“Be bold, be urgent, be nimble and be excellent.”
Kaya Henderson, interim chancellor of D.C. Schools (DCPS), shared her “four be’s” with GW students, alumni and educational professionals at the eighth annual Educational Symposium for Research and Innovations (ESRI) March 4-5 in GW’s Marvin Center Grand Ballroom.
Ms. Henderson delivered the keynote address at the two-day symposium, hosted by GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD). The conference included professional development and research method workshops, poster presentations and a case study competition and featured a number of local experts and GW faculty, including President Steven Knapp and GSEHD Dean Michael J. Feuer.
In his address March 5, Dr. Knapp noted the strong partnership between GW and DCPS and said GW can take a leading role in fostering educational research.
“We want to see the level of rigor and attention and focus on research as it applies to education just as strongly as it’s developed in medicine and public health at an institution like ours,” said Dr. Knapp. “I’m very glad to see such a powerful student interest in research at this symposium.”
“ESRI is an opportunity for students in GSEHD to test the waters with their research interests in a constructive environment,” said ESRI Student Chair Markesha McWilliams a second-year doctoral student in GW’s higher education administration program.
“Research in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields has received a lot of attention lately both here at GW and nationally, but we also want to solidify the importance of research in the social sciences, particularly educational research, and to encourage our students to be leaders in research-based educational reform,” she said.
Ms. Henderson, who took over the role of interim chancellor in 2010, spoke about the “dramatic” changes in the world since she first began teaching in the South Bronx more than 18 years ago. She told the audience that education has not been as forward thinking as other industries and that the field relies on the ideas from young teachers to improve.
“When I was thinking about the role of research and innovation in pushing educational reform in this country, that [question] was answered by this simple statement: we cannot keep doing what we’ve been doing, the way we’ve been doing it, and expect different results,” she said.
Ms. Henderson also detailed some of the local changes she’s helped push through as Teach for America executive director and vice president for strategic partnerships for the New Teacher Project, including the development of IMPACT, a new teacher assessment system, and the D.C. Teaching Fellows Program, which trains highly motivated teachers to enter DCPS.
Ms. Henderson urged the audience to practice “the four be’s,” adding that DCPS “has made excuses for far too long.”
“I don’t control what happens to my kids outside of my four walls. I don’t control whether they come to school hungry or not, whether they were read to or not, or if there is violence in their neighborhoods or heat in their homes,” she said. “But what I do control is what happens within the hours that I have them, in the four walls in which I have them. I have an obligation to make those hours and those four walls as excellent as possible. That is the work that we have to do.”
“You have an obligation to be bold, to be urgent, to be nimble and to be excellent. D.C. schools are depending on it.”
Ms. Henderson, who participated in GW’s Summer Scholars Pre-College program as a rising high school senior, praised GW for its longstanding commitment to DCPS, noting that the GW Stephen Joel Trachtenberg Scholarship Awards have provided more than $16 million in scholarships to DCPS students.
“We are pushing all our university partners to step up and show up for our children the way that GW has,” said Ms. Henderson. “GW has also been a professional developer, certifier and degree conferrer for our teachers and principals and has been a partner in reform.”
Calling Ms. Henderson’s remarks “the most inspired and interesting talk that I’ve heard in 25 years,” Dr. Feuer said the combined influence of research and innovation will provide “a whole new era of thinking” in education.
“With this inspired leadership, there’s now a foundation that’s given me hope for what we can do in this city, with our university and even nationally,” he said, “for the reform and improvement of education for all our children.”