memorialized the partnership that has been in place since we first took KIPPsters to Dear Ole Penn in the spring of 1998. That campus visit has always been one of the most inspirational tours we have done, as not only do the KIPPsters get to see what a beautiful campus can look like in the heart of a big city, they also get a taste of college  life, listening to a lecture on American Diplomatic History by Professor Walter McDougal, getting grilled Socratic style on a law school case by Professor Regina Austin, and oh ya…visiting the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house and eating cheesesteaks.

Our partnership got even closer in 2006 when our first KIPPsters started to enroll at Penn. To date a dozen have gone to Penn and are joining KIPP leaders who are also Quakers such as Elliott Witney (KIPP Houston), Jason Botel (KIPP Baltimore), Josh Zoia (KIPP NYC), 10 KIPP teachers, former KIPP leadership recruitment director Allison Rouse, and yours truly (although friends from back in the day still dispute my alumnus status and wondered if I really graduated…diplomas, like hips, don’t lie )

At the October ceremony, the KIPPsters at Penn and several of us Big KIPPsters got to hear from KIPP Foundation board member and Penn-KIPP partnership funder Martha Karsh, Penn Dean of Admissions Eric Furda, and Penn President Amy Gutmann. Dr. Gutmann focused her remarks on “Tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase that means “repairing the world”. What a beautiful phrase that sums up why Penn is partnering with KIPP, why KIPP is partnering with Penn, and not to mention why we are getting out of bed in the morning to work very hard and be very nice.

I have now travelled all over the US where we have schools and where we do not yet have schools but there are needs for great schools, and I have also visited underserved communities in Mexico, India, Israel, New Zealand, Colombia, Chile, and Brazil. Dr. Gutmann is absolutely correct:  we…all of us…humanity has a responsibility to ensure that demographics do not determine destiny. As we move into the 21^st century and more and more countries around the world embrace the concept of the land of the free and the home of the brave, and as our American Dream becomes a shared dream that all parents all over the globe have for their children, we cannot tolerate gross disparities that indicate children do not have the freedom to pursue their passion and interests simply because of the circumstances of their birth.

Thank you, Penn; thank you, Martha; thank you, KIPPsters big and small; and thank you, Amy! Tikkun Olam indeed…Plow on!

This post is from a guest blogger, Leo Linbeck III. Thanks to Leo and the educators and business leaders who huddled up with him to think beyond Z about our upcoming legislative session!

Texas Families First is a different kind of education reform.

I can hear the collective groans after reading this sentence. “Yeah, sure, a different kind of reform. Great. That’s what we need, is another ‘reform’ that confuses everyone, makes teachers’ jobs harder, and ends up hurting kids.”

If that’s the kind of skeptical response you have to YEARP “yet another education reform proposal,” it’s with good reason: the past 40 years, the state has lurched from one major reform to another, but never solving the underlying problem. Through it all, the state has driven the process, trying to fix a system that they, by and large, were responsible for breaking.

TFF took a different approach. The core team behind TFF is comprised of educators and parent advocates – people who have spent many years working in schools (both districts and charter), educating children and educators, and advising families on how to find the best school for their kids. The approach was informed by real-world experience in the challenging world of P-12 education.

And this “bottom-up” perspective resulted in an agenda unlike any other that has been proposed in recent memory.

How is it different?

First, TFF was developed with an understanding that the shortcomings of the current system of public education in Texas are systemic. The problem does not have a single cause, and therefore cannot be solved by a single change to the system. Often, education reform proposals have tried to find a “silver bullet,” the one change that would magically fix everything for every kid. These “silver bullet” approaches have come in many different forms:

• Accountability. For a number of years, we’ve been told that the problem is that schools are not held accountable for the performance of their students. To fix education, therefore, all we need to do is create a system of tests that measure how schools are doing, and the underperforming schools will be forced to change their ways.

• Vouchers. Proponents of this reform have pointed out that since most schools are run by monopoly districts, they are not subject to the forces of competition. The solution, then, is to give money to families and let them attend private schools. The resulting competition for resources will drive innovation and improvement across the entire system.

• Expand charters. Similar to vouchers, charters are often held up as the solution. Add more charters, create more competition, force traditional districts to compete for students, and the market will take care of everything else.

• Merit pay. Since teachers are the most important factor in the performance of schools, we were told that creating incentives – and in particular tying pay to performance – were the way to fix the system.

• Parent trigger. One of the latest innovative ideas in education reform is the “parent trigger,” which allows parents to petition for a change in the management of their school. This innovation has gotten a lot of attention lately due to a the movie “Won’t Back Down,” which chronicles the efforts of a Los Angeles mom to change the leadership at her child’s public school.

Now, all of these ideas have merit – after all, who can argue against accountability, choice, parent control, and rewarding great teaching? And this is just a partial list – there have been many more attempts to find that elusive “silver bullet.”

There is one common element of all of these reforms: they were all state-wide reforms. They were designed, debated, passed, and administered at the state level. Passing those reforms resulted in a transfer of power and authority from local entities and families to a centralized state bureaucracy. Those who were actually responsible for their implementation – school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, and families – ended up being subject to more control out of Austin.

The cumulative effect of these reforms, then, resulted in an educational system that was more bureaucratic, less responsive, and larger scale. We evolved from a distributed, localized system to a system of central control.

This reality leaves us in a situation where incremental reforms cannot address the underlying problem. The existing system is so complex and interconnected that attempts to make change at the margin are bound to be ineffective. As I said above, the problem is systemic, so a systemic solution is what is needed.

The Texas Families First Coalition therefore set out to create a systemic solution. We worked to develop an alternative system of regulating public education in Texas. This system is built around the two principles of local control and family empowerment. These two principles, in turn, create a sort of balance or creative tension. Both are needed, and in their proper proportion.

A reform program that only provided local control would fail, because we would only be substituting one state-wide monopoly for many local ones. Many of the state regulations that have accumulated over the years have been in response to the dysfunction that has occurred within some of these local monopolies. Freeing a monopoly to behave like a monopoly would not improve the system. That is why family empowerment must be coupled with local control – families must have the rights and privileges needed to hold local districts accountable for their performance. It is only when families are empowered that local jurisdictions can be trusted with local control.

A reform program that only provided family empowerment would fail, because the vast majority of the capacity in is the public school system, and without freeing that capacity to respond to the needs and wants of families, the result would simply be anger and frustration. For families to have a real choice, they must have options, and that requires freeing districts from burdensome state regulations. That is why local control must be coupled with family empowerment – districts must have the freedom and flexibility to respond to families. It is only when local districts are free to respond and innovate that families will enjoy the benefits of choice.

There is more to say on this topic, which I will do in a future blog post.

L3

I am honored and humbled to have served with each of you in our incredibly committed Team & Family this year. Friday was the last day of summer session and also marked the last day of an extraordinary year.

Congratulations and thank you again for all you do to help build a better tomorrow. We have been on a nutty ride of expansion the last several years, trying to give seats to more families who want our help. This work is difficult under normal circumstances, so it takes on epic challenge proportions when we layer the hyper growth on top. I am very proud of all of you for what you do day in and day out; on the good days we’re working hard to set our KIPPsters up for success in the classrooms or we’re supporting those teammates doing this work, and on the bad days we’re dealing with all the variables that get in the way on top of still trying to set our KIPPsters up for that success.

Out and about, people routinely will ask me how I have the energy to keep doing this after 20 years. I think it’s a strange question although it’s hard to give an answer in words. Those folks who ask the question need to see the eyes of all of you when you’re focused on eliminating those variables, the eyes of our children when they’re in your classrooms and the light bulb goes off, and they eyes of our parents when they walk into the school to sign up for the lottery and at their children’s graduations. It’s that sparkle and fire that keeps a man alive (credit “She Sells Sanctuary” for those words ).

I’m pumped for the next 20 and hope you are, too!

Plow on,

Mike

Our new Director of Development, Sondee Hatcher, is taking her position to new heights…..literally Call it mission-driven, call it insanity, call it desperation, call it inspiration, but whatever you call it, Sondee will be climbing a 14,000 foot mountain in Colorado this summer all in the name of raising money for our KIPPsters. Why?! You can read about it in her own words below.

Dear Friends,

Raising money for my favorite cause may not be as hard as climbing a mountain, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do! As the new Director of Development at KIPP Houston, my job, by definition, is to raise money for KIPP. But I wanted to do something personally to support this vital and worthwhile cause.

At KIPP, we’ve made a sacred promise to help our students climb the mountain to and through college. This summer, in an effort to raise money for KIPP, I plan to climb a mountain of my own – my first 14er, and I invite you to sponsor me in this effort.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “14er,” 14ers are mountains whose summits are at 14,000 feet or higher. In July, I’ll be climbing Quandary Peak, just outside of Breckenridge, Colorado. My climb, of course, is symbolic of the KIPPsters’ climb up the mountain to and through college, and through this climb, I hope to raise $25,000 for KIPP Houston. To date, I’ve raised just over $11,000, so I’m almost halfway there, and I’d truly appreciate your support to help me reach the summit.

While climbing this 14er will be no easy feat for me, it is nothing compared to the obstacles and challenges that the KIPPsters work hard to overcome every day as they climb their own mountain. Ninety percent of KIPP Houston students come from low-income households, and most will be the first in their families to attend college. The odds of going to and graduating from college are stacked against them.

Without KIPP, the students that we serve would have less than a 50% chance of even going to college and only an 8% chance of graduating from college. Yet in defiance of the odds, 90% of KIPP Houston students, tracking from the 8th grade, are going to college. While their climb up the mountain to and through college will not be an easy one, KIPP is doing everything within its power to make sure our students are prepared for their climb and have the support they need to reach the ultimate summit – college completion.

This coming school year, there will be 9,000 Pre-K through 12th grade students in 21 KIPP Houston schools. Please support the KIPPsters on their climb up the mountain to and through college by sponsoring me on my climb. Your generous donation will help to provide the KIPPsters with a first-rate, college preparatory education and with the choices and opportunities that all children deserve.

Keep climbing,

Sondee Hatcher

Director of Development, KIPP Houston

shatcher@kipphouston.org

P.S. Every dollar donated goes directly to support the education of KIPP Houston’s students. Your gift and your help will make a tremendous difference in the lives of our KIPPsters!

Our guest blogger is Elliott Witney, who has been School Leader of KIPP Academy in Houston for the past decade, and who is about to take his leadership skills to our partner district, Spring Branch ISD, to help them double their college completion rate in the next five years.

Elliott spoke at our KIPP Houston HS Class of 2012’s graduation, and his speech confirmed for me why we have speakers who are KIPPsters themselves.  What an amazing speech –congrats and thank you, Elliott!!!

embedded by Embedded Video

Thank you, Jessica.  You’re incredible.  Thanks also to the KIPP Houston Board, Mike (you can call him Mike now), Paul Castro, Aaron Brenner, Lara Wheatley, Ms. Mohr and Mr. Estrella.  Your strong leadership and trailblazing courage continue to hack through dense jungles of worldwide skepticism about what’s possible for ALL our children.  To our teachers…there’s nothing harder than teaching.  If we could coax Nhan Thai to figure out how to harness the brain power and passion in the first few rows here…we could, well, at least afford a gallon of gas.

To our KIPP alumni, much love and huge respect.  And to our parents and families: gracias por el amor y el apoyo a los graduados – a través de largos días, tareas, oportunidades de verano, tráfico en el estacionamiento. KIPP puede pasar factura a una familia. El amor que siente por estos graduados y los sueños que mantiene profundamente en sus corazones acerca de lo que cada uno de estos jóvenes va a hacer en sus vidas… sabemos lo real que es. Sabemos que estás ahí recorriendo mentalmente su álbum de fotos  - primeras palabras, el primer paso, primer día de clases, cumpleaños, quinceañeras… Es una locura lo que recordamos de nuestros hijos. El primer recuerdo de mi hija Olivia se encuentra en la sala de partos con su lengua hacia fuera como una lagartija. Esta noche sus familias podrían estar pensando “Ay, mi pequeña lagartija!”  Families, thank you for doing everything you have to help your children be here tonight.  Getting to college ain’t easy, heck…navigating the parking lot at dismissal isn’t easy.

To our graduates, I’ll be brief; I realize I stand between you and a party.  Over the years I’ve gotten to know just about every one of you in some capacity.  Leadin’ the school.  Teaching.  Coaching.  Walking the high school halls.  I’ve got so many lasting memories of 2012.  The MS-150 team.  Interviewing Alexis and Gerardo.  Ms. Cumbley and Pat King’s stories.  Battle of the Bands.  Bobby and Tracy at the Poetry Slam.  VASE.  The trash talk during the World Cup when France lost on a headbutt.  3D basketball beating us in a close game while Mr. Caesar ran up and down the court taunting me with Tiger cheers.  And of course David Lara’s black glove and death-defying school bus acrobatics.

Those memories pale in comparison to one.  You don’t even know this happened.  You were in 6^th.  It was a tough year for me for a bunch of reasons.  Professionally and personally.  Obsessed with the movie Gladiator…watching one scene every morning.  Which is admittedly kind of strange for a pacifist!  In the scene, a grizzled, filthy, and totally serious main character named Maximus – a Roman General ready to lead his troops into a vicious battle against a barbarian horde – stops for a second…and stares at a beautiful bird and smiles.  In full battle gear, he finds a moment of happiness.  Wiped out from a sweltering soccer practice and physically spent from long days trying to be a better Principal, I had my own bird moment.  In the Breezeway, laughing hysterically I saw a few of you – Monica, Steffy, Mendoza, Q.  Hearing such hard-working kids laugh changed me.  I started thinking about this whole thing – to and through college, climbing the mountain, raising the bar, taking no shortcuts, impossible is nothing, closing the achievement gap.  And I remember thinking, “Yeah, all that does matter…and so does happiness.  Where’s the happiness in this battle?”  We need to see the bird.

So I walked into my office, closed the door and made a list of those moments when I felt my own genuine happiness.  I wrote it, read it, and reflected.  Of course there were moments with my family and friends.  The Cubs actually won a few games that year so a victory ended up on the list.  (And I think the White Sox won a few, too.)  The rest of it, though, was filled with teaching moments.  Teaching someone his first letter sound right under where this stage sits now.  Tutoring.  Sitting back it was then, thanks to you, that I realized I had to find a way to get back into the classroom somehow the following year.  The next morning I asked Ms. Williams if she’d let me teach some of you.  She said yes.  And I did.  Then History with Charles King.  And soccer ever since.

2012, you changed my life.

We’ve heard a lot in the media and Hollywood about 2012.  Bilquis just referenced it, too.  The apocalypse!  Rosie joked about it on the soccer team half the season.  We teach a song about the end of the world in Songfest – REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).”  When I think of 2012, I definitely don’t think apocalypse.  I do think that tonight marks the end of the world…as we know it.

For at least a few years, this world – KHHS – has been your world.  The long days.  The bus.  The homework.  Ricki and Jasmin saying KIPP It Up, Morris’s Popeye’s fried chicken sign.  Tonight that world…ends.  But it’s not the type of end that turns into defriending people from Facebook.

Tonight and starting in the Fall, your KIPP world ends and you get to join the rest of us as we wage war on injustices in every nook and cranny of the world.  Education.  Ego.  Poverty.  Disease.  Immorality.  Infidelity.  AND…people who break up with each other by texting.  “OMG we’re done.”  Tonight – after your party – you get to start building a better tomorrow.

It would have been really easy for the teachers in these front rows to stop at academics.  Goldsbury’s math.  Written’s grammar…To leave a lasting imprint on the world during your lifetimes, though, academic skills aren’t enough.  This is why we’ve pushed you to wrestle with moral dilemmas that helped each of you figure out for yourself who you are.  Are you someone who lies or not?  Steals or not?  Picks up trash?  Holds doors?  Expresses thanks to your family and those who have helped you or not?  And we’ve tried to open your eyes to some of history’s most hideous horrors, too.  Slavery, bigotry, genocide, torture.  The types of social injustices that scar families, communities, nations, and continents.

You’ve learned who you are and what needs to be done to build a better tomorrow…And it doesn’t have to be what we’ve done.  Soccer players have stopped civil wars.  The Innocence Project is ending wrongful imprisonment.  Doctors stopped smallpox.  Start an art studio, write inspiring folk music, build a soup kitchen.  Or as I’ve told Marisol and Suzy, make a billion dollars and give it away.  Just do something that makes you happy.

KIPP started in 1994.  Lots of you were born in 1994.

1994 was a different time.  There wasn’t even email in 1994, and now people check their email in the bathroom.  For me, 1994 meant my first year of college. Mine was hard.  I wanted to quit.  A couple months into it I was failing every single class wondering why the university made such a huge mistake accepting me.  Sitting in a dorm, tear-stained eyes, nothing to show for everything I’d done but college debt and immeasurable self-doubt.  I picked up a phone to call home.  (Holding a fake huge phone with two hands – “This was 1994…we didn’t have cell phones”) “Dad, they made a mistake.”  I expected compassion.  A Jewish father’s version of pobrecito, or at least an oy vey.  Instead, silence.  “Hello!?  Dad, did you hear me?  I’m done.”  Silence again.  “Remember that time we took you ice skating when you were 5?”  “No.” (Ice skating?!) “Well your mother and I watched you on that ice for 45 minutes.  You’d stand up, fall down, stand up, fall down.  Until you started to skate.  You’ve got this.”  I don’t know if he said “You’ve got this” but I’ve heard the Lady Kerberos say it so much.  Thanks a lot, Jenny Valle!

Last year on Father’s Day – my first as Olivia’s father – I experienced a real end.  My own father lay unconscious on a hospital bed – fallen victim to a massive and irreparable heart attack.  With Olivia in my arms and my wife by my side I knelt at his bedside, gave him a gentle kiss, said a quiet prayer, and joined my family as we agreed to make that day his last.  I miss my father.  Not when it’s easy.  But in times like 1994.  For some of you, your families are where you turn when times get tough.  They’ll give you a pobrecita and then they’ll help you back up.  A mother or father, a grandmother, an uncle.  Maybe a teacher or priest.  For all of you, though, you have each other.  Although social media has made some around us meaner – bullying all the way into the bedroom – it’s also connected Baylor to Ohio Northern, Southwestern College to the University of St. Thomas.

When you hit the wall, want to quit, or get sucker-punched by the last person you’d ever think would, you’ve got each other to remind you about who you are and what got you here.  You’ve got this.  We know you’ve got this because like my father watching me get back up when I fell on an ice skating rink, we’ve watched you simply being you.

You’ve run more miles on a court, field, or course than many run in their lives – in the sweltering sun; in the freezing rain.  You’ve juggled art, dance, band, SGA, athletics, tough coursework, and scads of other responsibilities…and still found time for your family and faith.  You’ve climbed out of holes so deep you could hardly see the light.  With shredded knee cartilage, one of you joined a team that rode a bike to Austin to raise money and hope for Multiple Sclerosis.  You’ve hopped on planes and trains to travel with a courageous, adventurous spirit – to DC, Utah, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Lancaster County, and the Dominican Republic.  You’ve shown honesty, integrity, and a true commitment to do what’s right.  In a world rife with deceit and phoniness – even by some of our most celebrated leaders – you’ve spoken the truth to others, to each other, to us.  And many of you have dealt with the worst things a kid could face.  And you’re here.

You being you is exactly what you’ll continue to do.  Tonight marks the end of the world as you know it here, and I feel fine because you being you will build a better tomorrow.  Have fun.  See the bird in the battle.  And laugh the way you always have.

Now I’d like to introduce by far the best Witney on this stage, Ms. Figgy.