Hello.
Hello, my people. Yo. Welcome back to Cheerdo's
Teachers and Mike, the most dangerous podcast in
the schoolhouse where we remix the conversation about
race, power, and education, and all the ways
that teaching and learning gotta be revolutionary. What's
going on, y'all? It's me, Gerardo. I'm holding
it down. And this season
on the two Dope features and on my
podcast, we are asking every guest one really
big question.
In this moment,
hello,
my peoples.
Yo, welcome back to two Dope Teachers and
a Mike, the most dangerous podcast in the
schoolhouse,
where we remix the conversation about race, power,
and education,
and all the ways that teaching and learning
gotta be revolutionary.
What's going on, y'all? It's me, Gerardo. I'm
holding it down. And this season
on the two Dope Teachers and a Mic
podcast, we are asking every guest one really
big question.
In this moment
where we stand at the
crossroads of race, power, and public education,
what is it that needs a remix?
Today's guest gave an answer so simple and
so powerful that it might change the way
you think about schools.
He said,
every time a kid gets access to their
full potential,
we all get richer,
like significantly
richer.
And the person dropping that wisdom is my
friend, Alex Guerriere.
He's the CEO of DonorsChoose,
one of the most impactful education nonprofits
in The United States Of America.
If you have ever funded
a classroom
library,
a robotics kit, art supplies, calculators,
headphones,
or even a set of flexible classroom seating,
you already know that DonorsChoose
makes things happen.
What you might not know is that DonorsChoose
is more than crowdfunding. See, this is something
I didn't realize before.
As the conditions of teaching have steadily deteriorated,
Alex is leading important work to ask hard
questions of our education system, which, you know,
asking the hard questions is my love language,
y'all,
as well as those who needed to be
successful, which is honestly all of us. We
talk a lot about how
education
really is for uplifting individual kids and individual
communities,
but, really,
education is about uplifting
all of us.
I'm working on a piece for my Substack
where I kind of examine why
public education
is such an imperative
for our whole
society.
And
I think a lot of it has to
do with moving away from the thought
that
we don't benefit from education if we don't
have school aged children
or if we don't if we don't attend
or work in public schools. We all benefit
from a great public education system.
Here's what I really appreciate
about Alex, because there's a lot of people
leading work to strengthen
teaching and learning
capacity
for all kids, particularly kids from historically marginalized
or minoritized
backgrounds.
There's a lot of these kind of billionaire
do gooders, which, a,
I would rather you be
a billionaire do gooder than a billionaire
bad do bad doer bad doer bad doer.
And so I'm not mad at people who
decide to use our considerable resources to do
something good for communities.
But Alex is different
because he lived
this very issue that he is
leading the work to transform.
He's a first generation American. He grew up
in public schools in New Haven,
learned English as a second language, which is
gonna blow you away because this dude
is just so comfortable in the English language
and so good at it.
He became a science teacher and now leads
the organization that has reached, get this,
90%
of all US public schools.
It has reached teachers who are still spending
650
to 1,000 plus a year out of pocket
for their classrooms.
And he's reached communities navigating new arrivals, language
barriers, poverty, burnout,
and possibility
that endures
despite
all of the barriers.
So in today's episode, we got four segments.
Segment one, you're gonna learn a little bit
about what DonorsChoose really is. Alex breaks down
how the platform works,
not as a charity,
not as a cash drop, but as a
teacher designed
dignity centered resource engine
to get schools exactly what students need.
No red tape,
full transparency.
Segment two,
we're calling stories from the field, from immigrant
students learning electronics through hands on robotics
to a teacher in Puerto Rico building a
roof type hydroponic
garden that blended science, service learning, entrepreneurship,
and food justice.
These stories remind us what becomes possible when
educators are trusted with resources.
In segment three, we will talk about equity
beyond the buzzwords,
also my love language. Alex unpacks what equity
really means. It's not just distribution
metrics,
but abundance thinking in a system
conditioned on scarcity. We dig into teacher burnout,
remediation versus acceleration,
learning models, and why scrappy
shouldn't be the job requirement for educators trying
to meet kids' basic needs, particularly for kids
who are very dependent
on their schools to give them the opportunity
for a great future. And in segment four,
we'll talk about DonorsChoose's next twenty five years.
DonorsChoose
is more than just crowdfunding.
That's not
all they're doing anymore. And I think this
was probably the most important learning from our
interview,
that I had,
which is that they are starting to aggregate
real time educator
insights.
They're using new technologies to surface trends
like the ballooning need for student mental health
support spaces
and turning local teacher requests into national data
that can influence
system
level
change, y'all.
And, of course,
we close it out the only way we
know.
We got a top five rappers with Alex's
picks.
It's very heavy on the Fugees, so you'll
hear about the Fugees, Wyclef, Lauryn Hill, plus
a little bit of a cultural curveball,
little change up action from the k pop
demon hunters soundtrack via his daughters that had
us laughing and vibing.
So
get comfortable. Get ready for this conversation. It's
about trusting young people's genius. It's about teacher
powered student leadership. It's about education activism
fueled by imagination,
and it's about what it really means
to remix
opportunity
instead of just rationing it. Let's get to
it.
Folks, I am here with my friend, Alex
Guerriere,
from DonorsChoose.
This is so exciting to have you back.
Take two, sir. We got this.
Yeah. So Well, it is a it is
a pleasure to be back. So thanks for
having me again.
Again. Yeah. And folks, you might be, like,
thumbing through your podcast feed saying, wait. Again?
Did I miss an episode?
No. So there were some tech issues with
the last time Alex and I talked. I
really worked hard to try to solve them,
but turns out that not every tech problem
has a solution. So,
but Alex
was so gracious and kind in coming back,
and, you know, we're gonna have this conversation
today. It's gonna be great.
Tech
be darned.
Yeah. Yeah. We're I I think we got
it covered. We got some backups. I I
I think we're good. We're good to go.
We're good to go. Alright. So, Alex, this
season on two dOPE teachers and a mic,
we're
asking
every guest one big question. Right? We're at
this very fascinating
point in, the history of our nation and
in Yeah. Education.
In the ongoing conversation about race, power, and
education,
what do you think needs a bit of
a reboots?
First, I wanna say that I love the
question,
because I think
the dimensions that you're highlighting, even in the
framing of the question,
are the ones that we need to think
about.
If I were to pick one
idea,
one thing that maybe we've lost that needs
a remix,
it is
the
crystal clear notion
that every time
a kid
has the chance
to
access their full learning potential,
we are all made richer.
For every single kid
that gets that chance,
we all benefit. And I'm not talking about
a little bit. I mean, hugely,
hugely. Every kid that gets their full,
yeah, just the just that full opportunity and
gets a chance to really show what they
can do. And the reason I think about
that in relationship to your question
is
that that idea is unifying.
When we look at the world, we'll see
that those opportunities
are not equally
available, and it's exactly dimensions.
Race
is a dimension that
is relevant here, power, wealth,
geography. There are all these divisions.
And and so I like the idea of
being mindful of those divisions, thinking explicitly about
them
with the driving,
unifying
idea that actually brings us together, that says,
actually, we're all in the same effort.
Yeah.
That's it. Man, I love that. That if
if we could remix that one thing, I
think it would be really powerful.
So much of the way we talk about
education is operating from a scarcity mindset. Yes.
There's not enough. There are not enough opportunities.
There are not enough good schools. There are
not enough kids who have the supports that
they need.
But what you're saying just tracks so powerfully,
the the kind of exponential impact
of one kid
tapping into their potential just a little bit
more than they were before. That's awesome. Well,
it it's super, pertinent for our conversation today.
So folks,
welcome it to the show. Segment one, we're
gonna talk a little bit about Donors Choose,
what it is, maybe a little bit of
what it isn't,
because I think that's a powerful conversation to
have.
Segment two, Alex is gonna share some stories
from the field, some of his favorite anecdotes
from his time and from the history of
Donors Choose. In the third segment, we're gonna
talk a little bit about equity focus. So,
Alex made some reference to inequitable structures that
are often understood along the lines of race
and power.
We'll get into some teacher nomics and burnout,
and then we'll kind of go into what's
next, the next twenty five years of Donors
Choose.
And of course Alex is gonna have a
fire top five for us and and we'll
take care of that as we go, you
should see his face,
this audio, it's always,
a tense thing. So
let's,
start with a couple of things. So we're,
we're living
in in a little bit of a I
was gonna say like a hectic time. I
I feel like that undersells,
some of the tension and some of the
insecurity that people are feeling, but we've got
rising school supply costs. We've got stagnant salaries
across the board. We're not just even talking
about teaching. That's right.
And we're gonna talk a little bit about
donors chooses twenty five year fight to to
bridge that gap.
One of the big stats that you shared
with me the first time we talked was
that nearly half of teachers surveyed by DonorsChoose
have a second job.
15%
work more than ten hours a week
outside of teaching.
Let's start with that. How does that sort
of help us understand
the work that DonorsChoose is attempting to do?
Yeah.
It really sets the stage for
the burning urgent need
that we're trying to address. Is it alright
if I take a minute and just describe
our model and lay out some of the
basic descriptions?
Yeah. Just so folks, if you don't know,
who we are, who DonorsChoose
is, we are a twenty five year old
nonprofit
organization.
We are celebrating our 20 birthday this year.
Happy birthday to DonorsChoose.
We serve public school teachers across the country.
And, really, we are on a journey to
try to reach as many teachers as we
can, as many classrooms as possible.
The core model that we operate on is
pretty simple.
Any public school teacher in the country
can come on to DonorsChoose
and create a request for stuff that they
need to address their student needs. And it's
whatever that teacher knows
is gonna make the biggest difference for the
kids that are right in front of her
or him. So they come on to DonorsChoose.
They create that request,
and we're a crowdfunding platform.
So individuals come to the site and fund
them. We also work with a lot of
corporate and foundation funders,
and we also work with the public sector.
And that's a little bit new over the
last few years where we work with,
state governments
to also meet those requests. One thing that's
a little different between us and other crowdfunding
platforms forms that you may know about is
we don't send cash. We actually have the
engine where we purchase the stuff ourselves. We
send it to the teacher,
at the school. It becomes district property. It's
transparent on our site. And we also, by
the way, handle
returns and, you know, errors,
missing things. We we do all that. So,
hopefully,
it's a delightful
experience for the teacher where they just, you
know, get get the stuff and stuff. Experience.
Yeah. Speaking from experience. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Is a delightful experience. Well, I'm I'm so
glad to hear. And it's the it's like
one of my favorite parts when I'm talking
of of this job, when I'm talking to
somebody and, you know,
they may or may not still be in
the classroom, but then they say, oh, by
the way, yeah, you know, I benefit. It's
like, yes. You know, a little a little
celebration there. Anyway, so so that's what we're
doing.
Why are we doing that? I mean, you
know, but I'll just say for the audience,
it is because teachers
and I was a classroom teacher myself a
quarter of a century ago, as my daughters
will make sure that you know that would
say. Yeah. So you so, mister, you were
teaching in the nineteen hundreds? Exactly. Oh my
gosh. That's such an attack that they do
that. But Disrespectful,
honestly. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
So, yeah, I was a classroom teacher myself.
And the reason that we do that work,
this this model, is because it links back
to what you described, you know, leading up
to this, which is that public school teachers
across the country are on this continual
grind, it really never ends, to make sure
that
what their kids need is met is met.
You know, it's kind of a
it it it it's a urge, I think,
that is somewhat irresistible because you're in the
classroom. You're with the kids. You can see,
oh, if I just had this or, you
know, a light bulb goes off. If I
could create this experience, it would make such
a difference, you know, for Yeah. They're they're
really gonna be engaged here. And so teachers
are constantly,
constantly,
underscore,
going out
and spending their own cash to make that
happen. No other job has that expectation, and
we take it a 100% for granted in
this profession.
No other job has that expectation. Right? That's
right. I mean, so back in my day,
that was going out for transparencies
and batteries for the calculators and, you know,
and books and notebook and kits and electronics,
and teachers are are still doing that to
the tune of hundreds to thousands of dollars
per year. That's what I mean by constant.
It's not a one time fix. So teachers
are constantly doing that. You know, one of
the notable things about our survey, because, you
know, we serve teachers across the country where
we like to check-in with them. We have
an annual survey. We're we're constantly, you know,
getting feedback, trying to get better ourselves.
But
it's so interesting that the teachers that we're
surveying are using DonorsChoose.
So
they are getting
benefits from Donors Choose,
and they appreciate it, and they still go
above it. It actually enables them to go
even further beyond. So even teachers on our
site who are using Donors Choose
are spending
on average 650,
$700
a year out of pocket, they report that
they would be above 1,000
without DonorsChoose.
And that's what connects to,
I mean, for their own
practice, but also for just their own sustainability,
the doing the second job. It's I mean,
again, I had a second job. I remember
that, you know, during the summer and Yeah.
And during the school year,
because you're you're trying to make ends meet.
You're trying to, you know, do right by
yourself and your family and your and your
kids. It's a big it's a big burden.
So Right. This is this is a need
that exists. And that's right. And there's, you
know, there's that meme that goes around government
funded classroom versus a teacher funded classroom. And
and it's a little extreme, but it it
does sort of point to something
that you said earlier, which is that
the public has gotten to a point where
they absolutely take for granted that the teacher
is going to provide certain things.
Some don't think very deeply about how are
they providing these things. Yeah. Exactly. Especially
at least everyone has a surface understanding that
schools, public schools especially, are underfunded.
And so but there's often a disconnect as
to how that happens.
You know, and I think for me, there
are a couple of different DonorsChoose projects
that, that I did were that that were
really amazing.
One was doing differentiated book clubs for a
cross cultural studies class. It was always books
for me because that's, like, my love language.
That's and I would have kids come in
my room. I always had all these books
on the walls, and they'd be like, how
do you have all these books? Yeah. And
it goes into some of that the whole
kind of thing. I I I love that
because,
even as you're describing it, I could hear
your recollection
of the reaction of of the students.
It's
it's a it's such a positive and eye
opening and and sometimes magical moment to know
you're going in the classroom. And then, oh,
wow. There's stuff. I've seen some amazing libraries,
you know, that really just light up kids'
minds.
Oh, yeah.
So,
No. It was really great. And I think,
you know, so I so
just being able to do that and seeing
knowing that there were powerful learning experiences
that students had that they may not have
had access to otherwise. And I'll I'll share
one example and then we'll kind of get
into some stories from the field. It's a
good segue into that.
There was a group of students
that had,
chosen as their book. This was in my
hip hop studies class.
They had chosen to read the book, The
N Word, and it was basically
a history of the word. And,
I think it was Randall Kennedy's book. And,
they were really committed to this. I was
like, alright, so there's a lot of really
intense language in this book, so let's make
sure we talk to parents, let me make
sure I talk to my boss, and that
kind of thing. So everybody was really on
board. And so what the students were challenged
to do, once we ordered the books, there
were there's a group of five kids who
each got a copy of the book. And
what they did,
they were they were directed to do an
action project. So what you have learned,
you and your group are gonna put this
into action.
So what they ended up doing,
this was an epidemic. This this word being
used in our school was an epidemic. And
especially
being used by non black students,
it was just a word they'd become too
casual,
around a lot of students.
And they're like, well, what do we do?
We can
we can just, like, call people out, but
I don't know if that's gonna help. And
how do we, like, do something that's gonna
be really sustainable?
And,
one student,
Zainab,
came up with this idea. I'm trying to
find something that can approximate it. Oh, this
is an audio call. So,
but they so what they decided to do
was print up little business card shaped to,
like, sort of,
info,
like flyers, like one pagers. Okay. And when
they would hear it, they would have their
little, like,
cache of these cards. They would hand it
to the kid, not say a word, and
keep walking.
And I asked them, I was like, so
how are you gonna know if it's if
it's impactful? And she said, we won't really.
But,
you know, you hand a kid something, they're
gonna look at
it even
if it even if they wanna save face
and not be embarrassed, like something in that
card is gonna sit in their heads.
And even if they just throw it on
the ground, someone else might pick it up
and see what's going on. And eventually they
would
eventually students would see Zaynab and her crew
coming
and they would just, like, change the way
they were talking.
Yeah. Wow.
And, and one of the kids was, like,
yeah, but how do you know people are
not saying the word? And Zaynab was, like,
if if there's one time they're not saying
it here,
then that's fine. That's how we start. So
that was a project that would not have
been possible if we hadn't been able to
get those books. And if we hadn't had
donors that said, you know what? I do
want
kids to have critical conversations about this book,
and I do wanna support this classroom. So
that's one of my favorite stories,
about just the casual ways that kids know
Yes. How to make change when you give
them the resources.
Exactly. Oh, first of first of all, I
am so proud retroactively
of Zaynip. Like, and, proud or
admiring. I mean,
that that's that's an inspiring story. And I
I would imagine that a lot of your
audience is pretty familiar with
education and the sector, but I also imagine
that there are some folks that are using
this podcast as a way to get a
window
into what the world is like. And, like,
what an amazing story just to
illustrate
the levels and layers of learning
that can happen,
but it's difficult to facilitate. Right? I mean,
there are so many ways that that kind
of situation can go wrong. You know, people
using a word callously,
you know, you know, feelings, emotions.
Basically,
the default is some kind of negative outcome,
but with the right resources and, let's give
credit where credit's due, the right educational leadership,
right, from the amazing teachers that are bringing
these resources in,
you can take that fraud,
situation.
And, I mean, what's happening here, peer to
peer relationships, leadership is being tried out, you
know, ways of influencing,
taking a risk, self advocacy.
I mean Yeah. Right? All of the I
mean, they were even doing data collection. They're
like Wow. Yes. How do we know if
this is working? Do we need to change
our approach? And then they would, like then
they would, like, ask people, and people wouldn't
really answer directly. So, like, what else can
we yeah. So yeah. So it's it's great.
People use that phrase critical thinking.
Sorry to but, like, you know and but
this is this is what that means. Like,
here's a perfect example. All of those questions,
the deliberations,
the thinking of the thoughtfulness,
that's the kind of critical thinking. It is
not easy.
Mhmm. But but you see why the more
kids have a chance to develop, the again,
the better off we all are. Right? Because
the world is better off that
Zane have got that experience, and now she's
in the world,
you know, just a little bit more knowledge
and power. Like, wow. I I I feel
better about it.
Yep. So I think and and, like, thank
you so much for that. And, it's just
so much fun to, like, remember,
you know, things like that.
I imagine in your work
that that story is just a star in
a galaxy of stories that you
have access to. Do you wanna share some
of your favorite anecdotes Yeah. From,
DonorsChoose and just from being from bearing witness
to this important work?
This is just the absolutely
unfair privilege that I have in this role,
which is
I mean, sometimes
and I this sounds like an exaggeration,
but you can prove to yourself, any listener,
that it's not an exaggeration by trying it
yourself.
Sometimes I just go on to the site
and I just read the projects. You know,
I'll just search for think of a topic,
you know, maybe, you know, violin or whatever.
You know? And,
it because it covers arts. It covers sports.
It covers, you know, all kinds of stuff.
And then just start Knowing what people are
doing is Yes. Exactly. People
are setting things. We will also link
the site itself. Oh, great. Because listeners,
y'all could do something besides just share and
listen to this story. You could actually contribute
to Alex's
experiencing
way more joy than a lot of people
do.
Yeah.
Yeah. Hey. It's it's fun. It's it's it's
slightly addictive, so fair warning. But, yeah, I
mean, this could be a a a, a
listen along activity, donorschoose.org.
Click on the link or, you know, just
just just bring that up right now. But,
you know, I I have a a lot
of stories. If it's alright, maybe I can
bring some that,
Yeah. That
and explain a little bit of the personal
meaning Yeah. For me. Love that. Love that.
So, you know, my background, I'm a first
generation American. My parents are from Haiti and
Brazil. Right? So born in Haiti and Brazil.
My my language
as a
kid was Haitian Creole. So actually, English is
my second language, and I learned in school.
Okay? So I remember going to school and
not speaking English.
And,
you know, I went to public schools. I
I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. Born
in New York, but grew up in New
Haven, Connecticut. So New Haven Public Schools k
through twelfth.
So that's just a a little bit about
me and a just a hint about family.
And so I I joined DonorsChoose
a little over three years ago as CEO.
So I'm not the founder. I succeeded our
incredible inspirational founder, Charles. You know, and I
came on and, you know, I had a
lot of work to do and try to
figure out, keep my head above water in
this big machine. And then, you know, a
little bit into it about, about two years
in, I suddenly realized, wait a second. The
whole reason I'm in here is because
I saw firsthand actually as a student and
as a teacher
that gap between
every kid's true potential
and
what's available
to them,
and what is sometimes available and not available.
You know? So I lived that gap as
a kid,
and I lived that gap as a teacher.
And that's why I'm in this job right
now. And I was thinking, wait a second.
I'm the frigging CEO of DonorsChoose. I can
maybe,
like, go to my school and just look
teachers up at the high school that I
went to, Wilbur Ross High School. An amazing
rich set of experiences. I'm proud of it.
There were a lot of challenges, so I'm
not gonna sugarcoat that and and see if
anybody's using it. Maybe I'll just, you know,
ping some teachers.
And so I did exactly that.
Teachers got back to me, you know, doing
amazing work. And so there was this one
teacher, mister David Lopez.
And, you know, I was doing that. I
was like, hey. Would you be up for
a conversation? And he got back. He's like,
yes. I was like, could, you know, could
I just talk to you about what you're
doing so I could learn? Because I have
this connection to
your workplace. That was my high school. You
know, I graduated from Wilber Cross High School.
You know, I was four year student there.
And so he said yes.
And,
mister Lopez,
moved here from Spain. The school,
Wilber Cross High School,
serves
as it always has, a very diverse
population,
of kids. And I'll just sometimes, I don't
know, people use that word diverse in interesting
ways. Like, literally, what I mean is many
different groups of
ethnicities
and countries and languages.
You know? Yeah. That was true when I
was there. It's actually only increased
over time, and he described how in the
few years that he had been at I
mean, he was a long time teacher, but
in the few years that he had been
in at Cross,
the population had grown
by a few 100, mostly due to new
arrivals to the country, you know, coming from
different places and and and stressed places. Right?
And he was teaching
robotics. Oh, and by the way, I the
reason I I reached out to him was
I was funding him. Like, that was you
know, he was one of the ones that
I love to fund. And the reason I
did it is because I'm a big nerd.
You know, I studied physics in college, and
he was doing these robotics and Arduino
projects, you know, electronics and stuff.
Exactly the kind of teacher and the experience
that I would have loved to have. Like,
I dreamed about having that kind of thing
in high school, and we didn't have it.
So I was you know? And it turned
out that he was doing these projects with
a focus on
the new
arrivals to the country, which may be a
little bit surprising. But, you know, some of
the kids whose income you know, they might
join in the middle of the year
Right. Not speak English
as a high schooler. Again, I remember how
tough that was in in kindergarten and first
grade. So high school, you're coming in. You're
maybe two you know, you're a sophomore.
Midyear, you're coming in from a stressed situation
to you know, you're bringing that with you.
And he's doing electronics, but he was able
to tell the story of how
just
allowing the kids to have success. Like, he
had this project where they built this model
house, like, imagine,
almost a, you know,
a table size
cardboard,
you know, dollhouse, but they build it and
they do the electronics in it and they
make, you know, working garage doors and timed
lights. And and they're just working on it,
and it's hands on, and it's creative, and
they're learning some programming, and they're doing the
hardware,
and he makes it accessible to them. And
to have those students who come in,
from challenging,
you know, challenging environment and to give them
a chance of success for something so
fun, incredible, and impressive,
show their families,
would
turn the whole experience around for kids and
just open up their eyes.
And he would
he he just described how they they carry
themselves differently,
you know, and how he could watch that
transformation over the course of a few months.
And, man, that's like one story. That's yeah.
That's beautiful. Well, and if I could, like,
I think I think just thank you for
sharing that. Shout out, mister Lopez.
Yes. That's super dope.
You know, the thing that kinda comes
to mind for me is is you kind
of you know, as you describe the backgrounds
of the students and you describe that
seemingly
insurmountable
hill to climb Yes. Which is to
gain enough English proficiency
really late in childhood
to be able to graduate high school and
have some options like that. That's gotta be
really daunting. And I think about
so many district leaders that I hear
saying that, well, yeah, like
robotics and project based learning and creativity,
that's all good and well,
but we gotta get them on grade level
first. And Yeah. I've always felt like that
line of thinking was so wrong headed because
here we have students
who aren't coming in with a lot of
the privileges that their peers had. And
it's that it's not just that you're having
fun. Although, I think fun is extremely important
when it comes to learning, but it's also
about recognizing
what you can actually do and having
that possibility open up to you.
Absolutely.
To to give a shout out do you
know the,
also a nonprofit focused on math called Zearn?
It's a it's an online program mostly for
for for the younger kids. You know?
But I'll just give a shout out to
Zern and Shalini Sharma who, another person that
I admire a great deal. Just wrote a
book, MathMind.
And they Zern did a study a few
years ago
that actually
took on exactly what you're describing,
and they contrasted
the approaches
of remediation when there's a a learning gap
versus acceleration.
Okay?
So that is
it's you know? So they're talking about math.
And, look. I'm not gonna do it justice.
I'll just say briefly, and then and folks
can go look it up. But, basically, if
you have kids that
miss a concept because, look, we all learn
things differently
in in math, And you think, oh,
that's math builds on itself. So you got
to make sure that kids have that concept.
One approach is to
pause,
go back and, like, kind of cover that
thing again.
Okay. Remediation.
In some sense, it's logical.
But what's the consequence of that? Well, you
took time to do that. So they
are still behind, actually,
because the curriculum moved on while you were
doing that. Okay. So now you're remediating this,
and the curriculum has moved on.
And she contrasted that with a different approach,
which is acceleration.
You actually
keep going forward and you sort of just
do more
and you accelerate the rate at which kids
are learning. And then you find that that
is actually what allows for lasting success. So
I'll just stop there because it's go deeper
there. You know, go read the paper and
go look that up. Absolutely. But I but
it's exactly kind of gets to the heart
of what you're describing.
You know, like, what do you do? And
sometimes I like to make analogies
for folks to other spheres of learning because,
actually,
the learning that we do,
it works largely the same. It could if
it's on the athletic field,
if it's in a art, you know, context,
learning an instrument, etcetera.
If you want to be able to play
on it, you gotta keep up with that
team. You know? So you gotta do the
Yeah. You know, you can't stop because you
missed some skill.
Right. Lose what the play is. Lose Sorry.
You know? Time out. I need to Yeah.
I need to figure out how to go
left.
Yeah, exactly. So you guys go ahead, and
I'm going to work just on the left,
and then I'm going to lose.
Good luck.
You can't do that. No, you can't.
You keep up, and then you learn it
in the context.
So you're working hard, but but our brains
are capable of doing that. And, actually, it's
a better,
yeah, it it's a better situation. Try to
keep it up. Like
and and I've not done
the level of reading that I need to
do on accelerated learning.
But it the way you describe it, it
makes it sound like it's more organically iterative
that you go through the things, you do
the things,
and
you
and and you just work on things as
they come and start plugging those gaps rather
than
taking a whole,
you know, chunk of time
to go back and, you know, focus in
on one scope. Because then you end up
in this Yeah. Kind of,
remediation
cycle. Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly right. Interest. Yeah.
I'll have to do more reading on that
one for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what
mister Lopez is doing, acceleration
to stuff that anybody would be challenged by,
you know, electronics Oh my gosh. Yeah. Programming.
It's It's acceleration, but that's another example of
it. You know? Like, re in in a
sense, raise the bar.
But
or raise your level of expectations
up to what the kid's potential actually is.
You know? Yeah. And then magical things can
happen.
Yeah. What about are there any other, like,
kind of I think we could probably do
one more anecdote if Yeah. I mean, I
I imagine it's a matter of choosing from
I it it is. Anecdotes
that you have access to. You know, I
wanna celebrate,
our team at DonorsChoose
for a new challenge. You know, we have,
we've been in operation for twenty five years.
We started small in the in The Bronx,
you know, in the the high school that
that Charles taught in in The Bronx and
have grown nationwide.
To date, we've served
90%,
like, a full 90% of American schools. Okay?
American public schools.
But but not quite a 100%.
One more time for the people. Yeah. Yo.
That is 90%.
Yeah. Nine zero. 90%
of full I'm not even rounding up here.
90%
of American schools have benefited from from DonorsChoose.
And but not a 100%. You know, we're
trying to click that up.
One of the components of that gap has
been,
the island of Puerto Rico,
because,
you know, we send stuff to schools.
And so, actually, in our model, it's nontrivial
to do the operations,
on the island of Puerto Rico. And so
we actually hadn't taken that on as a
challenge,
but we we took it on for the
first time as a our first pilot last
year, and it also involved,
introducing Spanish with and other languages in a
different way on our site.
And,
then I had the chance to go and
and and visit, you know, some of
the the schools that benefited.
And,
and, actually, I I also brought brought my
daughters down.
Again, like,
you know, the connection. I I'm I'm an
island person here. You know? Yeah. Yeah. You
know? I see. And,
and I
I wanna paint an accurate picture here.
The,
kind of, the built environment that is characteristic
of the public schools on the island
are different.
They're
qualitatively
it's qualitatively different than what you would find
in pretty much anywhere in the Continental
US.
Even adjusting for levels of,
income
and ruralness,
it's it's a different,
infrastructure and a different level of spending and
lower.
So the gap, I in resources
is
significantly
bigger in terms of really
thinking, you know, imagining what we could bring
kids.
And and and this is something that that
I knew from from past work and and
and visiting the island and also doing other
work, you know, in Brazil and and other
places.
Yeah.
The schools in Puerto Rico are a lot
more like the schools in Brazil, for example,
than they are, like, schools in Miami. By
by I mean so,
so we had a chance to see it.
One of my favorite
projects was
you know, you described this experience in your
school with the books, and it was this
rich sort of multilayered,
you know, learning experience.
There's one of these creative teachers
who decided there was an open space that
I got to see it. Like, there was
just an open space on the roof that
was just open. It was just kinda blank.
He's like, you can do something with this.
You know? It wasn't it's not inside the
building. It's outside the building. It's on the
roof. But he's like, we can do we
can do something with this. And he built
a hydroponic
roof? Yeah. No. Yeah. I'm like, that would
be my reaction. Yeah. We went up Yeah.
Like, on top. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Just,
you know,
and he created a hydroponic
garden,
and raised funds,
used donuts juice to get stuff, and
had some coverings up there, had the pipes,
had motors, had the seeds, etcetera.
And there was so much going on. You
know, I I I likened it a bit
to that multilayered learning experience that you described
with the book and how it kinda radiates
out because he's a science teacher, so there's
just science happening there. It's an activity for
the kids.
There is
a requirement
for
a service
that existed in that area. And so, actually,
this became a resource where kids from other
schools could come
and do service by working in this garden.
They produced
edible
crops, these different lettuces. And so actually then
what they did was they took some portion
of it and they made that available for
families in need and also sold some.
So you're getting
service. You're getting,
you know, the connections across school
school buildings of, you know, kids getting to
work together. You're actually getting the science and
the hands on.
And and there's the, you know, economics and
the entrepreneurship
Yeah. And nutrition.
You know, they're they're growing healthy.
So all these all these different benefits are
unlocked,
in the context of the of a school,
when you just
empower
a creative educator mind to have what they
need, you know, to,
to actually
get their vision realized.
What? The that's that's such a dope story.
I love that. And I think, like, I
even think about myself, and maybe it's because
I was a social studies teacher. But, like,
the application
of
a resource like DonorsChoose,
it would have never occurred to me
to deploy it in the way that you
just described. And I think
that highlights
the need for both
uplifting teachers. Right?
Yeah. Who know their content areas and
teachers who are passionate about
really engaging
in a teaching and learning experience with students
that sticks. Like, these are the things that
stick.
And,
you know, really going into that authentic
learning kind of environment.
And and I think it occurs to me
too that
you're also getting people
at such a great stage of their development
that these things will be cemented. The notion
that
you could put a hydroponic garden on top
of a building
is something
I mean, shoot, Alex. That might save us.
Right? Yeah. It's how we find these creative
ways to meet food shortages and that kind
of thing. And
if we went if I went
to my old employer and said, we got
that roof. Let's make a garden. I think
adults don't
necessarily Oh. Like, it's a lot more work
to get adults to think big in that
way.
Where with kids, it's like,
of course, that's possible.
Let's do it. Yes.
Yes. Oh, I was, I was talking to
someone recent. We, one of our funding partners
is Allstate, you know, the insurance company,
and they have a whole,
program focused on youth,
in service.
It's actually the the nature of our partnership
with them is that they fund teachers that
are creating,
chances for kids to engage in service. And,
actually, we also have it's a it's a
tripart partnership with,
Time for Kids.
They have a a a way of highlighting
teachers called Service Stars. And so then,
Time for Kids often will highlight some of
these projects and and share the word. You
know? Oh. So it's it's very cool. I
mean, again, just a That's really cool. Yeah.
I've just imagined getting a chance to hear
some of these kids.
And I remember,
one of the teachers,
was talking, and somebody asked,
him,
you know, like,
what can we
as adults, you know, how can we encourage
kids to do more service?
And he thought about it. He's like, you
know, in my experience,
really, the biggest thing is to get out
of the way
Because in practice,
it's often
some
hesitation,
fear,
you know, uncertainty. Can kids can you really
take that? I don't know if they can
really do that. You know?
Maybe they need some oversight. Like, let's
it's we we have this
adults, you know,
can have an instinct to kind of derisk
a lot of the ingenuity
out of
a kid's potential.
And he said that Absolutely. You know? So
that can be so that's a he had
an answer that was a challenge to the
audience. This was on on a panel, which
was essentially
yeah. If you're really interested in this, then
take a look inward. See what you can
do to unblock
because Yeah. I'll say it and, you tell
me if you agree, feel free to disagree
if you do.
It's it's already innate. I mean, for young
people, they're they're working on things. The world
is new. They're having new ideas. They're going
to be doing new things. So it's an
innate part of what they're doing, you know,
exploring. Yeah. They learn to stop that exploring
from, you know, constraints around them. So just
don't do them. Don't don't do those things.
Absolutely
agree with that take. And I would say
that that take is probably more controversial
in some spaces than it should be because
I think there is this and we can
get into a whole kind of money trail
on this one. But, you know, there is
this kind of
question. I remember somebody posing this question
to me. I was still relatively early in
my career. I just changed schools. But I
remember going to a conference presentation that was,
two friends that I still have, Annie and
Darren. And I remember Annie posing the question
and saying,
the big thing around student voice and the
big thing around student centered work
is do you trust your students with the
things that you are teaching them?
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
And for me Uh-huh. It was always about
getting to yes on that. Like Yes. And
do do I trust them
that they that do I essentially, it was
do I trust myself?
Do I trust myself? Yes. Exactly. That's the
Yeah. That's the thing. Am I putting things
in front of my students
that are going to be motivational for them
to be creative in the meet those learning
experiences
from where they are. And so I think
I think that's an incredible take. And I
think a lot of the time it is
particularly around student voice, which is something I'm
super passionate about.
It's about,
like,
it's about being,
student centered
and teacher powered. I'm borrowing that from my
friends at the,
at the Escuela Verde and the teacher powered
schools network.
Yeah. The students have the ideas. The students
have the passion and the desire
to meet a challenge.
What do we as teachers have? We have
access to resources.
We can put in a donor's juice.
We can
talk to people in our networks and in
our communities to make things happen, but the
students lead that,
and we are like, hey. I've been around
the block a few times, especially at our
age, Alex.
I know a lot of people, and I
know some places you might be able to
look to get the resources you need for
this thing they wanna do. I think that's
also, like, that touches on
the idea of equity focus. Right? Equity is
is is still a word that we're still
more or less permitted to use in different
education spaces.
But one of the things around that like,
when I think of equity, I think about
what does every learner need
in order to succeed, and it's not gonna
be a uniform thing. Can you talk a
little bit about
your work,
in the direction of equity focused schools
and how they connect to some of the
broader trends in education.
Yeah. Absolutely. And I'll if it's alright, I'll
sort of talk about it in two different
ways. One, using the more some more technical
language a little bit, but then,
Yep.
Try to escape that.
Because, you know, in this sector, we love
our terms. And, actually, there's a lot of
data and there's, you know, a lot of
specific terms where and we're used to a
lot of sort of shortcuts.
I mean, meaningful ones. Like, you know, we
are used to thinking
about whether kids are eligible for free and
reduced lunch and how that's a proxy for
income because you know? And so we are
are used to data that's kind of framed
in in in these specific ways.
And so the first way of talking about
it is, that at DonorsChoose,
we take advantage
of
the various forms of data and information that
are available about students,
including historically,
to
understand where is the need the greatest? Where
have we
seen systemically
the opportunity for more resources to be put
in, and we're guided by that explicitly. And
that's you know, we're a nonprofit organization. We're
mission driven,
and our board
has elevated
this equity lens to be our top I'll
use another
acronym, you know, KPI, key performance indicator. It's
what we measure ourselves on. So so we
do that pretty rigorously, and and we have,
you know, some descriptions of it on on
our site. And so that's why we describe
ourselves as a as an education equity organization.
It's because we we work on this. So
that's one way of of talking about it,
and that's what we do. You know, another
way of thinking about it, I would just
harken back to these individual
stories and anecdotes of what it looks like
and what it can look like
when
you're in a learning environment
and you have an educator
who identifies an opportunity to create a magical
learning experience in so many different dimensions for
their kids and then actually
has the resources to do it. That's
that's the part. And actually has the resources
to do it. I mean, sometimes,
you know, when I'm talking about our work,
I I describe that as
a sort of bold and provocative question.
What would happen if we
allowed teachers to actually have everything that they
needed to create the best, and let's be
ambitious here, not just an okay, but the
best
learning experiences
for their kids. It's provocative because we have
a long way to go from where we
are. I was just thinking to myself
that if somebody
came to me when I was a classroom
teacher and
said, what would you need in order to
have Yeah. The best
form of the of instruction that you wanted
to have? I don't think I would know
how to answer that question Yeah. Because
we've been operating out of a scarcity mindset.
Yes. Exactly. That
that we think Exactly. That
we think that the floor is also the
ceiling.
Yeah. Yeah. No. That's exactly right. It's a
it's a change. I mean, in fact, there's
and and this isn't even exactly it's not
I don't mean this as a criticism, but
just more a description. Often, people will go
in,
and almost celebrate that kind of scrappiness. You
know? And Right. It's it's it's part of
what we take for granted,
that we're not gonna have what we need,
that we're gonna have to be scrappy. You
know, it's good to to recognize and and
celebrate kind of, you know, hustle.
But it's different to
demand it just for
just to meet the needs of kids. Right?
That's that that that's,
the difference. And so
so if that provocative question and I I
think it's provocative because of the big gap.
It's also provocative because it's also once you
describe it and you just really start thinking
about it,
it at least leads me to think, well,
we should definitely be doing that. I mean,
who wouldn't be in favor
of making sure that all our kids, this
is back to the original idea, actually have
the chance to reach their full potential? Yeah.
Every time that happens, the world is made
better. And so if that's an if that's
an idea that makes sense, that's actually what
we're working on. And that's another way to
think about this sort of equity focus. Right?
I mean, yes. We're governed, and and and
we use the data that are available. So
we use this sort of technical measurement.
But at the heart of it is exactly
just this idea
of getting closer to that vision.
It's not just an academic sort of talking
point for you all that when you talk
about your your KPI,
when you talk about being an equity driven
organization,
about a third of schools fit into
that proxy category, that free and reduced lunch
category.
But close to double that donors choose actually
goes to those schools, and I think
that can only happen as a result of
intentionality.
Yeah. Yeah. That no. That that that's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah. We're we're on a big journey over
here. Alright. Final segment, everybody.
And, Alex, just thank you so much for
just
dude, like, you're bringing this
energy and this
joy that
is only sweetened by the fact that
we can see the impact that DonorsChoose and
that you and others like you in this
organization are making,
in order to uplift
teachers and by extension students, which is the
whole point. So,
so you you said earlier that 90%,
90 Yeah. Ninety Nine zero.
Nine zero. I just wanna make sure that
nobody gets it twisted,
of US public schools schools have had a
funded project through
DonorsChoose.
What does that tell you about
where you are right now as an organization
and what the next,
twenty five years may look like. Oh, yeah.
That's a great question, actually. And I think
you're you're teeing it up in almost the
way that I would do it because
we've reached a kind of scale
where some really interesting possibilities
start to be open.
One way of thinking about what happens on
DonorsChoose,
we serve every ZIP code, every school district.
You know?
We're open twenty four hours a day, you
know, on on the line. Twenty four seven.
So
so what that means is every single day,
teachers start coming on to our site from
all over the country
and describing
something that's going on in their classroom and
telling us a story about it and and
typing it in and some specific little window
into one classroom, you know, one priority
that one educator has.
But you multiply that
times, you know, all these schools.
So now we're at the point where, actually,
there's the ability to
use those insights.
And, yes Yeah. I'm not you know, we
actually are using large language models to help,
you know, parse that. Of course. You know,
everybody uses that, which is actually cool because
it it it opens up some new ways
of of driving insights. But we start to
realize we
could query
these,
this data
and look for trends
and then feed those trends back into, well,
our own, you know, our own practice, and
and it points us to where there's growing
needs because we see, like, you know, just
as an example, just to make it concrete,
I'm sure that this will be no surprise
to your listeners once I say it, but
an increasing
number of projects
on our site
are teachers reflecting
a need to support the mental health of
their kids and create different kinds of spaces,
for example. And so they're actually requiring,
requesting furniture and books and other things. And
this has been steadily increasing every year so
far. You know, we sort of first noted
this in the COVID years, but,
it's growing. And my point in in that
is that's a kind of
insight
that is telling
about what's going on in classrooms. We can
use it ourselves to, let's say, make some
more different kinds of resources available. We've seen,
you know, early indications of something that's sort
of about to go viral in schools. Yeah.
And
we work with the public sector and we
work with district leaders and we make those
data also available for system leaders. And so
that's one way that we're
looking to really grow over the next, you
know, I mean, over the next twenty five
years. Yes. But even over the next few
years, we're we're we're looking to really invest
in that. And it's great because I think
what the first time we talked, one of
the questions was
how do how do we move from crowdfunding
as a stopgap solution
to a space where crowdfunding becomes
the conduit into larger Yes.
Institutional and structural change, which I think you're
talking about. That's beautiful. I think it's really
hard in these times audience
to think in terms of abundance,
right?
Then
everything feels scarce because we're in this world
where we're pitted against each other rhetorically.
And
if competing for
resources
that there aren't enough of. What Alex is
here telling us
is that
we actually have access to abundance, and it's
a matter of take making Absolutely.
I mean and look.
We can say the same message in a
couple of different frames. We can stick to
an economic frame, and I will prove to
you that the ROI,
the return on investment That's right. From investing
in a student
is so overwhelmingly positive. That's like the real
ROI.
Yeah. Yeah.
Financially,
in in any way do you wanna men
measure it,
that it becomes a physical malpractice not to
do it. That's what I
like, that can be proven, by the way.
Or
we can do it from an ethical and
emotional frame and say,
think about
any of the kids that you'd know and
that you don't know. And imagine, do a
thought experiment of what the world looks like
if those kids
have desires and creativity,
and that that creativity is nurtured and the
learning is nurtured
versus
if it's not fed
and it exists, but then it's allowed to
die. I mean, which world do we wanna
choose?
Yeah. It's pretty I think it's a great
place. Be clear. Right? I think I think
yeah. I don't think that's a hard,
thing for for many people.
Yeah. Gosh. What the you know,
this conversation is so incredible, and I and
I'm just so excited for our audience to
get a chance to hear from you. We
have these organizations like DonorsChoose that are doing
really great work.
But to be able to humanize that work
and really see the level of intention behind
what you're doing, I came for the ways
that DonorsChoose allows,
teachers to resource their students
to grow.
And what I got was that
plus
a really, really big world of possibility on
how we can do better. Alright. So we're
gonna we're gonna let you go on this
one.
Before we let you go, there's a little
two Dope Teachers tradition,
top five tracks
or artists that keep you inspired, motivated,
or just vibing. So it typically is top
five rappers Yeah. But it could really be
anything. So
do you have a mixtape for us? I
mean, I got a is there anybody
who
would be asked this question and not come
back with k pop demon hunters as at
least a part of their answer right now?
I mean, I will say
that. Yes. Go ahead.
I'm just repeating what you've heard over and
over again. Is that right? Well, my so
I have a 20 year old who is
very cagey about their relationship with k pop
demon hunters. Oh, really? But they're very familiar.
So I'm still trying to nail down where
that lands generationally.
Okay. I mean, I I was brought in
It's great. I love it. 15 year old.
You know, we we watched it as a
family.
Oh, nice.
Week before last. So
in in this mix, not necessarily first. So
guess golden and also takedown
from that soundtrack. Okay. And then I mean,
I don't know. I we were from almost
exactly the same era. Yeah. So I think
we're, like, exactly the same age. Age. Yeah,
exactly. So there's like a trio of albums
that I would just pick one track from
each,
you know, and that is The Score, Fugees,
Wycliffe, Carnival
and Miseducation. Shout out to the Haitian and
the Brazilian. Yes.
Of course. Yes. Exactly. You know? So we
had we had to go there. So yeah.
So, you know, Ready or Not,
you know, yeah. Carnival,
Zion maybe from I mean, you can't look.
You can't go wrong.
No. You really can't. Mix and match from
these, you know, from from from miseducation.
I mean, Lauren, you know, Lauren Hill is,
just
Queen. Just just The greatest...dot.
Just just I love it. Well, this is
right. Well, we're gonna let you go. How
do people follow you and connect with your
work and ideas?
Wonderful.
Donorschoose.org.
That is the most important
stuff I give. Is there anything that you
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Join.
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Beautiful. All right. Well, Alex Garrier,
gonna do this thing. I ramble just a
little bit and on my cue, we're gonna
say stay dope together.
So for my guests, Alex Garrier of DonorsChoose,
I am inviting you all to stay grounded
in community,
stay creative in this struggle, stay disruptive in
this system, stay inspired by the youth, stay
hopeful for the future. And if you do
all that, then you know that you're always
going to
stay