39 minute read
Leading from Home
by SchoolCEO
Leading From Home Running a school district is hard work. How do you do it from your house?
As we on the SchoolCEO team began our transition to remote work, we couldn’t help thinking about you: dedicated school leaders all over the country, making hard decisions from your home offices. If we’re having a difficult time adjusting, you surely have it even worse. You’re not just working from home—you’re leading.
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So we talked to several private sector experts, pulling together some of the best tips for everything from supporting your staff to staying positive. Here’s what they had to say.
Supporting Your Staff
Show them you care. “It is more important than ever to reach out to individuals in your company,” says Brian Carlson, co-founder and CEO of e-learning provider eThink Education. “Not only are we remote, but we’re also dealing with an unprecedented health crisis throughout the globe. Families are in difficult situations. We have employees whose loved ones have lost their jobs, whose kids are now home. They’re under additional stress. You need to be flexible with those people, but as a leader, you also need to reach out. Take five minutes to pick one person in your company that you have not spoken with today and check in on them.”
Be accessible. “For teachers, it’s best practice to set office hours,” says Rich Henderson, Director of Global Education Solutions at tech company Lenovo. “They might be available for video conferencing between certain times, and parents and students can request a time during those office hours. That goes for administrators as well—you should be setting open office hours for your staff to come to you with questions or concerns.”
Promote best practices around security. “Teachers are still dealing with K-12 students—minors,” says Esther Yoon, Product Marketer at Zoom. “Just like at school, where you have security measures to protect your students, in a virtual environment, there still needs to be that same mentality. One of the most important things that superintendents can do is communicate best practices around security. Make sure you require a password. Don’t post your Zoom meeting link on a public forum, where anyone can just hop on, unless you have the right parameters in place. We have a lot of capabilities in Zoom that can protect teachers. So I would encourage superintendents to take on that leadership role by keeping security top of mind and making sure they’re aware of our security features.”
Provide resources. “I think the number one thing that managers can do right now is provide a very comprehensive and concise list of resources,” says Yoon. “A lot of K-12 teachers are scrambling to find things on their own because they haven’t gotten a really clear how-to on e-learning. Plus, not only are many teachers trying to transition their whole curriculum from this in-person experience to remote, which is a challenge in itself—they’re also doing video conferencing for the first time ever. If superintendents spent a couple of hours aggregating the best resources, it would save their teachers a lot of stress and anxiety.”
Communicating Clearly
Over-communicate. “You have to be proactive with your communications,” says Tom Popomaronis, Vice President of Innovation at Massive Alliance and a veteran of remote work. “It’s easy to go dark sometimes. Everyone’s accessible in an office, and being remote makes it easy to wait for someone to message you. Going out of your way to provide ample oversight or feedback on a project goes a long way for your colleagues and yourself. You’re still present digitally.”
Turn on your video. “Body language is a significant part of your communication,” says Yoon. “It’s a majority of how you communicate and how you respond. With video on, you can see if someone’s distracted. You can see if they’re nodding in approval. If you just jump on a phone call, you’re losing so much in visual communication.”
Keep communication focused. Kerry Hannon is a bestselling author and speaker whose forthcoming book, Great Pajama Jobs: Your Guide to Working from Home, focuses on remote work. “Be respectful of each other’s time,” she tells SchoolCEO. “You absolutely have to have scheduled communication, but it doesn’t have to be about minutia.” Having trouble maximizing your communication? “You might keep a budget for a week of who you’re calling and what you’re doing,” Hannon suggests. “Set a timer if you have to. From there, you can ask yourself how you can streamline your communication.”
Preserving School Culture
Keep everyone connected. “You have to find a way to connect your employees together,” Carlson tells us. “That’s part of your culture. So if you want people to feel connected, like they’re part of the team, video communication is very important, even if it’s just for fun. Last night, for example, we did a virtual happy hour. Everyone got together on video and had a drink, brought their kids to say hi—anything to get away from work for a second. That was very helpful for the group, because we’re all in isolation right now on top of being remote.”
Stay focused on your values. Julie Morgenstern is a New York Times bestselling author of six books on productivity and organization, including her most recent, Time to Parent. “As a leader, your job is to always hold up the flag,” Morgenstern says. “What is your mission? What are your values? During your addresses, in every meeting, challenge your people: This is our mission. We have these obstacles. Let’s brainstorm new ways to achieve that mission in these unique circumstances. That way, you keep reinforcing and rearticulating your identity, and you maintain that culture.”
Be authentic. “People believe that their background, their pets, their children, should never really interrupt their work environment,” says Henderson. “But I’ve found the exact opposite to be true. I’ll be on these important phone calls with educators, and my son will come over. At first I was very tempted to say, Daddy is on a really important call. But now, I just let him interrupt me. We’re all trying to do our best. I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to have this perfect environment, and that’s not the case. You’ve just got to get in it and be yourself.”
Engaging the Community
Provide your community with personal updates. “I’m on the board of my high school, and the head of school is adorable,” Hannon tells us. “Every morning, he does a nice little video walking around the empty campus, talking to a student or teacher. He might also share a short video from a teacher saying hi to the student body, showing her dog under her desk, or sharing some fun insight into what it’s been like teaching remotely. Be creative about how you might do a daily message to your school.”
Point to community resources. “One way that superintendents can bring people together at this time is by pointing their families and teachers to resources in their communities,” says Kathryn Haydon, award-winning educator and founder of Sparkitivity. “Where I am, we’ve had a local music venue offer free streaming concerts. The art museum is offering some online programming, and the Nature Center is still open because they’re big enough to accommodate social distancing. Superintendents could really build a lot of great community will by sharing those types of resources with their families.”
Look for the helpers. “Highlight people or organizations in your community who are making an effort to help in this crisis,” says Hannon. “For example, shine a light on organizations who have donated computers or tablets for kids. It makes that organization feel really good that someone’s realizing what they’re doing, but it also shows that you’re part of the community and in touch with people.”
Staying Productive Respect the workplace—even if it’s in your home.
“People think working from home is staying in your pajamas, working in your bed—and people do that, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t advise it,” says Popomaronis. He says it’s key not just to work in a dedicated office space, but also to minimize distraction. “You really need an incredible amount of discipline to be effective,” he says. “I’ll proactively block out distractions by turning on Do Not Disturb mode on my phone or my computer. I’ve also gone as far as setting up a firewall for myself during office hours so I can’t look at certain websites—like I’m my own parental control. It’s about respecting the workplace like you would the office.”
Don’t be afraid to restructure your workday. “It’s very important to get out of the mindset of the eight-hour day,” says Haydon. “Think about all the extra things you usually do during the workday—your commute, meetings, side conversations—that aren’t necessarily productive time. When you’re home, other things can fill those gaps.” Haydon emphasizes this in Sparkitivity’s training on working from home with kids. “You don’t necessarily have to be sitting at your desk for the entire typical work day,” she says. “You might get up very early to do some high-focus work while your family is asleep, then take a break once your kids wake up to get them situated, then go back to your desk. It’s very important to have some flexibility as to when you work.”
Take it week by week, not day by day. “When you’re not in an environment where you’re working together face-to-face all the time, a lot of the guidance we’ve seen is about organizing your work into chunks of time,” says Henderson. “So look at that schedule and what you want to accomplish over the course of a week, instead of looking at it day by day.”
Set clear boundaries with your family. “When you’re working in a home with a lot of people, everyone needs to have their own personal space,” says Haydon. “You need to have ground rules as to when you can bother one another.”
Taking Care of Yourself
Leave your desk. “For 15 minutes to every hour I work, I go on a long walk with the dog,” Popomaronis tells us. “In an office, you’re getting up, walking around, having water cooler conversations. But at home—one day I had a long project and I literally sat for five straight hours working on it. My feet were numb. You can’t neglect your health, but it’s easy to do when you’re by yourself without the typical distractions. So be proactive with your health. I set a 15-minute timer and do a loop, stretch the legs and the mind, get some fresh air.”
Practice mindfulness. “If you’re a person who does meditation or yoga, try to do that,” Hannon suggests. “It’s a solitary thing, but you’re quieting down that anxiety and finding a sense of balance, because things are so stressful right now.”
Replace your commute with self-care. “When you’re remote, that time that you were otherwise spending commuting can go back into your pocket for self-care,” says Morgenstern. “Rather than waking up and immediately going off to the races, use that time for yourself, for exercise or listening to music—anything that’s going to fuel you up.”
Looking on the Bright Side
Solitude promotes creativity. “In the science of creativity, alone time can function as incubation time, which brings forth new ideas and solutions,” Haydon tells us. “So this is an opportunity to be thinking, What are some new ideas that I can put forward when we get back to school, or even right now? How can I keep moving forward? The people thinking that way will be the ones who come out of this ahead.”
Your staff will be more willing to try new technology.
“We’ve been seeing this shift already in education where the teacher’s desk is no longer really the center of the classroom,” says Henderson. “We’ve seen this natural shift to address different learning styles, to address the different needs of students. We’ve been introducing digital tools, and now, after this situation, any hesitation that there was in trying new technology and trying something new is thrown out the window. You really have to take the risk.”
You’ll learn about yourself. “I’m a big fan of remote work,” says Hannon. “I think there’s so many good things to learn about yourself and about your work habits, your time management habits, your discipline, your communication skills. You’re never going to regret getting better at time management, or drawing boundaries between work and family, or communication. When we get back into the workplace, you’ll have learned something about how you work best.”
SchoolCEO
We spoke with four innovators slated to appear at this year’s SXSW EDU Conference and Festival. Here are their most exciting ideas for the classroom and beyond.
Shareefah Mason
A New Hiring Pipeline: Finding and Keeping Teachers of Color
“Right now the teaching workforce is 81% white female,” Shareefah Mason tells us. “And of course, that doesn’t match the diversity of students across the nation.” When kids don’t have teachers who look like them, it can negatively impact the way they learn. “Thirty percent of students of color are more likely to attend college if they have a teacher of color in their primary years,” she adds.
Mason, Social Studies Department Chair at Dallas ISD’s New Tech High School, is on a mission to change the way schools find and keep teachers of color. But when the New Orleans native relocated to Dallas after Hurricane Katrina, education wasn’t even on her radar. “I had just gotten my master’s degree in organizational management the year before,” she explains. “I was probably going to go into human resources.” After being transplanted to Dallas, however, Mason found an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. “There was a free alternative certification program for Hurricane Katrina evacuees that Dallas ISD offered, so out of pure boredom, I went to take classes because I love to learn,” she tells SchoolCEO. Fourteen years later, she is now one of the most distinguished educators in all of Texas and has won local, state, and national teaching awards. In January, Mason was named a 2020 Presidential Leadership Scholar.
Outside the classroom, she’s not only on the Texas State Board for Educator Certification, but also spends much of her time presenting at conferences and working with education partners to help other young people of color find their way into teaching. “My passion right now is trying to develop a really effective pipeline for the recruitment and retention of teachers of color,” she tells us.
Lead to Teach
Mason is currently a Research Fellow for Teach Plus, a leadership organization giving voice to teachers in several states. She’s previously partnered with them to find and present solutions to this specific recruitment and retention issue. This has allowed her to see firsthand what’s driving teachers of color out of the classroom. “What they’re saying is they’re not being prepared, they’re not being mentored,” she explains. “Their experiences aren’t valued, and there aren’t enough opportunities to lead from the classroom.”
To improve recruitment and disrupt this high turnover, Mason is launching a project called Lead to Teach. “What I want to do is partner with school districts to help them truly develop intricate policies to build this pipeline that is so necessary,” she says. A big part of this project is bringing educators together to share effective ideas and strategies. “It would give them the opportunity to share their already successful practices and to refine those together so we’re implementing the best practices for recruiting and retaining teachers of color across the country.”
Mason is hoping to bridge some of these gaps for teachers of color by guiding districts through a four-pronged approach to recruiting and retention, using rubrics she’s created for each strategy.
Understanding Needs: “The first rubric allows superintendents, principals, and board members to understand what effective teachers of color need to bring to the table,” Mason tells us. “In essence, it’s what every teacher needs to bring, regardless of race.” This rubric outlines the unique characteristics districts should look for in new hires: diverse experiences to meet students’ needs, intuition and understanding to minimize issues in the classroom, and a recognition of the importance of collaboration. “Another component is being kinesthetic, especially in urban settings,” she adds. “What I mean is you have to go to church plays and to basketball games and allow students and parents to see you in the community.”
Teacher Preparation: “The second rubric deals with everything from classroom management to trauma-informed instruction to social-emotional learning techniques,” Mason
tells us. “We have to really dive deeply into how we’re preparing our teacher candidates in alternative certification programs and traditional education programs, as well as what we continually feed them when they become teachers. I think the ball is definitely being dropped there. We have to have more purposeful professional development centered around student needs.” Mason believes that if teachers understand how to be successful in an urban environment, they can translate those skills into any other setting. “It’s important that all teachers have this foundational knowledge because we may never know where a teacher ends up,” she says.
Mentoring: “Each urban district should create a distinguished teacher of color mentoring program,” Mason says. “Teachers of color in years 0-3 would meet with distinguished teachers of color selected by their district every quarter to provide a safe space for dialogue, professional development, and innovative strategies and anecdotes.” This initiative, Mason tells us, “will provide the support teachers of color need from those who understand their plight and can provide the motivation necessary to encourage them to remain in the profession.”
Giving Voice: “The last part is to develop a teacher of color state legislative cohort,” Mason says. “This would allow teachers of color to feel their experiences are valued and that they have the opportunity to lead from the classroom.” Currently, Mason says teachers who go to the capitol only have three minutes each to express needs, which often leads to confusion in the implementation of any funds granted. “With my idea, teachers of color would be able to meet with state legislators in the off session to talk about what the problems really are, where the money really needs to go,” she tells us. “They would be able to devise a true, solid plan that would allow legislators to disperse money accordingly and appropriately so we can truly see change for students across the board.”
Mason is actively seeking partner districts to pilot her Lead to Teach program. She has also created the Building the Bridge Fellowship to bring administrators and teachers together and is working on grants to fund its implementation.
“There has to be a nuclei formed around teachers, instructional deans, and principals of color to figure out where professional isolationism is being created, why mentorship is not where it needs to be, and why these teachers don’t feel prepared,” Mason says. “This program puts everybody in the same room.”
Mason wants to help as many districts as possible find the right teachers for their kids—and give them the best chances for success. “We can overlook things like pay because we know we’re giving back,” she tells us. “We know we’re empowering a generation of children who will one day rule the world and that matters to us.”
For information on being a Lead to Teach pilot district, email Mason at shareefahmason@icloud.com.
Gerald Solomon
Laylah Bulman
Online Gaming & Schools: A Win-Win for Academics—and Fun
We know video games haven’t always been an educator’s best friend. When they aren’t distracting students in the classroom, they’re depriving them of sleep at night. But through the National Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF), online gaming is now playing a groundbreaking— and highly academic—role in classrooms all over.
NASEF is funded by the Samueli Foundation, whose Executive Director, Gerald Solomon, helped start the STEM Learning Ecosystems Initiative. This project seeks to reinvent how kids learn, how systems educate, and how the workforce is developed. “About two years ago, just by happenstance, we learned there was this thing called esports,” Solomon tells us. After looking at the numbers, he realized that gaming could be a perfect Trojan horse for school kids. “If we can let students learn without thinking they’re being taught, then we’re going to re-engage a whole slew of kids who see no value in education anymore, who see no real-world relevance in what they’re learning,” he explains.
After launching, the program became so popular among California high schoolers that there was a demand for middle school and CTE curricula as well. “We now have full state credentials for all curriculums for high school, middle school, and CTE. And it’s 100% free to every school, every afterschool program, every youth development organization, and every library in North America,” Solomon tells us. “Because that’s who we are—our return on investment is the impact on kids. It’s not in our pocketbooks.
But that’s only the beginning. Since launching just 18 months ago, NASEF is now in 48 states with nearly 10,000 students in almost 800 school clubs. And, as a result of its success in the U.S., NASEF has recently signed MOUs with Mexico, Japan, the British Esports Association, and will be working with Israel next. “We’re going global,” Solomon says.
He gives much of the credit to Program Director Laylah Bulman, a former principal who knows a lot about making learning fun. She worked for LEGO Education to implement hands-on instructional systems across the Southeast and is also the director of the Florida Scholastic Esports League. “What Laylah has done in Florida has become the model for what we’re doing across the country,” Solomon explains.
“The great thing about our curriculum is it’s extremely flexible and highly scalable,” Bulman says. “It looks different from class to class, and it reflects what’s happening in the community.” Solomon adds that some people call it a “scholastic playground,” but stresses that their approach focuses on learning first and foremost. “It’s really about how you connect passion and play with purpose,” he says.
Not Just a Game
NASEF’s curriculum is a set of nearly 40 modules, all regarding different aspects of four major domains: Entrepreneurship, Content Creation, Organization, and Strategy. “If you think of a sports team, you need event planners, you need social media experts, you need web developers and data analytics—that’s our curriculum,” Solomon explains. “But we tie it in through gaming so kids can have fun learning.”
“The modules are all aligned to jobs within the esports industry,” Bulman says, noting that as careers change, their modules will follow. It isn’t just about teaching kids to be competitive gamers—players are actually a minority in the program. Learning comes first, so there’s no play during the school day. “That’s done in clubs,” she notes.
Organizing modules into these domains helps teachers utilize the material and integrate it into their own lesson plans and teaching styles. NASEF competitions, which take place only after school, also involve every student, no matter their area of study. “Our tournaments don’t look like traditional esports tournaments,” Bulman says. “Teachers want to physically see students making artifacts of work and examples of their web pages, merchandise, ecommerce sites, or strategy and data analytics.” During a competition, students actually gather in quadrants around a game player with surrounding examples of their work, like fan art on easels. “And they love it,” Bulman adds.
“It’s an equity issue,” she says. “If you have an esports class, tons of kids want to be in that environment but may not be gamers. The after-school club portion is ample opportunity for kids to express their interests, explore work, hang out with one another, and find a cool space in their school.”
NASEF also finds ways to open up the world of gaming to students who can’t afford to play the same way as some of their peers. “Kids who are playing League of Legends usually have to pay to unlock more characters,” Bulman explains. “We provide it unlocked. That’s huge for kids. They can explore all these characters that otherwise would take them hundreds of hours a day to unlock. Here they can explore if they like gaming, they can get better at gaming, or they can just run the club.”
And while you may expect esports to appeal mostly to boys, many programs are seeing girls step into various roles. “We have a lot of girls who are gaming, for sure,” Bulman says. “But in terms of leading, we’re seeing girls run these clubs. In fact, the two leaders of the University of Central Florida esports teams are girls—which reflects what we see in K-12.” The Samueli Foundation gave a three-year grant to an outside research company to study the impact of NASEF’s curriculum, and the results couldn’t be a stronger endorsement for scholastic esports. “The data is off the charts as it relates to social-emotional learning, communication skills, critical thinking, you name it—all the characteristics you want to see people develop,” Solomon explains.
Because of widespread school closures surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, NASEF has recently had to pivot their program online—but they’ve quickly formed unique partnerships to keep learning fun and fruitful. “Typically, we have teachers in schools activate clubs, because our purpose is to have kids getting together,” Bulman explains. “Right now, because everyone is dispersed, we’ve opened our materials to various streams for kids to learn things like content creation.”
“For the next couple of months, we’ve created a theme called From Competition to Community,” Solomon says. “We’re giving all the materials out for free. And with the help of Twitch, Microsoft, Flipgrid, and Earpod, we’re creating daily activities—45-minute sessions with 15-minute health and wellness breaks everyday—and we’re opening that up to everyone. We’re doing trainings on everything from how to become a club to how to use Minecraft in a way that deals with economics to COVID-19.” NASEF has also set up a free professional development channel on Zoom for teachers who preregister, along with a channel for kids to learn how to collaborate on projects and play games together from home.
For NASEF, it all comes down to providing free, equal access to any student, especially those who may otherwise be disengaged or disinterested in school. “Esports brings kids together in a safe, welcoming space where they can not only share what they’re passionate about through play, but also explore ideas and careers that are going to be highly relevant in their futures,” Bulman says. “This is not about game time,” Solomon adds. “This is where kids are. Go to where they are, speak their language, and do it through an academic lens. Be intentional about inclusion and diversity in how you bring kids together. When you do that, and you don’t prejudge, and you give kids the opportunity to build their own community—the world is their oyster. It’s amazing what they can create.”
For more information on how to bring NASEF’s curricula to your schools, visit esportsfed.org.
Stephen Ritz
Farming in the Classroom: Feeding Hearts, Minds, and Communities
“No one is the luckiest guy on earth more than I am,” Stephen Ritz tells us with a big smile. He’s wearing a black T-shirt that reads “Sustainable Gangster” in bright green letters and a cowboy hat made of what we hope is fake cheese. Ritz is a lifelong educator and the founder of Green Bronx Machine— an urban farming nonprofit he started in his classroom that has now become a global phenomenon. “It’s changed everything for me,” he says.
Ritz grew up wanting to be a pro basketball player. “This is the last year I’m willing to accept a call from the NBA!” he jokes. But he found his true calling off the court. “I started my first year teaching at South Bronx High School—it was the only standing building within an eight-block radius in the poorest congressional district in America. That’s where I found out I have a gift with children and that I love teaching.”
Ritz eventually left NYC, overwhelmed by the “sheer desperation that was life in urban America in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s,” he explains. He moved to Arizona, where he worked with Native American kids, connecting with them on a social-emotional level through project-based work and basketball. This was a game-changer. “I decided I was going to dive deep into public education,” he says. After getting a master’s in special ed, he taught briefly in Arizona before making his way back to the Bronx.
He wound up in what he says was the “worst” high school in New York City. “They had 256 felonies in the building during my first year,” he tells us. “We had 18 armed police, 48 security officers, and about a 17% graduation rate.” Ritz says many of his students had already been in prison. “They were all overaged and undercredited, and I didn’t know what to do,” he adds. He was also tasked with teaching science, which he had no background in. Desperate, he put a call out on the internet for help. Four weeks later a huge box arrived at the school. ”I opened it up like a kid on Christmas morning, and inside were these things that looked like moldy onions,” he says. “I had no idea what they were.” He shoved the box behind a big radiator in his classroom and forgot all about it.
A couple months later, something strange happened. After a fight broke out in his class, a student reached under the radiator hoping to find something to throw—and instead pulled out a handful of yellow flowers. The fight ended immediately. “It was this big, diffusing moment. We looked in the box and it had hundreds and hundreds of flowers in it,” Ritz tells us. It turns out the box had been filled with daffodil bulbs. “We were all just fascinated we could grow stuff in our classroom.”
This eventually led the class to planting community gardens in abandoned spaces around the city. “These young people were really strong and energetic, and they didn’t want to be in school,” he tells us. “So we started building gardens right at the cusp of the city parks movement—and it was the perfect opportunity to get them jobs.”
Two years into gardening, Ritz and his students visited the first Whole Foods Market in NYC and were all stunned. “I myself had never seen so much food!” he tells us. “Plants, vegetables, fruit—most of our knowledge in the Bronx is relegated to a small bodega with no fresh fruits or vegetables.”
In fact, living in a food desert had been impacting Ritz’s health. “My metabolism slowed down,” he tells us. “I’d stopped playing basketball, started drinking soda, and I was eating what was available to me in my community—I had no idea what real food was.” Ritz says fast food had become his go-to, something he had in common with far too many of his students. “We didn’t know any better,” he adds.
But on that trip to Whole Foods, they were introduced to a healthy and lucrative opportunity. “We saw white people—which was rare for my kids—and they were spending money!” Ritz says. “And it was cash, it was credit cards—and we said, Hey, we want some of that! We can grow that.” Whole
Foods then gave them the opportunity to sell their own produce in the store as long as they could grow it responsibly. Thus, Green Bronx Machine was born. It would not only give students hands-on, project-based learning, but also help them supply their community with healthy, sustainable food.
Four years later, a much healthier Ritz gave a talk at Columbia University called From Crack to Cucumbers. “I brought a bunch of young people who used to sell drugs but found that there was more money and a better lifestyle in the fresh whole food movement,” he tells us. “Kids should not have to leave their community to live, learn, and earn in a better one.” After winning the National Indoor Gardening Championship with the country’s first edible classroom, Ritz and his students began getting national media coverage, which got even more kids engaged—and fed. “In a small classroom we were able to grow enough food to feed 450 students routinely using 90% less water and space,” he tells us. “And if you expand their palates, you expand their minds. Healthy students are at the heart of healthy schools, and healthy schools are at the heart of resilient communities.”
Photo courtesy of Stephen Ritz.
After Ritz and some of his students were invited to a gardening expo in California, they ended up finding quite a surprise—and a way to expand their work. Ritz knew, as they pulled up to a “warehouse full of hipsters,” that this wasn’t a typical farm show. “Lo and behold, it was a marijuana show!” he tells us, laughing. Ritz decided to use the situation as a learning opportunity. “So we started looking at different technologies,” he says. “And I saw this amazing piece of tech: tower gardens!” These vertical, aeroponic gardens each grow 28 plants at a time without soil. “So I said, I could use that in classrooms and change the world,” he says—and that’s exactly what happened. The following year, Green Bronx Machine helped place 8,000 tower gardens in classrooms across the country.
The Machine at Work
You can see Green Bronx Machine’s academic impact in the data. After turning an underutilized school library in the South Bronx into an innovative health, wellness, and learning center, the school saw a 45% passing rate increase on New York state science exams. The program’s wide reach and impact also speak to its success. Over 500 schools currently use GBM curricula, and students have grown (and eaten) over 85,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx alone.
The GBM curricula centers on the art and science of growing fruits and vegetables in the classroom. “This is not an after-school program,” he says. “This is a build-in.” This whole-school instruction includes day-to-day lessons that teachers can use to maintain and grow gardens in their classrooms. “The kids think it’s their job to farm and grow vegetables—which is great, because if they grow them, they can eat them,” he explains. “But, really, their job is to learn through very project-based, social-emotional lessons.”
Not only is this curricula aligned to Common Core, but also Next Generation Science Standards and the International Baccalaureate. “We don’t do galas, we don’t do fundraising— the assets are our curricula,” Ritz says. “We offer a lifetime site license, data, maintenance, and ongoing professional development with a one-time fee. And it gives you a complete year’s curriculum that every single teacher in the school can use.” Ritz says he designed this curricula to transform outcomes aligned to attendance along with teacher satisfaction, retention, and tenure. “And in 500 schools, we have 500 satisfied teachers,” he adds. “We’re lean, mean, efficient, teacher-oriented, and results-driven.”
Outside of the health and social-emotional benefits of its work, Green Bronx Machine also teaches students about the importance of time, perseverance, and resilience. “When you put a seed in a child’s hand, you’re making them a promise that it will grow into something great, just like them. Seeds and students are potential,” Ritz says. GBM students also get experience in a wide variety of subjects through farming. “They’re selling products and creating marketing,” he says.
Like its founder, Green Bronx Machine has countless recognitions and awards, but the impact it’s made on students and their communities reaches far beyond any trophy or magazine cover. “We took the poorest-performing school in all of NYC, and in less than four years, they’re now outperforming city- and statewide in every single performance indicator,” he says. “And we made the cover of Time for Kids.”
Getting students to eat healthy has also gained the attention of Anthem, the nation’s largest provider of Medicaid to high-needs communities. The company is currently scaling GBM into 22 cities across 19 states. “They looked at our data aligned to social determinants of health and realized we were really changing outcomes,” Ritz tells us. “I have kids in the South Bronx who are vegan, which is crazy.”
GBM not only feeds student farmers and their families from its Bronx classroom, but also grows enough food to send 100 bags of groceries a week to food-insecure cancer survivors. “We’ve targeted other high-needs communities around the country—I go in for a one-day professional development and leave the curriculum and links they need,” Ritz says.
When we spoke with Ritz, the joy he finds in his work was obvious. It became undeniable when he told us he doesn’t even take a salary. “I decided to embed myself in public school for free,” he says. “I’m a full-time volunteer.” His work, however, has given Ritz some life-changing opportunities. He’s not only met the Pope, but also former First Lady Michelle Obama, who, of course, shares his passion for sustainability and healthy eating. “She says the way we treat our children is indicative of who we are as a nation, and that it all starts with food,” Ritz explains. “That really resonates with me.”
But it’s the students who inspire Ritz most of all. “Projectbased learning works because kids like to get dirty, touch things, blow things up, make, tinker, and hack,” he says. “The hacks these kids are coming up with around technology to grow food are amazing. And they take ownership of it. Project-based learning like Green Bronx Machine works because students want to be involved and engaged. We’re transforming the world.”
To learn more, visit GreenBronxMachine.org and check out Ritz’s bestselling book, The Power of a Plant.
How superintendents are boosting morale amid extended school closures SchoolCEO Conversations: Coping with COVID-19
First, it was one week. Then, it was two. Then a month. Now, most districts around the country are facing a bitter reality: schools closing for the remainder of the academic year. But as we all adjust to this new normal, school leaders are finding incredible ways to do what they’ve always done best: focus on the well-being of their students. Here are a few star superintendents who stood out to us.
Story Time with the Suit Guy
Superintendent Mike Nelson, Enumclaw School District, WA
Superintendent Mike Nelson is a beloved fixture in Enumclaw School District. He’s been there 21 years, nearly 14 as superintendent. Lovingly known as “The Suit Guy”—a reference to his colorful, patterned suits—his visibility and consistency have given him a valuable asset: credibility. So when COVID-19 closed Washington’s schools, Nelson knew it was his job, as a school leader, to set the tone for the closure.
A former elementary teacher, Nelson went back to his roots. “It just comes naturally to me to read a story,” he says. So each school day since the closure began, he’s hosted “Story Time with the Suit Guy,” reading a children’s book live on the district’s Facebook page. With a calming presence reminiscent of Mister Rogers, he welcomes the district’s kids into his office and shares a story. He often includes an accompanying activity, whether it’s hard-boiling an egg, planting seeds, or making Rice Krispie treats.
The videos not only engage Enumclaw’s students and parents, but also provide teachers with invaluable professional and emotional support. “All of our elementary teachers are now connecting that as part of their daily work with students,” Nelson says. “And it helps them realize their superintendent’s in it with them.”
They’ve also seen ripple effects in the greater Enumclaw community. When a local author started selling books to raise money for a food bank, a resident donated $100 to send a single copy to Nelson—and pledged another $100 if he’d read the book for Story Time. “So as a result of reading that book, $200 went to the food bank,” Nelson says. “Those little ripples are fun.”
Nelson’s emphasis on reading hasn’t stopped at Story Time. “One day,” he tells us, “I started thinking—We’ve got to get people united in this community. What if we did a reading challenge?” So the district introduced “Read Together, Learn Together,” an initiative encouraging the entire Enumclaw community—even those not directly connected with the schools—to read more and keep track of their reading time. “People go to our website and log their minutes,” Nelson explains. By June 19, the official last day of school, Enumclaw hopes to have read a collective 10 million minutes.
For Nelson, both Story Time and the reading initiative are about more than just literacy. “Our kids are watching us right now,” Nelson says. “How are we modeling how to be resilient, how to be kind and compassionate during times of adversity, how to have empathy for one another?” Sometimes, it’s as simple as reading a story.
Taking the Classroom Outside
Superintendent Dr. Howard Carlson, Wickenburg Unified School District, AZ
Like many districts, Wickenburg Unified is working to provide for their families’ physical needs during this trying time. They’re providing food for pickup and delivery, distributing Chromebooks, and working with local providers to supply internet access to families who need it. But once those needs are met, says Superintendent Dr. Howard Carlson, “we’re starting to shift our focus toward the social and emotional support that our families and students need.”
“Oftentimes they’re locked at home, and although they can get outside, they’re not able to connect with others in person,” Carlson tells us. “We’re trying to figure out ways to make sure kids can stay connected and healthy.” For some families, that means wellness checks, or digital meetings with counselors who can provide resources. For others, it simply means moving the classroom to the backyard.
“We aren’t just delivering an educational opportunity,” Carlson explains. “We’re trying to tie in scenarios where students get outside and do something. It couples the educational component with the social-emotional component, dealing with that mental health piece—getting outside, getting in nature, getting into the sun. That’s a real innovation, because normally when kids go to school, they go to a classroom and they learn. Here, you have an opportunity to get them outside.” This approach to learning forces teachers to get creative, but Wickenburg’s staff has jumped at the challenge. “Our high school art teacher climbed one of the peaks out here, and, along the way, took pictures of the various wildflowers—then made that into a lesson around painting wildflowers,” he says.
Even the district’s social media has turned to nature for inspiration. “We’re in Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert, and this is a beautiful time of the year,” says Carlson. “Wildflowers and cactuses are starting to bloom. So on social media, we’re sharing a lot of pictures of that natural beauty, trying to shift everyone’s focus beyond the virus.”
“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood!” reads one Facebook post, accompanied by photos of vibrant pink flowers and the open desert sky. “We hope everyone is finding time to enjoy their surroundings.”
Carlson knows that his staff needs the benefit of fresh air just as much as his students—which is why he’s practically requiring them to spend time outdoors. “I think it’s going to be of vital importance—telling people they need to get outside,” he tells us. “Take a walk, walk the dog, whatever the case may be. You need to be able to get that fresh air. That’s going to help keep us centered as we go through this.”
Wickenburg’s Facebook page shares natural beauty to lift community spirits.
When Education Isn’t #1
Superintendent Robbie Binnicker, Anderson School District One, SC
At Anderson School District One, the COVID-19 crisis has demanded a shift in priorities. “As the superintendent, it’s very hard for me to say that education isn’t the most important thing,” says Robbie Binnicker. “But right now, it’s not. We’ve got families that are really struggling with new challenges, whether that be sick family members or parents losing their jobs or older kids having to watch younger siblings. Right now, education should not be adding stress and anxiety to people’s lives.”
That philosophy has been the district’s guiding light since South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster closed all the state’s schools on March 15. In the district’s response protocol, they list three main priorities: safety first, anxiety reduction second, and learning third. Reducing anxiety, for Anderson One, means providing thousands of meals for kids, both onsite and at bus stops. It means continuing to pay all staff for as long as possible. And it means making sure the stressors of this situation don’t negatively affect a student’s long-term academic success.
“We don’t have any way to know right now why a student isn’t turning in quality work,” Binnicker explains. “It could very well be a motivation issue, but it could also be a myriad of other things that the kid doesn’t have any control over.” So for this fourth quarter, the district is changing their grading system; instead of letter grades, assignments will receive one of two distinctions: “Meets Expectations” or “Needs Improvement.” At the end of the school year, teachers may add zero, one, or two percentage points to a student’s third quarter grade average; that will be their final average for the year. This quarter can only help students academically, not hurt them.
“We tried to find a balance so that there was an incentive for kids to do their work without it causing nervous breakdowns,” says Binnicker. The district has many ways of looking out for the emotional well-being of its students and families. “Early on, every school divided their kids up and gave them to staff members who really couldn’t work from home—teachers’ assistants, attendance secretaries, receptionists, one-on-one special education aides,” Binnicker tells us. “For three and a half hours a day, all of those employees are calling and checking on folks, asking, How are things going? Do you have enough food? Are you having issues with the light bill?” Not only do these checkins show families the district cares, but they alert Anderson One to any potential problems that might keep students from working—issues with technology or other stresses at home. Most families get a call at least once a week. “The people making the calls are getting a lot out of that, and the parents and kids love it,” Binnicker says. “It’s great PR for our district.” Like any educator, Binnicker wants to make sure his students are learning. But “you’ve got to keep the main thing the main thing,” he says. “You’ve got to know that you’re making things as good as you possibly can for the students. That’s the goal that keeps every educator going: knowing you’re making a difference in the life of a kid.”
