Be About It

Don’t talk about it. Be about it.

When I think about what drew me to KIPP 14 years ago and what keeps me excited about the work every day, it’s working with people who exemplify this saying. From teachers to principals to central office leaders, everyone knows the urgency of our mission. The challenges of poverty, racism, school funding, generational lack of investment in neighborhoods, and on and on and on, are real. They impact our kids and families and the work schools do…deeply and profoundly. At KIPP Philadelphia, we don’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. Just the opposite- we’re drawn to this work because we see great schools as one lever for disrupting those patterns of inequity and the artificial ceiling on what is possible for Black children in North and West Philadelphia.

But we can’t just talk about it. We need to be about it.

We approach how we build and run schools with an understanding that we must tackle these challenges. 

• It’s why we work hard to find great teachers and leaders who look like our students because we know that matters. I'm proud of the fact that both regionally and at my school (KIPP North Philadelphia), the number of staff members of color is about 50% and we’re committed to continuing to raise it. 
• It’s why we make staffing decisions like KIPP North Philadelphia having a social worker on staff in our founding year even though we only have 200 students right now. We must be ready to support our kids and families who have needs.
• It’s why we work so hard to build strong partnerships with our students’ families through home visits, robust family/teacher conferences, and families having the cell phone numbers of every staff member. 
• It’s why we located KIPP North Philadelphia in a neighborhood that is particularly underserved (the zip code we’re located in has the 3rd highest poverty rate in the city) and especially in need of high quality elementary school options. Because we not only wanted our school to be located in a community that most needs a great school, but to educated students from that neighborhood, we give preference in our lottery to students who live in the area around the school. We worked hard to recruit students by going door to door and establishing partnerships with local daycare centers. As a result, nearly 100% of our kindergarten students are from the surrounding neighborhood. 
• It’s why we pay so much care to how we hire teachers and staff members for our schools because nothing magical happens for kids without great teachers in front of them. 

This picture is from our regional leadership retreat this week and includes the principals of our schools and the senior leaders in our central office. It’s a group full of diverse, talented, and experienced educators – in fact all our principals worked as teachers in one of our schools before moving into a leadership role. And it’s a group that isn’t just talented but one where everyone shares a deep and personal connection to this work – to Philadelphia, to the power of education to transform lives, and the impact of great schools. Over two days, we dug deeply into our current performance, our aspirations for what our schools can be in the future, and planned for how to get there- and had some fun too. It wasn’t just talk though – it was about how we can make our schools better next week, how we can chart a stronger path for the next 2-3 years, and how we as leaders can be better at our jobs right now.

Even after 14 years, it’s a thrill to get to learn from and with folks who don’t just talk about it, but are about the work so fully.