Meet Our Latest Fellows: The New Normal Wave
Tags: Innovation, Covid-19, Education, Newnormal, Co Vid

Jen Chiou and Chelsea Hylton | Integrating Yoga and Mindfulness into Coding Classrooms | Irvine, CA & New Orleans, LA

About Jen: Jen Chiou is the founder of CodeSpeak Labs, which runs computer programming classes in PreK-12 schools. Prior to founding CodeSpeak Labs, she worked in tech where she was shocked at how difficult it was to recruit a diverse tech team. She ran a nonprofit tech startup called Crisis Text Line that built the first nationwide SMS-based crisis hotline and built online tools for the media company GOOD Magazine. Prior to getting into tech, she focused on innovating and expanding education models, particularly for low-income students. She’s supported the creation of more than a dozen teacher recruiting organizations around the world through the Teach For All network and consulted for education and youth development nonprofits at the Bridgespan Group. She graduated from Stanford in 2005, where she was highly envious of her peers who came to college already knowing how to code.

About Chelsea: Chelsea Hylton is a New Orleans based educator and Founder of Project Peaceful Warriors, a non-profit organization developed to bring the tools of Trauma-Informed Yoga and Mindfulness to students and educators. Originally from Alexandria Virginia, Chelsea has been serving students and schools through Yoga and Mindfulness since 2009 starting in Charleston, SC where she received her B.S. in Physical Education at the College of Charleston. Upon moving to New Orleans in 2014, Chelsea began working with charter schools within the Recovery School District where she served as both an K-6 enrichment and middle school english teacher. As a teacher, she gained invaluable communication skills and learned pedagogical practices that continue to influence the way she trains and approaches her work with youth today. As Founding Director of Project Peaceful Warriors, she has taught over 6,000 hours of yoga in the classroom, trained over 500 teachers, and taught over 3,000 students in the City of New Orleans. Her work with Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine was published in March of 2018 in the Journal of Psychology Research and Behavior Management. Chelsea has is a 500 hour ERYT, RCYT, and YACEP.Chelsea aims to create community minded and user centered programming that creates safe and healthy learning environments in schools and all students have equitable access to the tools that they need for success. Her vision is to see a shift in the focus of education beyond academic success to address the social emotional needs and success of young people.

About their Idea: This summer, CodeSpeak Labs (CSL) is running all of our coding camps online. Schools and parents want students to be working with us for longer blocks of time, so students are sitting in front of a computer screen sometimes in 2.5 hour blocks. CSL and Project Peaceful Warriors (PPW), the leading expert in trauma-informed yoga and mindfulness education, will work together to creatively design ways to integrate movement, mental and physical breaks, and reflection into our work. Now, more than ever before, is our opportunity to lean into our yoga and mindfulness toolbelt as educators to help our students (and ourselves) feel grounded and focused in this overwhelming time.

Websites: ww.Codespeaklabs.com |www.projectpeacefulwarriors.org

Jessica Hamman | Glean Education’s Summer Swell Camp (SWELL: Summer Work Eases Learning Loss) | San Rafael, CA

About Jessica: Jessica Hamman is a former teacher, interventionist, and instructional designer who has worked in both traditional and online classrooms. In 2016, she founded Glean Education, a company partners with school districts and states to provide accessible online training that increases teacher awareness of struggling readers and instructional best practices to increase student literacy progress, build academic equity, and close the achievement gap.

About Their Idea: We are creating summer school pop-ups using community volunteers to provide instruction in literacy, math, science, and SEL for homeless and foster youth in a way that is replicable and scalable in other areas around the state and country.

Website: Gleaneducation.com

John W. Spencer | TEACH IT Labs Institute | Philadelphia, PA

About John: John W. Spencer is a lifelong Philadelphian who believes that businesses have the responsibility to impact people, planet, and profit positively. With that in mind, he formed TEACH IT Labs, Inc. [TEACH IT]. TEACH IT’s mission is to provide information technology that imparts skill and provides knowledge for social change and the advancement of humanity. John holds a Doctorate in Educational and Organizational Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, along with Master’s Degrees from Lehigh University and Drexel University and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology from Morgan State University.

About Their Idea: Because students are now required to attend school virtually, we must prepare and empower families to adequately support their child(ren) when it comes to learning the core academic subjects, as well as support their child(ren)’s social and emotional learning needs. As such, I would develop a free course for parents on my TEACH IT Labs Institute learning management system. The course will address self-awareness, responsible decision making, relationship skills, social awareness, and self-management — all in the context of navigating the local school system and providing academic support in the core subject areas.

Website: www.teachitlabs.institute

Johnaé Strong | Black Girls Restore(d) | Chicago, IL

About Johnaé: Johnaé Strong is a writer, healer, and creative based in Chicago, IL. She has a background in education and has taught all ages from toddlers to adults including serving as a certified Restorative Justice practitioner. A large part of her work has integrated political education, healing, and organizing including her tenure as a founding member and Co-Chair of the Chicago chapter of BYP100, an organization a part of the national Movement for Black Lives. Currently, she is founder & CEO of Strong Visions Productions, a multimedia company committed to honoring the beauty and wisdom of BIPOC folks through education, healing, and the arts. She is on all social media @johnae_alyse

About Their Idea: My idea to address the problem is continuing my pilot program, which is even more urgent as a result of the pandemic and national trauma related to racial injustice. The original pilot is an online academy focused on organizing and restorative practices to bring emerging changemakers including parents, teachers, and students together to build plans of action in their local community to address inequity in education while honoring human dignity of folks at the margins.

Website: strongvisionsproductions.teachable.com

Karima Wilson | Houston, TX

About Karima: Karima Wilson, founder of Forged Ed, supports schools in building equitable learning environments through tools and trainings. Her passion is building supportive communities for educators and students of color. Karima has been a bilingual teacher, an assistant principal and a school leader. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and her master’s degree from Harvard Graduate School of Education. In her free time, she likes to cook and play capoeira.

About Their Idea: What we learned from piloting the 100% Me Curriculum with KIPP Voyage is that strong foundational adult social emotional skills are critical to strong SEL teaching. Our goal is to help the faculty build their self-management and self-awareness skills. This program will now act as both a prequel and a supplement to last year’s workshops on equity. The sessions also play a dual purpose, modeling effective strategies for teaching and learning online.

Website: www.ForgedEd.com

Dr. LaTasha Adams | Atlanta, GA

About LaTasha: After realizing that she had been mistracked in middle school due to the predominant race and class of her elementary school, Dr. LaTasha Jones Adams vowed to be a voice for the voiceless in the fight towards ending educational inequity. She began teaching as a Teach for America corps member with the Atlanta Public Schools. Since then she has been a middle school and elementary school principal, curriculum specialist, curriculum coordinator, educational research associate, and assistant professor. Dr. Adams is also a member of several advisory boards and professional organizations all while founding Dominion Literacy, a non-profit that focuses on educational equity and advocacy through literacy. Through her service, Dr. LaTasha Adams echoes the cries of the voiceless and continues a relentless pursuit towards her life’s mission: educational equity for all. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction/Urban Education from The University of North Carolina at Charlotte; a Master of Education in Teaching Excellence from Cambridge College; Bachelor of Arts in English and Religion from Spelman College. In her spare time she enjoys traveling with her husband and daughter, Zoe.

About Their Idea: We plan to host a series of webinars for families who want to learn more about SEL and strategies to prepare students for returning to educational settings. Some of the topics for the webinars include: 1) What is social emotional learning? 2) What are developmental implications after Covid-19? 3) How can we prepare for kindergarten readiness?

Laura Stein | New Orleans, LA

About Laura: Laura Stein is the co-Founder and Executive Director of Dancing Grounds. Prior to founding DG, Laura worked for Community Works of Louisiana as an afterschool and summer Site Director and Teaching Artist. Before moving to New Orleans from New York City in 2012, Laura was Director of Education & Production at Dancewave (2010–2011), NYC Executive Director of RISE (2007–2009), Education Pioneers Fellow (2007), Policy Associate at New Visions for Public Schools (2005–2007) and Program Assistant at the Social Science Research Council (2003–2005). In 2010, Laura lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where she helped create a girls’ Hip Hop program for Tiny Toones. Laura holds a Master’s in Public Administration (M.P.A.) from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and a B.A. in the College of Social Studies from Wesleyan University.

About Their Idea: Dancing Grounds will build a virtual curriculum that provides dance training, develops young leaders, and promotes health & wellness. From our initial attempts this spring, it is clear that attempting to directly translate in-person strategies to a virtual format does not have the same effectiveness. DG needs support and resources to determine a new virtual strategy, including format, curriculum, and technology, in order to create impactful classes that provide the same level of training and support as our in-person programming.

Website: www.dancingrounds.org

Laura Thomas | The Bud to Blossom Project | Washington, DC |

About Laura: Laura Thomas is the founder of Effective to Great Education, an ed tech startup developing social emotional learning tools geared for our most vulnerable students. Her South Carolina upbringing within an education oriented, black family fostered an early interest in developing habits that would enable her to build and maintain her academic achievement; yet also strengthen her self-identity. With a driven interest in performance, intrapersonal and interpersonal development she cultivated her life-long passion into supporting black and brown kids from underserved communities as a mentor, program designer and educational enrichment educator. Laura completed her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her graduate studies concentrated in education policy from Brown University. She spearheads the Transformative Technology Chapter of Washington, DC and serves as a mentor for the Women’s Launch Pad Program at Brown University. She has been most recently awarded Moonshot Fellow by Kravis Leadership Institute and was named 2019 Dent the Future Scholar by the Dent Foundation.

About Their Idea: Bud to Blossom Project is a social emotional learning web-based technology application that helps student participants track emotions, measures emotional change and suggests interventions and teaches them practices. Our prototype equips disadvantaged students of color with consistent self-regulation practice through our algorithm, while enabling teachers, schools and districts to monitor school climate. In response to COVID-19, I have designed a Mindfulness Labs program specifically for Bud to Blossom to virtually support student onboarding and critical thinking activities on mental health, mindfulness and social emotional learning in addition to its current capabilities.

Website: www.effectivetogreat.com

Lawrence Wagner | CyberSpace Academy Remote Program | Colorado Springs, CO

About Lawrence: Lawrence Wagner is an eight-year Army veteran who also is Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Spark Mindset. Lawrence has over ten years of project management experience, along with a background in military, cybersecurity, high-tech business, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and human design thinking. Lawrence has a Master’s Degree in Business Management from Colorado Technical University. He also received leadership training from Leadership Pikes Peak Signature Program and Center for Creative Leadership Community Leadership Program and is currently serving on the Colorado Workforce Development Council. Now living in Colorado Springs, Colorado, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and is a huge Ohio State Buckeyes, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Cleveland Browns fan

About Their Idea: Spark Mindset Cyber Academy Program is moving from a face-to-face to a virtual experience that uses both asynchronous and synchronous learning to prepare students for the CompTIA Network + certification. Each lesson will have soft skills integrated into each networking lesson, and each week students will learn financial literacy with a combination of live remote learning and Junior Achievement Virtual Park. Students will receive 4 hours of technical training and one hour of financial literacy each as they move through our program.

Website: www.sparkmindset.com | Social: @SparkMindset (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter)

Lee Pruett | San Jose, CA

About Lee: Lee is a former science teacher and current school psychologist who is a mom to a student with a learning disability. Lee believes passionately in the power of educational institutions to respond to and uplift communities. Her role in her school district is to advocate for the most vulnerable students and ensure that their educational needs are being met. When Lee is not thinking about special education and working on building partnerships between the school and community, she like to do crafty things and watch movies.

About Their idea: A robust online SEL program for students in grades TK-2 to address the gaps that will grow due to the lack of in-person social interaction and play. SEL programs equip children with the language to express themselves, which leads to fewer behavioral problems and better learning outcomes. A component of my program will be parent trainings that compliment student learning and allow the parents to also learn the SEL language that the students will learn.

Mikala Streeter | Outdoor Adventure & SEL for Teens | Atlanta, GA

About Mikala: Mikala Streeter is the Founding Principal of The LIFE School, an accredited, nonprofit high school in Atlanta, that has transformed the traditional high school experience to be more personalized, real world, and exploration-focused. Prior to founding The LIFE School, Mikala taught middle and high school computer science and math courses for 7 years, designed project-based STEAM curriculum, and coached teachers around the world. She also co-founded an educational technology company focused on college access. She is a 4.0 Schools Founder Advisor and a SXSWedu conference speaker. Mikala has a B.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.A. in Education (Learning, Design, and Technology) from Stanford University.

About Their Idea: Outdoor Adventure & SEL for Teens will host a series of 5–10 outdoor activities for our students and parents so they can safely spend time together in person. Each outing would include an SEL workshop led by an experienced practitioner. These workshops would teach students and their parents practical skills for dealing with the depression, anxiety, loss and social separation caused or exacerbated by the pandemic.

Website: www.thelifeschool.co

Monica Green | Capital Village Community Circles | Washington D.C.

About: Monica Green knew from an early age that she was an educator. Growing up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, she began working with young people in middle and high school. After graduating from Towson University, Monica began her career as an educator teaching middle school English in Suitland, Maryland. For 15 years, she taught English and theater in DC, Maryland, and Virginia, developing a passion for integrating field experiences, community experts, and teaching artists into the everyday curriculum. Monica has served as a team leader, department head, and coordinator for the AVID program, a college preparatory program aimed at making college accessible to all students. In this position, Monica grew in her passion for ensuring that all students have equal access to a rigorous, college-preparatory academic path, regardless of their academic history. As a way of helping schools keep students engaged and motivated, Monica’s consulting company, Project Destiny Educational Solutions, partnered with schools and educational organizations to provide curriculum writing and professional development services. Monica founded Capital Village PCS as a way of reaching students who get lost in the system of schools not built for them. She believes that with learning environments that are flexible, adaptable, and customizable to student needs, all students can thrive. Monica earned her Master’s degree in education in curriculum and instruction. She is also a candidate for a Ph.D. in educational leadership, with a dissertation on student engagement in the blended class

About Their Idea: Community Circles for Students & Families: We will bring on a trained certified psychologist to lead group therapy sessions for students. These sessions, entitled community circles, are aimed at providing students both coping skills and positive peer support during the first semester. We will also hold another group therapy session for the parent or guardians of the student participating. These sessions are to provide coping skills for the adults also dealing with the trauma associated with the Coronavirus outbreak. Together the groups are working on the same coping skills but in an adult and child context. Further, the counselor will work with individual families on continued services through various programs.

Website: www.capitalvillageschools.org