Stories by Andrew Bauld

At Jordy Sparks’ high school in Springfield, Ohio, there were two counselors for all graduating seniors — one worked with those heading to college, and the other with those heading to the workforce. As with all the seniors, the counselors alone determined placement, and Sparks was not college bound. “I asked to be transferred,” says Sparks, hoping to be one of the first in his family to go to college, but he was denied. “I was told people who came from my side of town don’t interact with the college counselor.” That would set Sparks, Ed.L.D.’18, on his own path, inspired not only to make it...

Dealing with high-pressure situations is nothing new for Abigayil Joseph, Ed.M.’99. While the pace never lets up in her role as chief of staff to the Chicago Board of Education, where she’s worked alongside former superintendent Arne Duncan and current Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, it’s behind the wheel as one of the only female pre-war Formula race car drivers where things really speed up for Joseph. FIRST OFF, WHAT EXACTLY IS A PRE-WAR FORMULA RACE CAR?
Pre-war cars are the oldest and, personally, I think, the most interesting cars in vintage race. Formula One was the continuum of the European...

Helen Janc Malone has devoted her career to better understanding the future of education. She is director of education policy and institutional advancement at the Institute for Educational Leadership, and the author of Leading Educational Change, which looks at the latest research from around the globe. We talked with Malone about her new volume, Future Directions of Educational Change, which she edited along with fellow Ed School alum Santiago Rincón-Gallardo, Ed.M.’07, Ed.D The last book, from 2013, was a bit of a survey for scholars from around the world about research. How is this new...

It began as a volunteer opportunity for Elaine Townsend Utin, Ed.M.’16, working with Latinx high school students across North Carolina. Now, she’s returned to lead the organization that set her on a path to a career in education. Scholars' Latino Initiative (Sli), began in 2003 at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill in response to the dramatic increase in the state’s Latinx population. Initially a resource for undocumented students from across the state who did not have access to in-state tuition or financial assistance, now the program has grown to a full mentorship program for...

As a writer, Ph.D. candidate Clint Smith has many achievements. His essays on race and education regularly appear in The New Yorker and The Atlantic; he was the 2014 National Poetry Slam champion; and his debut collection of poetry, Counting Descent, won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. But for all his accomplishments, Smith says the most important scholarship he’s done has been his work with prisoners serving life sentences. Education is a human right deserved by all, says Smith, especially those sentenced to life, and...

As a student, W.E.B. Du Bois understood the segregated world of Harvard in the late 19th century all too well. But the future scholar and Civil Rights leader, who would also become the first African-American to receive a doctorate from the college, made one attempt to cross the racial divide. “I did have a good singing voice and loved music,” Du Bois wrote in his autobiography, “so I entered the competition for the glee club…. Quite naturally I was rejected.” It is also natural that the orchestra founded in his name would be dedicated to addressing issues of social exclusion in the arts and...

Dilara Sayeed, Ed.L.D.’15, was tired of witnessing the challenges of education — from bullying to the cradle-to-prison pipeline — yet rarely hearing anyone talking about those issues in the public arena. For over 20 years, she has been a teacher and an education policymaker. While she’s always been politically engaged, Sayeed never thought of actually running for office herself. “I worked behind the scenes,” she says. “I’m a public servant, not a politician.”  But, when a seat opened up this summer in the Illinois House of Representatives 5th District, which comprises a wildly diverse...

We expect the Ed School to produce the next generation of great teachers, education entrepreneurs, and policymakers, but for Leah Waldo, Ed.M.'15, her time on Appian Way, including one foot-stomping, memorable event, led her on an unexpected journey from Cambridge to Nashville to become a country musician. It was truly a life-changing afternoon for Waldo as she sat in the audience of Askwith Hall in January 2015, listening to country legends Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood share stories of their own careers. At one point, Brooks described how after all his years performing he still got...

Play is an integral part of a child’s development according to traditional research mostly conducted in Western societies, but what role does play serve and what does it look like for children in indigenous communities? Ed.D. candidate Lynneth Solis, Ed.M.’10, is determined to better answer that question.  Solis’ research focuses on children’s cognitive development, specifically how young children play with each other and with objects to understand and build theories about the world around them, and how this is shaped by their cultural context. After completing her master's in the Mind, Brain...

For Alec Lee, Ed.M.’85 (right), summer isn’t a time for students to escape school. Since 1986, Lee has championed the power of summer learning for students through his organization, Aim High, a free summer learning and enrichment program that brings high-quality classroom experiences to low-income middle school students in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lee, who at the time was teaching high school history, focused on this population because, he says, “there was a lot of emerging research that middle school was really a critical juncture, especially for kids with limited experience. Also...