25th Anniversary Summit

This past weekend was TFA's 25th Anniversary Summit in Washington DC! At the 20th we had 11,000 attendees and I couldn't believe how many people that was; this year we had 15,000. We took up the entire million square feet of the convention center, and could no longer fit in any one room of it - the only time all 15,000 attendees were in the same place was for closing ceremonies in the Verizon Center. Just like five years ago it was a re-energizing and inspiring weekend for me as I think about the work I do and why.

Me looking cool with my lanyard and buttons by the Philly sign.

Besides running around squealing and reuniting with TFA friends from all over the country (including Ms. L, who is now in her eighth year of teaching!), I got to attend some pretty great sessions. One highlight was a panel on "What is the role of white leaders on the path to educational equity?", which was moderated by Dr. Beverly Tatum, who I have a HUGE professional crush on. I was helping set up the room for the session before it started, when she came in and introduced herself to me like it was no big deal, and then SHOOK MY HAND!! Alas, I don't have any photographic evidence that this happened, but it did and it filled my heart with joy. The panel itself was pretty great too:

From left to right: Dr. Tatum, Elisa Villanueva Beard (our CEO), Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade, the principal of a local DC school, and John Deasy (former LAUSD superintendent)

(Seriously, if you haven't seen Dr. Duncan-Andrade speak before, definitely click the link and watch the video.)

My other favorite session was on intentionally diverse schools, since as Ben and I get closer to starting our own family, we have been talking a lot about the type of school where we want to send our hypothetical future kids. We both agree we want a racially and socioeconomically diverse public school, but those are few and far between - and ever fewer and farther if you want such a school that is actually integrated, and doesn't track its students by race and class under the guise of "ability." The panel consisted of four principals of intentionally diverse schools, and was moderated by Nikole Hannah-Jones, who you may know from a recent piece she did on This American Life - The Problem We All Live With. That's another one you need to listen to as soon as you can if you haven't already. You can also watch the full panel online if you are interested - I learned a lot, but honestly left feeling discouraged about the backwards progress that seems to be happening in school integration across the country.

The closing ceremony at the Verizon Center was great - there's nothing like being in a stadium full of people passionate about working towards educational equity.

Photo shamelessly lifted from the TFA twitter feed.

I'm embedding the video below - you can watch the full thing if you are interested, but there are a few highlights I particularly recommend:

• First 10 minutes - three different groups of student performers: students from Hawai'i performing a hula, students from New Mexico performing a drum circle and hoop dance, and a drumline and dancers from a DC high school
• 0:43 - a second generation corps member (aka a TFA teacher who was taught by TFA teachers) talks about his journey to end up teaching students in his home community of the Rio Grande Valley
• 1:02 - President Obama!! (sadly, he was present via video only)
• 1:22 - an alum's powerful spoken word piece, it's hard to explain but just watch and you won't regret it
• 1:27 - a truly amazing student leader from Baltimore (and hopefully a future TFA teacher!)
• 1:36 - Memphis parent activists and organizers (I will be sending this segment to everyone who trots out the old "but those families don't care about education!" racist bullshit from this point on)

Also - a small personal highlight for me was that in our CEO's closing remarks (last 10 minutes of the video above), while listing out the many identities that comprise the TFA community, she said "we are a community that is Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Humanist, and Atheist and so much more." There are a lot of religious folks at TFA, mostly Christian, so there is often language that is unintentionally exclusionary to atheistic folks like myself (e.g. "please join us all in praying"). A few years ago I started a small resource group for secular people at TFA, and several times in the intervening years we've contacted the CEO when she says stuff like "we're all praying" to let her know we exist and ask her to consider more inclusive language like "our thoughts and prayers." So the fact that she included "humanist and atheist" in her list was very exciting to me, since it means she knows we exist and proactively thought to include us, and I think I can take some small amount of credit for that fact. It was a very small thing in a weekend bursting with big things, but it was a very personally satisfying note to end on.