Centering Humanity as a Lever of Change

Abstract

Aspen Institute’s Education and Society Program (ESP) seeks to improve public education by informing, influencing, and inspiring education leaders across policy and practice. For years, ESP has run communities of practice for urban school leaders at the superintendent and C-suite level. In 2021, ESP hoped to receive philanthropic support to lead a community of practice for urban school districts and a corresponding work group to lead high school transformation efforts. The goal of these proposed groups would be to learn how to make secondary schools more human while influencing the sector to embrace a bolder vision for education. My residency, based on the ESP Team, involved setting conditions for leading this work. This capstone begins by examining the purpose of schooling in the USA and how this history informs mental models. I then describe my work in three phases: seeing the tensions in the field, attempting to shape a working group and community of practice, and seeding conditions for lasting change. Through my analysis of the progress (not yet) made, I explore the changes required to transform at the self, site, and sector level.