Like educators around the globe, Team Ednovate has spent the past week working on our plan to go completely virtual, as we help our communities in the best way we can to get our current public-health crisis. After a lot of quick, hard work by the team and our fantastic group of innovative educators, we went virtual starting on Monday, March 16. And I wanted to share some of the learnings we’ve had and the adjustments we are making.  

Over the last few months, I’ve loved sharing some of the great elements of Ednovate with you.  Today, it is my honor to share why I have chosen to do this work for the last 20 years. 

At the end of an All Ednovate Staff meeting last October, one of our teachers casually introduced and brought up four students up to the stage. With little urgency or fanfare, one plugged his electric guitar into his amp, another sat behind a drum set, and one of the students grabbed her mic in one hand while cooly pulling her hair back with the other hand. Our teacher announced that this was the first time that this group, Los Leones, was going to perform for an audience. Their debut performance was going to be in front of over 220 people! What an opening gig. 

One morning in late May of 2019, I sat down for my annual role as a panelist for our Positive Multigenerational Change (PMC) Capstones. This event could seem a little American Idol-ish as our seniors put months or years of work in front of their peers and community and are asked tough questions. For me, I try not to channel Simon Cowell and try to be more like Randy: positive and supportive.  

Community: How can we build a school so every student feels connected? That is one of the critical questions we ask ourselves at Ednovate. One of the systemic ways we ensure a connection between our students is by structurally building long-lasting relationships with a group of students. One fantastic educator follows a group of students for four years.

Every year around the holidays, as I sit down to dinner with family or friends, I inevitably get asked the question, "So what are charter schools anyways?" I usually am happy to entertain the question, as there is a lot of information out there, some true and some not true.

Community colleges are an awesome resource for students in our communities. Offering free tuition for the first two years to those who go full time, they are a low-cost way to receive an AA degree and transfer to a 4-year college. They are also great for taking dual enrollment courses while in high school to earn college credits before even starting college. But it’s important to select your college knowing all the statistics surrounding them, and go into any college choice with eyes wide open.

Many times I hear people tell me that universities are tough to partner with, that they move too slowly, and there is too much red tape. But that hasn’t been the case on my end. From my experience, these are the 4 keys to establishing a great university-high school partnership.

With our country’s middling performance in math globally and with a high percentage of current students with a phobia about math, maybe some free resources will help you breakthrough in your math class?