The Portal Project: Imagining and acting into new ways of being

Joelle Basnight Head of School

In the fall of 2021, AISC launched “The Portal Project.” The Portal Project was an opportunity for a global audience to come together to listen, dialogue, reflect and converse around salient themes related to education.

Two pieces of writing inspired the project. First, Arundhati Roy’s April 2020 essay, The Pandemic is a Portal, in which she implored us to think deeply about what we would take with us “through the portal” into the future post pandemic and what we may leave behind. The second came from the Big Questions Institute and their free e-book published by Will Richardson and Homa Tavangar titled 9 Big Questions Schools Must Answer to Avoid Going “Back to Normal” (because normal wasn’t that great to begin with).

To begin, AISC chose five questions to explore through the global conversations. They were:

What is sacred?

What is learning?

Are we literate?

Who is unheard?

Are we well?

These conversations were for and with local and global thought-partners and community members to facilitate imagining and acting into new ways of being. Each session featured a provocative speaker who led participants in learning and dialogue. Our own learning coaches, Elliot Fijman and Walter Basnight, teamed with our Curriculum Director,

Mary Kelly Bello, made a case for nurturing adult learning. Our librarians, Barbara Bowman and Marion Whisnant, unpacked the importance of exploring racial and cultural literacies. Consultant Mark Church challenged us to think about the kinds of thinking needed now and in the future. Author Jennifer Abrams encouraged us to stretch our learning edges to remain healthy and well. Finally, activist and educator Tricia Friedman helped us to disrupt heteronormativity. Each session left participants with information and thoughts to share with their own communities.

The spring of 2023 saw a “mini-series” reprisal of The Portal Project with a focus on exploring who has the power and who is unheard? Consultant and researcher Emily Meadows shared her thoughts about the needs of transgender youth while speaker Alysa Perreras explored power and positionality in international schools.

Putting together a lineup of skilled speakers was an absolute pleasure. They made us question, think deeply, speak honestly and consider how we may contribute to our institutions and communities. On the heels of professional learning filled with webinars focussed on the practical, from COVID mitigation to supporting virtual learning, The Portal Project provided a much needed space to be in community, in conversation, together. My deepest gratitude to all of The Portal Project speakers and participants!

“Historically, Pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next…we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

- Arundhati Roy