This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
You know what they teamwork makes the dream work. These articles have been written by the wonderful members of our team.
In this interview, Dr. Nick Polyak, the superintendent for Leyden High School District 212 in Chicago, Illinois joins Anna and Jordan to talk about improving equity in schools, how you can create a culture of innovation in your school district, and why you might need to consider adding some students to your local school board.
This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
In this interview, Dr. Nick Polyak, the superintendent for Leyden High School District 212 in Chicago, Illinois joins Anna and Jordan to talk about improving equity in schools, how you can create a culture of innovation in your school district, and why you might need to consider adding some students to your local school board.
This conversation was originally featured on our podcast The Flywheel Effect, which you can listen to here or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
We have heavy equity work to do across our school systems. A colleague of mine had something to say on equity and it really stuck with me.
“We need to stop building our schools out of bricks and mortar and start building them out of mirrors.”
So that when our kids walk through the hallways, they see themselves reflected in everything we do
We need every kid that comes into our schools to be able to look around and say:
“Hey, this place was built for me, not this place was built for somebody else, and I just happen to be here.”
And so that's a really, really tall order. In terms of work that needs to get done, it takes all of us, really looking internally at ourselves and our, you know, our internal biases and the things that we bring to the table.
It was life-changing for me when I came to this district 10 years ago, because, you know, I'm, I'm currently the white male superintendent of a 70% Latin X community, our white students, which are 29%, speak over 30 languages, because their first and second generation Eastern European families from that have flown into the O'hare airport and just settled.
I get to challenge myself all the time.
How can I be the appropriate leader for this community, when my lived experiences are so different than theirs?
If I don't challenge myself, and figure out how I need to grow, to best meet their needs, it's never going to work, I'm never going to be as effective as they need me to be. So equity has a lot of definitions for people. I think we all need to dig into the equity work in our districts.
I'll give you a Hallmark example from six years ago, I had a conversation with our school board and said:
“We really believe in amplifying students' voices, we talk about it a lot here. If that's true, let's really put our money where our mouth is.”
That resulted in us selecting two students to sit on the school board every year. We have two high schools here. So we have seven elected adults who are on the school board, and we have two students every year that represent the student constituency.
The student representatives:
So when we're trying to make heavy decisions, our board lives by a motto:
What's best for the kids?
So if that's the case, then turn and ask the kids, what should we be doing?
We put that in place, and shortly thereafter, we were having a conversation about eliminating:
That can be a pretty highly charged conversation, a lot of communities are used to that from a historical perspective.
My board turned to the students and said:
“Well, what do you think?”
They told us that they pick classes based on what's gonna result in the highest GPA, so they don't often take the classes they want to take, they’re just trying to maximize those numbers.
So we think this would be a positive change because kids could take what they want to take. One of the adults looked at me and said:
“Why haven't we been doing this for years?”
We laugh about it now, but we realized nobody built these buildings so adults can have a place to go and work. These buildings were built for the kids and for the communities. So why aren't we engaging them in leadership and partnership?
I'm not the through-line of this school district. I'm here to be the superintendent and make decisions for the years that I'm here.
The teachers, support staff, and communities that are here, they're the through-line. If we hire a brand new teacher, they're probably going to be here for 35 years before they retire. Same with cafeteria workers and bus drivers.
So a lot of the people that were here are going to way outlive me. They're the true through-line of the organization.
So a specific thing I can say that I did that I'm proud of was the empowerment of a group of teachers. A number of years ago, we put this opportunity out that we were creating this group that we call the Innovation Incubator.
It was a completely made-up idea. But we said who wants to be involved in this? We had a group of teachers that raised their hand, and we said, if you do this, we're going to excuse you from some of your PLC meetings on Wednesday mornings, and you can meet together and your charge is to dream big:
We gave them the resources and instructed them to just go dream big. We let this group of teachers start cranking for about two years, and what they finally came back to us with is this program that we call “Co-Lab for Leiden collaborative”.
It’s a completely brand-new way to do freshman year:
So any kid can earn credits at the highest levels. It's about 120 kids per High School, a group of six teachers, and there are no bells. They're learning all of their curricular content but in an interdisciplinary format.
It's been wildly successful, so much so that the sophomore teachers are looking at our students and asking:
“Who are these kids?”
The confidence they're bringing, the collaboration skills, the public speaking, the enthusiasm towards community involvement, and they are incredibly engaged in the learning process.
The super cool thing is I'll bring people in to look at it, and they'll say:
“How did you ever get the buy-in for this program?”
And I'm like, no, we gave the teachers the leverage to go create this. I'm just the one that put the rubber stamp on it and said, keep going.
I think there's a story in there about empowering and trusting others and then coming alongside them for what we need to do because it's an awesome program for our kids and community.
But it's successful, because the people that are in it, are so passionate about it.
Because their blood, sweat, and tears are in the fabric of the program.
