Interpreter pause

Wednesday evening Lisa Dorner accompanied me to a parent meeting at SSDN.  This was the first outreach meeting that we’ve done where

1. half of the families were Spanish-speaking and half were English-speaking, and
2. we had a simultaneous interpreter!

Lisa could have easily interpreted for the Spanish-speaking families, but SSDN always has a bilingual staffer/interpreter available for their parent meetings.  It was reassuring and delightful to hear how excited both groups of families are about our schools.  And the presentation reminded me to practice my interpreter pause!

At last night’s school project group meeting families generated a list of new marketing/outreach ideas for this winter.  Hopefully we’ll get the list posted soon along with other notes and bright ideas.

Where it all began

When I was 17 I started teaching summer school courses for middle school students through an amazing, life-altering nonprofit called Summerbridge (now Breakthrough Collaborative).  This year Breakthrough is celebrating its 30 year anniversary and featured me in their “30 Leaders in 30 Years” article.  I encourage you to read the Celebration newsletter for a sense of the transformative nature of Breakthrough and a reminder about the power of youth.  Last school year I spoke with a group of Campus Y volunteers at Wash U about my trajectory as an education entrepreneur.  When I returned this fall, one of the volunteers stopped by to tell me that he had been so inspired by my talk that he applied and taught in the Breakthrough Miami program and will return to teach again in 2009.

I am humbled to be in the company of so many change agents for education reform.  I’d like to extend my sincerest thanks to each of you for being a part of this vision for St. Louis.

Peace,
Rhonda